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18/19 Race for Promotion


KJT123

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1 hour ago, Cjay said:

West Brom have a top of the league attack but are bottom half defensively.

Not sure about WBA.

How would they cope if they lost Rodriguez, Gayle and Barnes for a spell, 5 games or so?

Thats what happened to us, Hernandez, Roofe and Bamford, there equivalent is Rodriguez,  Gayle and Barnes.

It's yer Bielsa burn out, intit ?

Dunna fret, the longer folk don't rate us despite 2 points a game, the better. ?

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8 hours ago, hooter said:

It's yer Bielsa burn out, intit ?

Dunna fret, the longer folk don't rate us despite 2 points a game, the better. ?

Hit a comparatively dodgy spell lately though haven't you (10 points from a possible 21)? I had thought that you might run away with it this season but you are only 8 points clear of us and we've had a miserable run. We both need to begin consistently good runs now (in our case picking up a few more points than you need to do). Come the end of the season we both have it in us to be in the top six. I for one would rather like it if we both finished in the top two. ?

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2 hours ago, John said:

Hit a comparatively dodgy spell lately though haven't you (10 points from a possible 21)? I had thought that you might run away with it this season but you are only 8 points clear of us and we've had a miserable run. We both need to begin consistently good runs now (in our case picking up a few more points than you need to do). Come the end of the season we both have it in us to be in the top six. I for one would rather like it if we both finished in the top two. ?

I could live with that, and the PL would be all the better for it.

We've been missing some big players for last 5 or 6 games, Pablo, Roofe, Berardi all due back next weekend and fixtures look a little kinder, be disappointing if we don't pick up again.

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9 hours ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

Pretty sure you lot are gonna be just fine with Bielsa :) That leaves one spot in the auto's for us I hope....

He has us playing great football, but there's plenty of time for us to bugger it up yet !!

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15 hours ago, ender4 said:

We need to start getting some points on the board after the disaster of the first lot of games.

Hoping for a new manager bounce to keep us going until Smith can get his own tactics/ideas up and running.

Our results so far have been mediocre and we certainly do need to pick up a run of wins fairly soon. But it’s by no means a disaster. We are 4 points off the playoff places so catching up is not a forlorn cause.

I’m not sure that new manager bounces ever really happen but Dean Smith hasn’t achived one with either of his last two appointments. 7 wins out of his first 26 games with Walsall and 12 out of 30 with Brentford (9 of those from the last 11 games of the season).

I think it will take time for him to get the squad playing the way he wants and it may need the January window to get the defence set up properly.

(Obviously will be delighted if this proves too gloomy!)

Edited by briny_ear
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On 12/10/2018 at 22:09, hooter said:

It's yer Bielsa burn out, intit ?

Dunna fret, the longer folk don't rate us despite 2 points a game, the better. ?

Good ole Bielsa burn out ?

Yesssssss, sneaking up on the outside to snatch the title  ?

 

Edited by Cjay
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4 hours ago, briny_ear said:

Our results so far have been mediocre and we certainly do need to pick up a run of wins fairly soon. But it’s by no means a disaster. We are 4 points off the playoff places so catching up is not a forlorn cause.

I’m not sure that new manager bounces ever really happen but Dean Smith hasn’t achived one with either of his last two appointments. 7 wins out of his first 26 games with Walsall and 12 out of 30 with Brentford (9 of those from the last 11 games of the season).

I think it will take time for him to get the squad playing the way he wants and it may need the January window to get the defence set up properly.

(Obviously will be delighted if this proves too gloomy!)

This is where the John Terry factor may come to the fore.....

Based upon last year and the respect he clearly gets from the squad we can hope he gives them all a lift in-between Dean Smith getting his message and playing tactics across.

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4 hours ago, briny_ear said:

Our results so far have been mediocre and we certainly do need to pick up a run of wins fairly soon. But it’s by no means a disaster. We are 4 points off the playoff places so catching up is not a forlorn cause.

I’m not sure that new manager bounces ever really happen but Dean Smith hasn’t achived one with either of his last two appointments. 7 wins out of his first 26 games with Walsall and 12 out of 30 with Brentford (9 of those from the last 11 games of the season).

I think it will take time for him to get the squad playing the way he wants and it may need the January window to get the defence set up properly.

(Obviously will be delighted if this proves too gloomy!)

That would fit in with what we saw at Fulham last year too, there were players there who said it took them a good while to understand and implement what Jokanović was coaching them to do. We're going from scarce tactical complexity, to put it politely, to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. They'll be spending a lot of time with the ball learning what Smith wants from them, and I'd be surprised if it takes less than a couple of months to start to bed in properly. Jokanović had a pre-season which is a luxury Smith doesn't have.

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4 hours ago, romavillan said:

That would fit in with what we saw at Fulham last year too, there were players there who said it took them a good while to understand and implement what Jokanović was coaching them to do. We're going from scarce tactical complexity, to put it politely, to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. They'll be spending a lot of time with the ball learning what Smith wants from them, and I'd be surprised if it takes less than a couple of months to start to bed in properly. Jokanović had a pre-season which is a luxury Smith doesn't have.

Really? Is there a source for that?

They also played exciting football the season before last and scored more goals in that season too. 

If we start slowly, I’ll think it’ll be mostly because we don’t have a defence and some of our players aren’t actually all that good. It wouldn’t surprise if it takes two full transfer windows before things really start to fall into place. 

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10 hours ago, briny_ear said:

Our results so far have been mediocre and we certainly do need to pick up a run of wins fairly soon. But it’s by no means a disaster. We are 4 points off the playoff places so catching up is not a forlorn cause.

I’m not sure that new manager bounces ever really happen but Dean Smith hasn’t achived one with either of his last two appointments. 7 wins out of his first 26 games with Walsall and 12 out of 30 with Brentford (9 of those from the last 11 games of the season).

I think it will take time for him to get the squad playing the way he wants and it may need the January window to get the defence set up properly.

(Obviously will be delighted if this proves too gloomy!)

Given the opposition we've faced I think our starts been a disaster. We are fortunate to be within 4 points but I think we will fall further away.

We now head towards a far harder run of games with a manager trying to embed a different way of playing on inherited players low on confidence.

I agree with you that new manager bounces don't really happen, they are a bit of a myth. I also don't particularly expect one as it will take Smith time to get them playing his way, those records with Walsall and Brentford are interesting and perhaps need to be repeated a few times for our fan base to digest. 

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I agree about the new manager bounce myth, but in this case we have a side that (in most people's view) are underachieving somewhere between slightly and severely. 

For all the defence being crap, the mere presence of Terry will give them an extra 20%. For the attack - we have the potential... I don't think we need a big shift to get an immediate effect. Plus there are a lot of players with entry to prove to the new boss. 

It may be a while till we the the full effect, but I can easily see an immediate impact from the new team. 

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A win today and we will be no more than 3 points outside the top 6. 

Whilst I think we have had a poor start given who we have played looking at the table we have though played two teams in the top six, four teams in the top ten and overall half the sides we have played are in the top half. Despite me thinking it has been an easy start to the season overall it has probably been a balanced one.

If we can start playing to our potential on paper I see no reason why we can't claw back that gap to the top six. I am certain that will be the aim of the new coaching team and anything beyond that would be a bonus.

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22 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Trent has a point we will fall away because if the tough games coming. The starts been a complete disaster I agree. I would argue this starts been the worst since we got relegated considering the teams.

 

I keep thinking we have had a really easy start but after today's game we will have played 13 teams and 7 of them will have been in the top half of the table. We have 10 more games after today before we hit the half way point of the season and 4 of them are against sides in the bottom half of the league. 

That December run does look tough on paper but if games were played on paper I guess we'd be sitting in the top two or three.

We have a decent start under Smith and can get some momentum going before that run in December then I would fancy us against anyone.

This run of 3 games in six days now will arguably define our season. We can get off to a flyer under the new set up then that could be the springboard for the rest of the season and us making our way into the top six.

I am not disputing by the way that given who we have already played I'd have expected us to be 7 or 8 points better off. We can't change that though but all is certainly not lost this season and this next run of games is nothing to fear.

Edited by markavfc40
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