romavillan

I don't think anybody is saying there is no way back if we got, say, 14 points out of the next 10 games. What i think people are saying is there is absolutely no way we'll be amassing that sort of points total, therefore there is no way back. I agree it is unlikely but strange things happen in football. In O’Learys first season we won just 2 of our first 13 league games we then won 5 of our next 7. Every game we have lost this season has been by the odd goal. We are potentially not a million miles away. For me it is not beyond the realms that over the next 10 games we could get wins against Swansea (H), Watford (H), Newcastle (A) and West Ham (H) and pick up of couple of draws. It needs something to spark us into life soon though as losing just cranks up the pressure and destroys confidence and I am not sure we have enough strong enough characters to handle that pressure. It also makes the manager start questioning himself and compromising on his footballing beliefs and we have already seen that with Sherwood. Given the choice now Moyes, Rodgers, Allardyce or Sherwood I got to be honest I take one of the first three. That is not on the table though is it and won’t be on the menu for some time as I just can’t for one second see Lerner/Fox pulling the trigger so soon after overseeing a huge turnover in players and the fact that Sherwood last season succeeded in his only remit. It will, whether some like it or not, be seen as too soon. For now then I have to, or maybe I choose to, give the man currently at the helm the benefit of the doubt, however slight that doubt may be. The alternative to that is knowing that he won’t be sacked but giving up totally on any hope of him turning it around after just eight games. I may as well cut my season ticket up now if that is the case and if my poor results threshold was that low I’d have probably given up going years ago. Sensible but for me 2 more losses put us on 4 points from 10 games and in a very dark place indeed. How far do we let that go? 4 points from 12? 4 points from 15? That would leave us needing to average nearly 2 points a game to be safe. That's close to title winning form and very unlikely to happen even if we signed Messi and Ronaldo in January and replace Sherwood with Guardiola. That winning streak needs to start very soon indeed before the games left and points needed equation gets beyond us.

There's definitely a way back for him. All he needs a couple of wins that bring us back into the mid-table pack and everything could and will look very different. If we were to somehow win 2 of the next 3 games for example, the pressure would ease significantly. Its not great at the moment - but he's certainly not beyond redemption yet. Can you really see us winning 2 of the next 3 games? I think it's entirely possible that we'll be approaching December still on 4 points. Absolutely, we could be going into the xmas fixtures 9 points adrift of 17th.

There's definitely a way back for him. All he needs a couple of wins that bring us back into the mid-table pack and everything could and will look very different. If we were to somehow win 2 of the next 3 games for example, the pressure would ease significantly. Its not great at the moment - but he's certainly not beyond redemption yet. a couple of wins might not be enough to do that though, it might only be enough to be in touching distance of 16th/17th.

Well, whilst honesty is generally the best policy in this case I think it's naive from Tim to be so massively transparent. He has already contradicted himself publicly a few times now. I saw an interview with Trapattoni the other week where he said he reckoned he's never told the truth to a reporter whilst he was a manager. He said that you have to think about the group and that it's really easy to rub players up the wrong way with what gets said to the media as the journalist will always try and sensationalise what gets said in order to sell the story. I think there's a lot of truth in that to be honest, there are so many different personalities involved and all will react differently (just look at the diff views on here on the same things) so it's probably better to at least be thinking about your players when you are responding to a journalist, no matter how "gutted" you are after a loss.

Yeah, the cup final was horrendous, just seemed to evaporate after that great win against the plop. If we just lay down and die and create nothing against Chelsea then he might get his marching orders, if not being hammered by Swansea might do it. By then we could be rock bottom. If Allardyce goes to Sunderland, then that's a fairly safe pair of hands disappearing. Not entirely sure Rodgers would want a job so fast. Hard to think of immediately available managers who would 1. come here, 2. get us up the table quickly

BOF - "Plus if you're chopping and changing by your own admission, you're not giving these players the chance to get used to their role in the side. A system that loses on day 1 might start to win on day 7 when the players are familiar with it, but it won't if you don't give it a chance - and he has admitted there that he won't be giving initially-losing systems a chance to develop. Being new players to a new league and country is hard enough on its own, but it is made infinitely more difficult when Tim is playing Championship Manager with his line-ups and personnel. Just as an example, I wonder if Veretout and Ayew are beginning to question what on earth they've let themselves in for." Yes I think that's going to increasingly be a problem. We have put a decent enough group together IMO, but if they start to perceive that they are not being coached and used properly and we keep losing then we will almost certainly have a load of want away players very soon. That's a very bad scene if we need a tight group to get together and fight their way out of the relegation spots.

I asked a while back if they were still on double traingin every day? are they? still 9-3 with a session in the afternoon? If he hasn't managed to get this group "fit" with a full preseason and double training for months then he has no idea what fit is, or they are doing it wrong.

ahahah. there is that. still though I think he knows how to organise a side well. which is something I think I was expectin gwilkins to help sherwood with and something we have seen precious little of in the defensive half of the pitch. i saw palermo v roma and juventus v bologna today and if bologna and palermo are poor serie a sides (by all accounts they are) then the amount of mistakes made in possession, unforced errors if you like, were waaaaaaay lower than us on any given matchday. that's something i think rodgers could help out with and something i though wilkins would have brought to our game.

I'd take Rodgers in a heartbeat. Nothing against Tim per se, just hypothetically if our job came up and he was available the I'd snap your hand off if offered. Would certainly organise us better than what we are currently seeing IMO.

West Brom this seaosn was as bad as that IMO. And Southampton/Burnley/FA cup final were worse (although I acknowledge they were last season) EDIT: Quote screwed up, replying to Bobzy. The West Brom game was horrible overall - not worse than Hull imo. Strangely, outside of the West Brom game, I think our worst performance was probably against Bournemouth, but that's ended up being our only league win. Go figure Yeah west brom game was as bad as the Hull game IMO. They all looked like they had something better to do, or they'd all left the gas on or something.

It certainly could have gone a lot worse after the Hull game. It's a difficult situation really, should we lose again in front of our own fans to a good Stoke side that are more than capable of turning us over then it's hard to see where the run is going to end as we have tougher fixtures on the horizon. It's frustrating because we look to have a lot of potentially good players capable of actually playing some attractive football but should we find ourselves on 4 points from 12 games we will probably be rock bottom and the wheels could really come off the wagon spectacularly. Instead of forging a winning group Sherwood could well be looking at a disparate mess all blaming each other and all wanting out asap. That's a QPR style recipe for the drop. On the other hand though, if he has the courage of his convictions and doesn't try to play tight and we get and keep all our best players fit and they click, then maybe Sherwood will achieve that winning group mentality and we can start to climb the table. I actually think he is capable of creating a nice team, but if we don't start picking up the points then he might not have the chance.

If Okore and Traore are fit... ...and try and score 3

why would you hope that? it's massively hurt italian football to the benefit of the bundesliga. it wouldn't be good for english football at all, would make it even harder for a club outside the richest to make any type of challenge to the established order by making it even harder to get the big cash bonus required by a couple of years in the CL. I don't like seeing the english clubs struggle, it just underlines how mistake ridden the english game is. not sure why we value fast paced game with loads of errors so much, kills us at this level.

people are just sick of seeing Westwood play, its no coincidence the players that get most abuse on here are the ones we have watched consistently for last few seasons. Guzan, Gabby, Bacuna, Westwood and Clark Good point, they've all to a greater or lesser extent been the root of all evil on here for a while.

Ha, great post. Reminds me of Casano type attitude, in interviews he said loads of times he hated training and made it obvious that was the case, hated tactics lectures too, basically saying just give me the ball and let me play and I'll do something special. Not surprising in the modern game he rubbed so many up the wrong way. It must be weird to know you can at any time possibly do something that no-one else on the pitch is capable of anticipating or stopping. Very rare too.

Great news for England. Possibly less good news for us long term but who knows, he could be our Totti.

I think the defensive suicide stat would probably give us 1st rank in that dept. Still though, it does back up what a lot of us were saying up until the understandable recent angerfest. All the more reason why he should stick to his guns and play football we don't have the players for 10 behind the ball military discipline, compact and concentrate for 90 mins, we need to go at teams to get points with this squad, or if we want to contain it should be by keeping the ball not by conceding 2/3rds of the pitch and playing a catenaccio which we just don't have the players to play.

At a stretch it's similar to our away kit, the cross is more like Parma though...

I don't think sacking him now would do much for us, or the squad he's just facialised so dramaticaly to convince to join us. I don't think these players that I and a lot of others were so chuffed with getting are suddenly poor players. In fact, despite results and up until the 71st minute against Leicester we have played some very nice football. I am however worried, the run of fixtures we are now coming into compared to who we have played is a much tougher ask. We appear to be ready to commit suicide at any given moment, the management team don't appear to know the best 11 but weirdly stick with some elements of formation and personnel that really aren't working well and so finding the best 11 without changing things will be hard. All of this on the back of only managing 4 points and 1 win in 7. That's grim in anyone's book. IMHO Sherwood needs to have the balls to stick to his guns over the style of play he introduced end of last season, this experiment with playing deep and compact and looking to break quickly really has not born any fruit at all. He also needs to be as cocky about our survival prospects as he was in a worse situation back end of last season. The players I think need that sort of confidence in them seeing as they are a young group going through tough times. If we had a squad of experienced players, scaring them into action by saying we're doomed unless we are prepared to fight it out might be a good idea. I don't think it will be with this lot. Equally though I understand it's hard to fill them with confidence when we have 4 points from a possible 21. There has to come a point when we think about it though, 8 points from 14 games would be very bleak indeed.

Bit early to talk about sacking him but he's not exactly doing himself any favours. I wouldn't have minded losing 3-2 to Liverpool at anfield if we'd had a go at them. We only started to come out of our own half at 2-0 down. That's not what Sherwood's mantra has been at all. With Lambert's team he said we had to go for teams to stay up, now with his own team we are negative and he's talking about "if" we stay in the division. That's precisely what Lambert turned into after the exciting end to his first season. We have a better squad now IMO, as a whole, we have certainly lost 1 very very good striker. We were promised positive football and goals. Up until the 71st minute against Leicester it seemed to be what we were getting. That capitulation and the subsequent over adjustment is worrying and smacks of panic. We do not have the players to play catenaccio/anti football/kill the game type football. We have a fairly long list of creative attack minded midfielders and forwards. We shoudl try and get the most out of them and go for it, the thought of Sherwood trying to shut down teams and play tight is pretty horrible. I don't think it will work. Can't beleive after being in a far worse situation last year and him saying he was 100% certain we'd stay up he's talkign about "if" already with his own new squad. Really bad situation all of a sudden. If we're bottom 3 come December I think it's time they started looking for a new manager.

Ayew was instrumental in changing the game last week, but Sinclair was preferred, Sinclair stayed on and Jack came off. Lescott looked a liability. Hutton was good, Sanchez and Lescott combined to gift them 2 goals. Very negative till the game was out of reach. Not very good all round really. Tim needs to sort his best 11 out sharpish.

GOOOOOSE

JESUS FUCKBALLS

Grealish is nto who should be coming off for Traore.

Lescott again. Good football from them, but really too easy.