romavillan

It's definitely fair to have concerns, I'm still waiting for us to play well for 90 minutes this season. If we want to win the league next year we need to do it more often than not, so far 0 out of 41 played. Not a good percentage so far. Radio comms said Burton were the better footballing side. Let that sink a minute, Clough has a football philosophy and (mostly) throughout his career in the lower leagues his teams have had an identity and a way of playing. His teams very often are more than the sum of their parts. Bruce needs to convince in that games remaining that he is capable of doing similar with this group. He will be backed in the summer no doubt but it shoudl be 3 or 4 with real quality, not another summer of signing a new team. For that to work we need some good foundations. Looks like Bruce has sorted out the back 4, but to do well next year the other 2/3rds of the pitch need sorting out too. Preferably with some solid showings with the pressure off in the next few weeks.

Bang on, we've played 41 games and not once put together 90 minutes of decent football, not great, not outstanding, not worldbeating, just decent! The run was mental, Bruce himself said a few times during the run we need to be better, even though we'd won. On the radio, they were saying Burton were the better side. Which is massive credit to Clough seeing what he has to work with but it's damning for us surely? With the playing staff we have, what is wrong with the coaching (not pointing finger specifically at Bruce, it's been years this) that we can't put out a side that is more than the sum of it's parts? Hopefully with the pressure off now Bruce will try and take the defensive shackles off and explore ways of trying to get the best out of the squad in terms of playing actual football.

We'd need to take our revolutionary be shit and win to crazy new levels to do it...

"first bit of decent play" - 80 minutes on the clock!

not asking a lot to play for 15 mins out of 90 is it? That's seemingly all it would take today...

The impossible not play well every week but win every week run had to come to an end some time. Maybe we can buck the trend and play football for half an hour and then win? Crazy I know...

Not like winning a major trophy no, a total miracle though, would feel like winning the league but really even if we win our remaining games we've only shown championship winning form for less than half a season. To actually win it you have to be good all year, we haven't been close, actually we STILL haven't played good football for 90 minutes in one game this season. The results have been fantastic in this run, but any game I've seen or listened to on the radio in it has contained long periods where we are totally disjointed and can't put two passes together. Not just the normal pendulum of who's on top in the game either. Long periods where we are pretty poor. As such, it would be nuts to rank it alongside our older (and getting ancient) achievements, as we've had great footballers playing well and won things doing it in the past. That said if we even get close to the top 6 from here it's an incredible thing, the turnaround after the Newcastle game has been monumental, asking for 6 straight wins now is straight up mental.

Let's not forget the extremely sarcastic genuinely miserable bastards.

if this total tool of a co-commentator can spot it, I'd hope our manager can.

it was at least as hurtful as the start IMO. Still though, neither run helped.

2 points from 24/27 (??) is not a blip.

not even a little bit?

holy crapballs, 18 goals in a season for codger!

Neigh, or nay, or no, i don't agree, it's not clearly massively less useful than creating better chances, converting more shots into goals. It is the necessary precursor to the ability to do those very things, as you can't do any of that without the ball can you? The minimum that having the ball gives you is that the other team cannot do those things. Having the ball and actually doing something is the best possible case, but for you to do something with it, you need to have it. We've lost a lot of points this year in essentially close run things, that 4 or 5% decrease in the time the opposition have had to score might have turned a few 1-1s or 0-1s into wins or draws, and more points on the board. The fact that having the ball is important in and of itself means the opponent cannot score is not only useful in a game where the other team never have the ball, that 4 or 5% of the time Brighton have had without the threat of an opposition attempt on their goal they've used very well. Without the need of 100% possession.

wow, comparing goal difference per game to possession per game with respect to points? That's like comparing the effectiveness of shots that go in against shots that go wide and concluding it would be better for a coach to get his players to get their shots to go in than go wide. Possession is important in and of itself, if only because if you have it they cannot score. Being better at keeping the ball would stop us going so deep and inviting on pressure when defending a lead. It's clearly not the only stat that counts but all the great sides have been good at keeping the ball, seems like a non argument to me. Is it the most important thing for us now? No, points are until we are mathematically out of the chase. Then we should experiment a bit and use the remaining games to play a bit better regardless of result.

Ahhhh, got it , jimmy danger kodija is the answer, thought i was going mental for a bit, needed the surname

If we'd have gone at just a point a game through the horror run with Bruce, what was it 2 points from possible 24? or 27? Even if it was the poor return of 8 points from 8 games we'd be only 4 points off 6th now. Which is unbelievable seeing how shit we have been for nearly the whole season.

????

Great summing up, we are yet to play well for 90 mins of a game and we've recovered from a horrendous run by seemingly not playing much better football and miraculously smashing our way up the table on championship winning form. WT actual F? How does that work?

In our current situation, and in general, yes I sort of agree. Ideal world we would be playing better football though.

Saying that we have got the defensive side right isn't the whole truth though, on the radio they were getting very worried about how deep we were playing and they had lots of threatening moments. This has been true for some of the other wins in this great run. Fine lines, but we've not commanded a game once yet, or played well for two halves of a game. Bruce has undeniably managed to make us harder to beat again, like when he first came, but I'd say performances are a concern. Nothing more than that though, it's only concerning, whilst we're winning credit should go to Bruce just as when we had the horror run the blame was laid at his door. Confidence from this run should give Bruce more authority and leeway to try and get some better performances out of this side. He has said as much himself, being very critical of how poor we have been even in winning games. So he knows it, we know it, but another 3 massive points and long may it continue. win 5 of the next 7 and who knows.

well till 2 mins ago it was 9 points, now it's 10. Rotherham are probably not going to score.

shinner

win today and we're 9 points off 6th.

Plus even coming straight back down again would mean we're on the new and improved insane money level of parachute payments. Will be easier to try again with that cash than without.