stevegrant

Christ, the merge function on this forum software is back to front

Not sure the heat of a relegation battle is really the place to be trying to get players to learn a new system that - if rumours are to be believed - the players hate and even felt strongly enough about it that they raised it with Jones so early in his tenure. Of course we should have flexibility, that seems fairly obvious, but switching so wildly from one system to another every 20 minutes can't do anybody any good.

And so much of it was completely unnecessary. Almost as soon as he's walked through the door his attitude in interviews and press conferences has been all about covering his own arse. Nothing's his fault or his responsibility, and that was after his first game, seeing as he has already disassociated himself from his actual first game at Liverpool. "They weren't winning many games before I arrived" - note the "they" there. Let's be honest, most managers arrive at clubs after the previous manager had been sacked, usually for results that were below expectation. And as a result, most new managers attempt to get a fairly unhappy fanbase on-side, even if it's with empty platitudes. Get the fans behind you from the start and you'll get a fair bit of rope. Jones has torn up the playbook and decided that being defensive, narky and downright delusional right from the off is the way that he's going to go about it, and then seems surprised that his attitude, coupled with abject performances and results and no sign of learning from the many selection and tactical mistakes, has led a significant portion of the fanbase to decide that he's not up to it. As mentioned in an earlier post by someone else, as a fanbase we do generally give new managers a warm welcome and a bit of time to get their feet under the table. For the patience to have lasted so little is on Jones, not the fanbase. Would be interesting to know whose decision it was to not have him on the panel at the Fans Forum. Either it's the club's decision and therefore they know that the fanbase is unhappy and will give him a tough time on live radio, or it's his decision and he doesn't want to have to look paying fans in the eyes and answer some tough questions. Either way, it doesn't reflect especially well. I'm not sure I'd necessarily put the spending this month in the "backing the manager" basket - it's entirely plausible that those players (James Bree excepted) would have been on our radar this month anyway given the makeup of the squad and its very obvious deficiencies. Modern clubs don't tend to pander to the manager, it's a bit more flexible so that if the manager leaves for whatever reason, the next guy isn't ripping everything up and wanting to get rid of everyone and make 20 new signings.

I mean, you're making out like we've lucked out and got a manager who is so clearly head and shoulders above anybody else and is doing a fantastic job that nobody else could do, when that is objectively obviously not the case

Absolutely, and if we could have got Alcaraz (who admittedly was pretty poor tonight, but we were left outnumbered in midfield for some reason ) in August then we'd have been able to free up JWP from his "6" purgatory to the extent where he might not have looked quite so out of sorts for months.

Excellent player badly utilised by previous managers, absolutely NOT a holding midfielder

Man United spent a decade neglecting the holding midfield role, and now they have one of the world's best players in that position, so all of a sudden they look like quite a good team again. Absolutely insane how that position isn't one of the first recruitment wishes for any team with suspect defences. Think of the players we've had in that position over the last decade - Schneiderlin, Wanyama, Hojbjerg, Romeu, Lavia. None perfect, but have all done excellent jobs (to date, in Lavia's case) in that role to the extent that you really notice when they're not there.

Imagine if Ralph had two new attacking players worth a collective £40m at his disposal in August. Given what he was left with and how things were going, a change was probably necessary, but that change didn't have to be someone with zero pedigree or any sign of being remotely good enough to step up to this level.

Neither Alcaraz or Orsic play as a number 10. Again, you've heard words, jumbled them up and come to a weird conclusion.

I mean, that's a pretty conclusive post to show you didn't actually listen properly. I said that Villa had prepared for the game having watched our recent games, realised that JWP is now playing further forward, and put a system in place to counter it. That's just a fact, it's what they did, it's why he hardly saw any of the ball for most of the game. I didn't say "we shouldn't play him there" at any stage

Not ruthless enough at this level, I'd suggest. Had some great results in that run before the break, but most were by the odd goal which gives you such fine margins. Today felt a bit sluggish for the most part, against a side who weren't especially ambitious in attack and scored with basically their only real chance in the first half, we just didn't move the ball quickly enough, whether that was through quicker passing or simply dribbling at/past the Lewes players. Everything was in front of their defence which just made it too easy for them.

Insane traffic levels (strange how nobody ever has anything to say when we're good, isn't it? ) and a bit of a glitch with one component on the server that was causing a bit of a headache. Hopefully that's resolved now, been much faster in the last hour or so after I tweaked a few things.

Again, tonight has been an opportunity for him to demonstrate that he has the ability to do it now, when as you say we need an attacking threat. Has he done anything?