romavillan

Here we are again, divisions over whether we should give an abysmally performing manager more time or sack him after a couple of months I really don't see what chaning the manager is going to do for this group of players. I mean, a new manager woudl have to assess the squad and then try and get players in, a third of Jan is gone already. It's not even slightly practical to sack Garde now. A lot of the reason why we haven't got results with Garde is the players insisting on playing for 95% of a game to a reasonable level and then seemingly totally forgetting how to be a footballer for 5-10 mins. Bad enough if you have one player like that, we look to have at least half a dozen at the moment. They contrive to do badly DESPITE being seemingly well prepared by Garde. Even if Garde gets massive backing I'm not sure where he is going to find the players he needs in one window. We need 2 full backs, a centre back, a goalkeeper, a defensive midfielder and at least one striker. That's 6/7 players. That's not going to happen. So, that leads us to him needing the summer too...

How much would you look forward to League One?

I'd go Richards -- Okore -- Clark/Baker Natural left footer on the left, Richards right sided is a natural fit for the right side of a 3 IMO. I'd love to see us try that, or even... ------------------------ Guzan ---------------------- -------- Richards -- Okore -- Clark/Baker --- Bacuna --- Sanchez ---- Veretout ---- Amavi ---------------------Gil---Grealish------------------ -------------------------Ayew------------------------ Hutton for Bacuna, and Troare for either Gil or Grealish is fine too. I think with this group 3 CBs, where we have Richards to cover RB and Clark/Baker to cover LB when they push up, is our best chance of not being so easy to score against. We need a new LB in Jan to take Amavi's place, but this shape lets us get the most out of forward thinking full backs, and lets us play two trequartista's/AM's. I think we'd keep the ball better that way too. Anyway, my take on the % of blame equation I've had a couple of pages back would be 90% Lerner, 9% Sherwood and 1% Garde. Garde is getting undue criticism I think. I think you could name the amount of managers on the thumbs of no hands who could have come in when he did and had us go on a winning run. He has taken a mentally shattered shambolic mess of a group and got them intermittently to play none relegation standard football. That's an improvement. Let's be patient, we are already down, if he had the bollocks to come here in the first place he has earned at least till this point of the coming Championship season to see what he can do. On the Richardson selection, he wasn't picked for his attacking prowess, he was picked to shore up the left side with Bacuna, which largely worked until his ambling back for their second.

I can't believe he is getting so much stick. Embarrassing. Surely it's pretty easy to understand he tried to pick a combination on the left that didn't add up to a gaping hole with a welcome matt for whomever wanted to walk into our box. He's not picked Richardson because he's the next C. Ronaldo has he, it was a move to *try* and be more solid down that side, and to be fair it was working until Clark gifted the ball and then Westwood froze and allowed the cross. I like him, I think his approach to attempting to get us out of the shit is the only sensible one, be more solid, keep the ball better, get some points and start to get some confidence. All of you saying we should just go balls out attacking might not be saying that after some 5 or 6 goal beatings. Training would have to become therapy at that point for some of this lot.

didn't like the fact we lost our discipline at the end, the time to show fight was after their first goal and the start of the second half and the way to do it was either with the ball at your feet or some hard running to keep us in the game without the ball. We were the better team till their first. Again mistakes costing us and just seemed inevitable we would lose after our reaction to that goal. The mistakes in front of goal, like Ayew's header should be a goal really, don't get as much criticism as the mistakes at the other end that made it easy for Norwich to score. If we weren't already relegated then you could find some positives in there. As it is we've ended up looking like a shambles with the handbags at the end after it could have been so different had Ayew's header gone in and we had something to defend and some more confidence. Garde I think prepares them well under the circumstances. He hasn't had that long to work with them and as a group it was a massive ask to take on something so obviously in disarray and shattered mentally. So you know I find it hard to blame Garde for much at all. The first 20-25 mins vindicates his selection and the work he is doing in training. The way they fall apart after that I don't think is his doing and is hopefully something he can put a stop to.

my house, bring beer and be out before the wife gets back....

Yep, if we concede early it'll mean trying to survive till half time and then change it. Trying to legislate for conceding early though as a manager would be more counter productive though surely? Just throwing your hands up and saying we'll never keep a clean sheet so we'll have to try and score 3 would be suicide.

It's a surprise that line up, but I think he's trying to pack the midfield and keep the ball. That's perfectly sensible IMHO, the time to get more attacking players on will be if it's still 0-0 with 20 mins to play and their crowd is frustrated and they've not been seeing much of the ball to get any rhythm going.

you can say that again.

you can say that again.

now or never has indeed gone, long gone. it's now, um, never. we should be thinking about promotion rather than avoiding relegation.

yeah the goal was not an easy thing to do, he got frustrated which perversely even thought he got booked was good to see as at least 1 of them gave a shit. I'd like to see him and more of our creative players together on the pitch at the same time but I understand why that's not going to happen until we have the defense sorted.

We were already down a few weeks ago, today is another point, which given we had only 6 points before today, a big plus. if we can start not consistently not getting a beating then we might be able to conceivably start consistently getting positive results and get some confidence. Realistically an improvement from here is not be a total shambolic walkover every week for whoever we play, then perhaps after a few weeks of actually being competitive who knows, we might win a game.

I thought it was deodorant? Stand up if you like right garde, feck off if you don't...

Interesting comments regarding Gabby too. On the Zog, just how many chances did he want? Labert gave him a go, Sherwood gave him a go, Garde involved him from the off... How not arsed must that chubby waster be?

Last nail in coffin time I think. We should already be planning for the phoenix from the flames act next season....

Will Richards be back for this? If not, then maybe we could try... ----------------------- Guzan ----------------------- ---------- Okore --- Lescott --- Clark ---------- Hutton ----- Gana ------ Sanchez -- Bacuna ----------------- Gil ---- Grealish ----------------- ----------------------- Ayew ----------------------- ... we won't, but it would probably put less pressure on Bacuna, you could swap Grealish for Veretout as well. I'd definitely try and pack the middle of the park and stay compact and keep the ball. Longer it stays 0 - 0 the more edgy their crowd will get, if we can boss possession then we might have a chance of winning, especially if they look to go back to front quickly and just give it us back....

If we don't win the "must win" games against direct opponents that are coming up, then we will struggle to reach 15 points this season IMO. Let alone avoid the drop. The fact that Lerner has managed to get us in this situation after so many warnings and when the huge jackpot of cash was just about to land next season is beyond ridiculous. The gulf between Premier and Championship will widen, and we will be on the wrong side of the gap.

I don't think he is that bad a player with the ball at his feet but I've just seen Arsenal's second goal again and I was furious with him at the time and am more so now. It's not like he's let his man go for a goal, he's let TWO PLAYERS run straight past him into space he should have been bursting his lungs to be in himself. The little wave of his hand at the linesman when he's 30 yards behind the play and they have scored the easiest goal they will ever score is particularly hard to take. I'd really like to like the lad, but that is just so poor and the type of thing we unfortunately see every week.

Fixed

But, but, but, we're a massive club aren't we?!?! Lerner is reaping what he has sown the last 4 years. He can't have too many complaints surely and will now lose a ton of cash because he was too foolish to protect his initial investment by spending enough to keep us in the league.

A good squad would have two for each position

Cole looked completely disinterested with Roma, not entirely sure that would be a stroke of genius. Rather we spent money on a young left back with talent that will be good at Championship level to help us back up quickly

12! YAY UTV **puts down crack pipe** 4

He's not awful, he's not amazing. I think he gets a bit too much credit for being our main attacking outlet when I really think teams let him have the ball whilst they shut down other options. His attitude is certainly an asset in our situation and if we had the same level of player at left back now amavi is out then we wouldn't have shipped 7 in 2 games.