St Marco

Commentator ' what a ball in by jwp, so good at crossing' the other commentator 'it was stephens'.....

Some of the stuff posted in here is just pure delusion and more a case of 'I told you so' than anything else. Firstly the whole entertainment thing. The problem with this is I can only assume some are talking from memory of 60s and 70s football where match ticket prices were tiny in comparison to what they are now. My sister went to yesterdays game with her husband and two kids. They sat in the family wing. It cost them around £100 for the tickets. Add to that the cost of getting there on the train bumps that up a lot. For the best part of £150 is it wrong to expect a bit of entertainment? The problem isn't down to the fans its down to football as a whole. It has become a massive money making machine and the club should be providing entertainment to justify those costs. If you can afford to throw away money like that and not care what is on show then fair play to you but you are obviously not living in the real world where real people cannot do that. Especially with how the cost of living has soared since the financial meltdown. Back in the day when you would pay £10 to watch a game obviously it was not so bad if you played crap because it was only a tenner. Football is entertainment. If it was not then why would tv companies pay billions to show it on their tv channel. Or is tv not entertainment now either? Secondly the Puel thing. I was not in the Puel in or out camp. I gave the guy a lot of time to see how his style would be. And upon reflection his style was boring and he deserved to be sacked. I was at the cup final and it was a great day for the club. But lets not pretend we were some amazing attacking football team. We were almost 20 points down on the previous season. Around 20 goals scored less on the previous season. Had the 4th worst home record in the league. Scored only 17 goals at home all season (2nd to last). Failed to score in 15 games (41% of our entire fixtures). And won once in our last 8 games to the season. We finished 8th not because how great we were but because how everyone else was equally as crap. If the season went on another game or two we wouldn't have been 8th for sure. Add to this people seem to have forgotten the beatings we got against Hull, Palace, West Brom, Everton, Burnley, Swansea, West Ham and how could you forget that wonderful game against those world beaters Stoke? And don't forget our amazing performances against the top 6! Where we won a grand total of **** all and lost 8 of them. Scoring a grand total of 6 goals in them. And I can't even be bothered to talk about the Europa league.... The fans didn't get Puel sacked. His football was the polar opposite to what we had seen in previous seasons. Free flowing attacking football replaced with ultra defensive slow boring football. That has continued into this season with our new manager. The fans were being told how we had the best midfield in the league. How our goal was to get to the CL as we were 'CL ready'. How all other clubs envied us and so on. Football is a business and if ticket sales start to go down business people tend to get worried. Its no coincidence Kat sold when she did. She sold us because the value was going to decrease. Buy low and sell high. I will always be appreciative to her and her father for what they did here but again lets not pretend she didn't make that decision based on financial forecasts. For me as I have said countless times our problems are not down to the fans. If we went into this season with Puel in charge I don't think we would be doing any better. We currently have 2 wins from 12 games and in our next 4 fixtures we have Chelsea, Spurs and Utd away. At the end of those games it will show our true league position and show just how bad our results have been. The worst part is in that period the teams below us all start to play each other so some of them will be gaining points on us. The problem is the decision making process above the manager. Who was the person who decided rather than continue our progress to change the manager and change the style of play that had made us successful? Who was the guy who decided to bring in a massive amount of defence minded players? One of them who we paid a **** load of money for couldn't even get on the bench yesterday. Who was the guy who sacked Puel and then basically brought in a guy who will play the same way? Who has assembled a squad of average players whilst allowing the best players to leave? That has caught up with us. Getting rid of MoPo will not change a thing if the decision making above him remains as poor as it has been. I don't blame the fans one bit. They pay good money which goes into the pockets of very rich people who are here for their supposed superior ability to play football. They have no control or say in what Reed and co do. And to think they do as said is delusional.

Kinda funny how quickly people forget the stuffings we got last season under Puel (west ham, arsenal, spurs, palace etc) In regards to this game that's up there with the worst 45mins we have played. We have some very average players. We set up with too many defense minded players. Lets see what MoPo does because if we come out with the same team and the same formation it could be 5 or 6. Thank god Lemina got that one off the line and Forster saved a couple.

Could get stuffed here if we don't wake up

I know its not related but Pordenone have taken Inter to penalties at the San Siro. That's like Cambridge United drawing at Man City. Legends.

I'm going to bite on this as got the day off and its miserable outside here so nothing better to do. Firstly I don't think anybody hates jwp or any of our footballers. That's a pretty stupid comment. We all want them to do well because that means the club will do well. But we are not doing well. We have won only 10 of our last 36 pl games. (2 in our last 11) That's the same amount as the bottom team in our league. In the whole of 2017 we have scored just 38 goals. There are issues with the team and its level of quality and to deny it would be 'idiotic'. That isn't down to jwp, you can't blame him for it at all. However if we want to improve we have to look at where the areas are that we have problems. Defence wise we are doing ok. Attack wise not so good. So lets look at our attacking players. Austin = doing well. Gabbi = doing ok. Long = doing bad. Boufal = ok but needs to do more. Tadic = chipping in with assists and goals so ok. Redmond = not so good but has helped with some assists so not awful. So how is jwp doing in comparison to them? Badly. Now its obvious from here some people think he is doing 'brilliant' which is of course their opinion. But lets look deeper into his stats (from opta). He is averaging 1 key pass a game. He is averaging 14 successful short passes a game and 4 unsuccessful short passes a game. He is averaging 0.3 successful long balls per game and averaging 1 unsuccessful long ball per game. In duels he wins 0.5 per game and loses 1.4 per game. He has made a grand total of 4 tackles this season. He makes 0.3 interceptions per game. He has a grand total of 1 successful dribble this season. He has 0 through balls successfully made this season. He averages 18 passes in total per game (Romeu averages 66 per game) His overall rating this season is 6.37 which puts him second to bottom for our entire squad. Now they are just stats and don't tell the whole picture. However from them it is clear he doesn't dribble past people, he makes mostly small short passes, he fails with most of his longer passing, he loses 1 on 1's far more than he wins them. He rarely makes a tackle, rarely intercepts the ball, he doesn't make any through balls, and of his key passes only 0.2 are longer passes. With the way we play where we only have one maybe two people forward at a time that stat shows he is not getting the ball towards our attackers. So on here a few people have mentioned 'effort'. You cannot fault the guy one bit for his effort. He will always give you 100% and try as hard as he can. But in the hardest league in the world you need more than effort, you need ability. I am sure most of us would run our asses off if we were playing but it doesn't mean we would actually be any good. The other thing people mention is 'He is English, he is young, he has potential etc'. This has been used in his excuses for years. He has made 185 games for us with 150 of them being in the pl. To put that into some perspective that puts him 13th in terms of our all time player appearances in the PL. By the end of the season he would most likely be 8th. Just under players like MLT and Benali. Legends for this club. To put that in further perspective thats more PL games then Kane (128). Delle Alli (85). Dier (117) Ox (140) Wilshere (149) Cazorla (130) Welbeck (145) etc etc. Can you honestly say he has done enough to justify that amount of games? The fact of the matter is he is from our academy and that is the only reason he gets the game time he does. This however imo is actually a bad thing because it means others are not getting a chance. Reed for example has been bombed out to Norwich where he is playing very well. Other players like Hesketh, Mcqueen and Sims are not getting a chance. Others such as Stephens have been given a chance in our strongest area of defence and they have done very well. In the game against Arsenal we had jwp play at right wing back, why? Why does he need to play there? Why not have a natural player there such as Pied who did well in his previous game? And finally as for the 'potential' thing. If he was going to be as good as some hope he will be why have none of the big clubs come in for him? Not one single bid for him. Players such as Shaw, Chambers, Bale, Walcott, Ox, Lallana etc were all poached by the bigger clubs and most of them younger and with far less games than jwp. I will continue to support ever player we have who plays for us but 'effort' is expected by every single one of them. They are not being paid vast amounts of money for their effort they are being paid for their 'ability'. If his name was James Miguel sanchez Prowseoski he wouldn't be getting the time he has.

May I ask what did he do that was brilliant? I don't think it was his worst game but I definitely felt he was our weak link. He lost the ball quite a few times, got passed with ease in the second half. Picked up the ball before it went out giving them a free kick. One of the worst corners ever that almost lead to them scoring. Got done sleeping and was bailed out by Yoshi with last gasp tackle. And stood off Sanchez allowing him to cross for their goal. I think his 6 rating is about right.

A decent half from us. Forster, Hoj, Romeu and Austin have been excellent. Redmond and jwp not so good. I'd take prowse off as he is an accident waiting to happen right now.

Prowse having another shocker of a game

Much better now with Jwp off.

We defended on mass in that game. Which looks good against a team like city. Against teams near the bottom of the table it doesn't look as good.

Need to stop them getting down the wings. Jwp keeps being left for dead.

So why don't they do that with the ref when they get a decision wrong and the crowd is going mental? If it is simply down to making sure they are being heard wouldn't that scenario be a perfect situation to do that?

Looks like the internet police are out in force tonight then. Shutting everything down on reddit.

NP. It will switch over to the Citeh game before kick off.

http://ripple.is/football/1060-manchester-city-vs-southampton

I voted out but I don't blame mopo for how things have turned out. The rot started before he was here and the blame lies at the feet of Reed and co. Add to that some of the coaches ie Black. Whilst I have seen nothing from Mopo to suggest he is a good manager it makes no difference if we get him out and bring in another defense minded manager. Reed changed our style of play and should have kept Puel on if he wanted us to play the same way. We have gone from a high pressing free flowing attacking side into a slow boring ultra defensive team. Add to that we are in the bottom 4 of amount of distance covered shows the coaches have not been getting the best out of our players in terms of effort. If we sack him and appoint someone like Fat Sam, Pullis, Pardew or Adkins imo that will show utter poor planning from the supposed genius who always has new managers planned out well in advance (so he says).

Out and take Reed, Black and co with him. Personally right now if I had to pick anyone to come in I would take Koeman back until the end of the season. He knows the players and the club. The way he left was more down to Reed than him imo. He might have a point to prove after the Everton **** up. Getting in fat Sam or anyone like that will see us play the same boring defensive football.

Can't really blame Forster for that one. Blame the 10 players ahead of him who were standing around like they couldn't give a **** especially vvd.

Or it could be they were right and you were wrong? Couldn't possibly be that could it? Everyone knows we have been playing **** for quite some time. Pointing it out doesn't mean people have an agenda.

He was gash at Celtic too.

Whoever in the other thread said it was smash and grab is deluded. We were not the better team, We were on par with each other. The difference is their manager decided to gamble and change tactics by putting more attackers on. We stuck to our keep possession and move the ball around slow tactics and hope our 1 isolated attacker could do something of quality. Its clear MP2 isn't a very good manager as he doesn't know where the players should play or how to change tactics to influence a game. He should not have been appointed. And for me that highlights the main problem. Who Appointed him? Reed. Who allowed the back staff to remain even though they have a history of being involved with clubs imploding? Reed. Who bought in many of these players who clearly do not give a crap or put effort in? Reed. Who bought in cheap players and bigged them up as the best midfield in the league? Reed. Reed, Black and co have to go. They got lucky in the past and thought they could continue to do the same thing every season. The past 2 transfer windows have been a **** up and I expect January to be the same. Add to this we still do not have a clue about what our owners plans are. Kat said she sold so they could take us to the next level. That level right now is below teams like Burnley and Watford. As the commentator said we have no plan, no direction and worst of all no positivity. We rested on our laurels and under estimated how improved the teams around us had become. IMO its time for change from top to bottom.

One up front at home to Burnley....Da **** happened to us.

Redmond is having a total mare of a game so far

Couldn't disagree more.... Stoke have played City, Chelsea, Utd, Arsenal, WH have played spurs and utd, West Brom have played City, Arsenal, etc etc We have played Utd and that is all. Yet the teams you say who are worse than us are only a few points behind us. How many points behind us do you think they will be when we get to jan 1st when we have played Liverpool away, City away, Chelsea away, Spurs away, Utd away and Arsenal at home? How many points do you think we will get from those following fixtures?