Whitey Grandad

I've only watched the brief highlights but what I saw was a defence with no shape or cohesion. Traditionally, a pair of centre backs in a back four will develop a sense of understanding and will instinctively be in the right position to cover any threat. With three centre backs you have three pairings instead of one and it leads to confusion unless they are drilled relentlessly in their relative positions. They also need to be played regularly with no chopping and changing. What is saw last night horrified me. Defensively no shape or structure with players rushing about like panicked chickens once a couple of foxes had got in amongst them.

It seems obvious to me. If you play three Centre Backs then you're going to be light in midfield. The three don't make us any stronger, they just get in each other's way and leave responsibility to each other and because we're light in midfield they have nobody to pass the ball to.

This post deserves a 'like'

Raining in on our keeper or theirs? That's a false extension anyway. I would be a lot happier to see traditional classical British football, not some modern theoretical experiment.

Except it isn't. Any statistics that have been quoted so far do not come near the actual result. They are therefore de facto a useless irrelevance. What we see is a result of targeting good statistics and is the bane of modern football be it possession, Xg, XgA or whatever. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

Here come da Bitch 🤗 Just more proof of what I've always said.

And had no effect on the outcome.

As I have always said, statistics are meaningless.

Just what everybody needs 🙄

It will take until the end of his contract just to teach him how to control a ball.

It would seem so.

Were they black too?

Differently worse.

87 is not a bad run.

Not if you're a football manager. Or a brain surgeon. Or a ...

It was only a throw in FFS. Nobody ever scores from a throw in. Unless Manning decides to stand around arguing and forgets his day job.

Because they know that we won't have anybody waiting on the end of it.

Ask his financial advisor what he thinks about it.

They don't show much of that on TV. It doesn't fit the hype.

"The screens are on but nobody's watching" That typifies modern society. It allso stupefies me how an American Football team (franchise) can up sticks and move to the other side of the country. I asked a bartender once what the fans thought of this. "They're pretty pissed" was his reply.

Coincidence?

There's a quote in The Times today from Keith Andrews, "If you make it about you, you're not doing your job "

I have concluded that modern football and especially TV coverage is designed to be watched in a sports bar. Constant replays from multi angles with frequent shots of the crowd and the managers. Football lovers who like to follow the match and get involved in it literally don't get a look in.

Playing Scrabble would get you more points.

That depends on who you ask.