Dean Smith

[TRO]

The irony is.....that line up last night, might be ok, against Arsenal....They let you play.

West Ham were cute.....they knew how to play us.

we should be cuter and have players who can counter it.....maybe in the summer we will learn.

Edited February 4, 2021 by TRO

[tomav84]

10 minutes ago, TRO said:

its like climbing up a rock face and constantly patting yourself on the back, for how far you have come......you are more likely to fall off, rather than get to the summit.

the Last few seasons was coming out of the Dark times, never to be repeated.....we are a Premiership side now, and we should think and moan like one.

why do we have to moan though? only 2 bad performances out of 20 is something that no other team can boast this season aside from maybe city. maybe we just enjoy it and put the VERY rare poor performances to one of those bad days at the office?

i get this is a forum and all are entitled to have a good moan but it doesn't stop here. it's in all the replies on the official twitter feeds. it's in the players' insta comments etc.

maybe expectations have changed as the season's gone on but surely everyone is happy with how the season has gone overall? i just don't get the meltdown every time results don't go our way.

[nick76]

1 minute ago, DCJonah said:

What do you expect though? Never play poorly? 

Liverpool drew with West brom and lost to Brighton. Spurs have played poorly and dropped points. Leicester lost to Leeds, Man U lost to sheff u. 

Of course we're going to have games where we play bad. 

Out of 20 games, how many have really been bad? 3 or 4, at a push 4 and a half? 

I mean if that's something you want to moan about what are you expectations? 

That was my point last night, we have been the better team in 16 of 20 games, that’s 80%.  As a team that is growing, and people don’t want to talk about last season or the last decade but this season is a massive step forward, a phenomenal step forward.  Yes we need to keep improving and we still have issues but we have to appreciate where we have come from so quickly.  In modern society though, we all know it’s about instant success and everything must happen now.  Reality doesn’t work like that.

[Zatman]

2 minutes ago, tinker said:

The secret to our loss was Moyes tactic of man marking Jack with a player who did a great job and our other players not taking the responsibility to create themselves.

The 2nd part for me, Barkley kept playing the ball to Jack. Headless tactic. When Ashley Young 1st getting double marked we did the same thing for a few games and it was similar. Players need to not just rely on Jack as an outball

[sparrow1988]

3 hours ago, Zatman said:

Lose a game we lack physicality a  Jedinak midfielder who only 2 or 3 teams in the whole league use. win a game we dont make subs. 

Same old story on here

But but but, we've made the least amount of subs (41) in the league this season.

2nd least amounts of subs.... Man City (42) - top of the league.

Edited February 4, 2021 by sparrow1988

[TRO]

1 minute ago, tomav84 said:

why do we have to moan though? only 2 bad performances out of 20 is something that no other team can boast this season aside from maybe city. maybe we just enjoy it and put the VERY rare poor performances to one of those bad days at the office?

i get this is a forum and all are entitled to have a good moan but it doesn't stop here. it's in all the replies on the official twitter feeds. it's in the players' insta comments etc.

maybe expectations have changed as the season's gone on but surely everyone is happy with how the season has gone overall? i just don't get the meltdown every time results don't go our way.

Well, my comment was tongue in cheek.....but hey, you can't be happy with that last night, and your comment on 2 bad games, is debatable.....we have dropped unnecessary points on too may occasions, with similar flaws in attendance.

Expectations will have changed, but that has nothing to do with what is being debated.....its clear poor play, we are talking about.

but we are talking about last nights game, not the season.

I thought Ollies Goal was a tremendous strike.....but there again, we are talking about the game as a whole and it was sloppy.

[sne]

3 minutes ago, tinker said:

The secret to our loss was Moyes tactic of man marking Jack with a player who did a great job and our other players not taking the responsibility to create themselves.

We are normally a great team in possession, looked jaded last night. Without the ball though we are pretty average, we tend to win the ball back in defense and play out from there. The midfield definitely needs a ball winning physical player in there if our creative players are losing the ball time and time again. We sacrifice that defensive strength to have Jack, Barkley , McGinn , Douglas,   Bert / Elgahzi on the pitch. All creative players who usually produce chances.

Do we change our methodology to a more defensive set up and sacrifice the stylish swagger we have seen and to be honest has been a pleasure to watch? 

Nah, I think we have a good thing going, but we need our other players to help out Grealish by offering options and creating space. McGinn and especially Barkley didn't do that against Wet Spam. 

Teams have been trying to cancel out Grealish all season but failed for the most part thanks to our other players pulling their weight. With Grealish perhaps not in prime form it all falls apart if he doesn't get help. We need Targett, Watkins and our midfield to maintain the level from earlier in the season and I think it will be a big ask as I think we will struggle a bit from now on due to tiredness. Hopefully Sanson and maybe Ramsey can help keep the intensity up and offer options.

I don't think we have players or a squad suited to play in a more defensive way or to sit and soak up pressure. 

[nick76]

4 minutes ago, TRO said:

Well, my comment was tongue in cheek.....but hey, you can't be happy with that last night, and your comment on 2 bad games, is debatable.....we have dropped unnecessary points on too may occasions, with similar flaws in attendance.

Expectations will have changed, but that has nothing to do with what is being debated.....its clear poor play, we are talking about.

but we are talking about last nights game, not the season.

I thought Ollies Goal was a tremendous strike.....but there again, we are talking about the game as a whole and it was sloppy.

(Not at you but generally)

But isnt that the narrative so often on this forum and other web feeds.  Always looking for the negative and exclude the positive in the situation

        Burnley - doesnt matter that we played so well we conceded silly goals and lost the game

        Southampton -  yeah we won the game but the important thing is we didnt play well and didnt used subs.  We dont use subs all season

        West Ham - we played poorly, that's not good enough we need to play well.  Dont talk about playing well all season we need to focus on this game.  

It's just all contradictory depending on the game.....its about playing well, dont worry about playing well. It's about winning not performance but we won despite the performance.

Dont get me started about rotation

 

Last night wasnt good enough I agree, we have things to improve on, we need more players, our players look a little leggy but where we are now there are so many more positives about us at the moment but sometimes on this website it doesnt feel like it.

[GingerCollins29]

38 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

What do you expect though? Never play poorly? 

Liverpool drew with West brom and lost to Brighton. Spurs have played poorly and dropped points. Leicester lost to Leeds, Man U lost to sheff u. 

Of course we're going to have games where we play bad. 

Out of 20 games, how many have really been bad? 3 or 4, at a push 4 and a half? 

I mean if that's something you want to moan about what are your expectations? 

I never said i don't expext us to have bad games but i'm going to moan sbout it because we should be beating those sides with the team we have now.

Or do you want me to applaud them off for making lingard look like ronaldinho?

[TRO]

2 hours ago, MaVilla said:

Just my opinions, but here goes:

1) Barkley is clearly a talented footballer on his day, no doubting it (although seems a 1 in 4 type player), but more often than not imo he slows us down and seems to want to act like a show pony, slowing play down so he can show how cool he is by standing still and waving his foot over the ball (the kind of thing players in my sons 10 year old team do to each other for "cool points"), he also imo is about as lazy a player as i have seen, he doesnt track, doesnt tackle and gets knocked off the ball way more than i would expect for a player his size, imo he's a 100% luxury player in a modern game where no teams (or very few teams) can carry a pure luxury player......we certainly cant.

2) We have Grealish (who is a bit of a show pony), but he works fairly hard and has earnt every bit of his show pony rights, but if you add Barkley (super lazy) and Traore (mercurial enigma) to this mix it effectively means the team as a unit doesnt work hard enough, we cant leave all the work to the fullbacks, the striker and 2 x DMs, we cant have 3 players with varying degrees of passiveness. (although i think Traore has progressively worked harder each game he has played, to be fair)

3) imo the right wing should be Traore or Trez (personally i prefer Traore), but at least trez gives us something the others dont in super high work rate, El Ghazi gives nothing imo.

4) El Ghazi shouldnt ever be in the starting 11, he's really poor, really really poor, ye he scored a few goals....but his overall play is epic levels of terrible.

5) Imo Sanson (who is known to be a hard worker with some ability to play), should come in for Barkley to add some solidity to the midfield, Sanson might also actually help Watkins press when we drop in to our 442 defensive shape.

6) We are too soft as a team, which i think is covered in the points above, i said to a friend that the modern game has (in part) changed because the old days of a Matt LeTissier type (for all his talent) who can just stand still and do nothing but wait for the ball are gone, the best teams today expect the entire team to work on and off the ball, any team in the modern game who carry a player that doesnt want to work is immediately at a disadvantage before a ball is even kicked, currently this is exactly what we are doing.

7) I think there are other issues with the squad/team, but i dont think they can be fixed until the summer window, so i have left them out and tried to just address my personal issues with the current squad, that can maybe be addressed with the current squad.

 

Honestly, if Deano persists with Barkley in the starting 11 i think it sends a very poor message to the squad in terms of getting away with being lazy and expecting the rest of the team to do your work for you, i have nothing against Barkley in the starting 11 "IF" he earns it and works hard like many others attempt to, currently i dont think Barkley deserves the spot, and by being there its sending a bad message imo with his current efforts.

Ma.....I respect your opinion on here, more than most, and all what you say here, is worth listening too.....Personally, I am not sure about Barkley, last night he had a stinker, granted, but he is one of the few with the guile to enter play with jack and interplay.

I am not saying front players are exempt from defending, but when you lose a game and opponents are able to pass through you so easily, I tend to look elsewhere.....we never got touch tight anywhere in out team last night and we invited them in.

I am not going to wax lyrical about the season, because it misses the point.....The team has a soft underbelly, that needs attention, I thought, we had over come that, but the evidence is still there....4 points from 8 games with Leeds,Brighton,Southampton, Burnley & West Ham, that is not a one off or a bad day at the office, that is endemic in this squad of players....The first people to defend, is those whose main job it is and then get others to chip in.....We, in those games mentioned, just failed to get close and disrupt, we have no natural players in the squad who have an instinct for it....sure players come on to us, but very few go hunting them down....We are passive, in a general sense and the types of personnel we have recruited, I wonder if we are sleep walking in to it.

Would we have bought Soucek a better mans Jedinak.....would we have bought Soufal or Dawson......My point is we can't keep signing Ballers and then see ourselves being ripped open by combative players.

I think our problem is the players who should defend or are tasked to defend, do exactly that.....I watched carefully last night our 2 CDM's and I couldn't honestly tell you what they was doing.....I had an argument with my son over it, until he focussed on the subject and conceded and said you are right..... we was wide open, with no disruption to what they were doing.....Sanson in his short time at least offered a presence.

If we are going to play 2 smaller players in that role they have to be like Makalele or Essien or Kante.

We haven't seen the last of last night IMO....we just have to factor in, we are going to struggle with the teams, i have mentioned...With this current line-up

 

[Mjvilla]

6 minutes ago, GingerCollins29 said:

I never said i don't expext us to have bad games but i'm going to moan sbout it because we should be beating those sides with the team we have now.

Or do you want me to applaud them off for making lingard look like ronaldinho?

But west ham are a good side. They have won 6 out of 7. Why should we feel entitled? We came up, little more than 18 months ago, with 2 players good enough. We've built a whole squad. A lot of which aren't good enough because they were bought on the cheap. 

I cannot think of another side who has had to build in this manner. We are STILL a work in progress. More so than any side in the top 12 I'd say. Games like last night will happen, they will likely happen for time yet. We can say how we think we can improve, I wouldn't deny that. I've read alot of very good posts in here on how folk feel we can get better. But, that will take time.

What Smith did last season is unheard of. Building a whole squad and keeping it up. To then take it to another level by having it challenging in the top half is fantastic. 

But it's all about expectations, and it's why I always think back to where we were 18 months ago after games like last night. The expectation from most for this season was to just not be involved in a relegation battle. We are exceeding that. Should Smith be a victim of his own success? Not from us fans, I'm sure he will demand more from himself and the players. But, we should enjoy the ride he is taking us on instead of moaning after every game win/lose or draw. 

[KentVillan]

The real problem last night was we let a team dominate the midfield battle *and* park the bus.

It's one thing watching Jack get double marked out of the game. We have to accept that will happen sometimes, and it should create more space elsewhere on the pitch.

The counter attacks too, are always going to happen when you're trying to get back into the game against a counter attacking side.

What really needs fixing is the fact West Ham were able to do a high press and always have a packed defence when we were attacking. That suggests (a) they beat us for fitness, and (b) we weren't shifting the ball quickly enough. I think that stems from McGinn and Barkley much more than El Ghazi.

[nick76]

13 minutes ago, GingerCollins29 said:

I never said i don't expext us to have bad games but i'm going to moan sbout it because we should be beating those sides with the team we have now.

Or do you want me to applaud them off for making lingard look like ronaldinho?

This season shows things like that happen, look what we did to Liverpool.  That was awesome but you can’t say generally we are that much better than Liverpool. We battered Arsenal, we aren’t that much better than Arsenal.

I think if everything happened as it should it would be worthless playing the league because we’d know the outcome.  We never would have a Leicester win the league.

West Ham are obviously fifth for a reason and we saw that last night.

[andym]

1 hour ago, TRO said:

Its not the intention, to write Luiz off....its the intention to see what job is not being done, and do it.

Personally, I think if he was Icelandic or Irish and Not Brazillian a different Perception may be made....but he has potential, sure, I just don't think he has it in him to be CDM in my understanding of the role.....but I don't think SJM is either, for maybe not the same reasons.

And i suspect if he was 6ft 4 but still had exactly the same performances and stats, a different perception may be made by others...

Only 4 teams have conceded less goals this season (although we generally played less games than most, but even going on goals against per game, we are not 'poor'), so overall defensively we are doing a pretty decent job, and he is part of that.

I'm not sure there is really a prototype CDM these days, its not really a case anymore of stick your biggest, strongest (but slowest) midfield to screen the back 4. Plenty of different body types playing that position well, the main thing is that besides defensive responsibilities, all the good ones can 'play' and can get around the pitch as well, they don't just hack it away when they get it.

Luiz has that natural ability on the ball. No-one would say he doesn't need to work more on the defensive side of things, but he is only 22, and for that side of the game a bit of experience helps, particularly if you are going from a more attack minded to defensive player. The younger CDMs around who are already really good defensively are generally going the other way - starting out as defenders. But then they lack the ball playing part.

The question is whether he can and wants to further improve that side of his game. Prior to covid, he had definitely made massive strides compared to last season, so i see no reason at the moment why he can't improve further. Its a massive plus to the team if he can, even if he eventually he doesn't end up in a dedicated CDM role.

 

[Zatman]

Yeah just like the United game a few weeks back I think some fams thought we would steamroll West Ham because we played well in London vs them

[nick76]

2 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

The real problem last night was we let a team dominate the midfield battle *and* park the bus.

It's one thing watching Jack get double marked out of the game. We have to accept that will happen sometimes, and it should create more space elsewhere on the pitch.

The counter attacks too, are always going to happen when you're trying to get back into the game against a counter attacking side.

What really needs fixing is the fact West Ham were able to do a high press and always have a packed defence when we were attacking. That suggests (a) they beat us for fitness, and (b) we weren't shifting the ball quickly enough. I think that stems from McGinn and Barkley much more than El Ghazi.

(c) they might have an overall better team/squad than us hence why they are fifth this season.  It’s close between the teams but you can argue that.

[Mjvilla]

Spoiler

 

One further point, I made a post recently about being more clinical as a way to improve. That was at the forefront again for me last night. We can talk all day about the midfield, but in the first half we created the 2 best chances.

If Watkins had scored instead of finding the post, or Barkley had struck it well instead of scuffing and scored then the whole game dynamic changes. West ham have to open up a bit to find themselves a goal and we exploit the space left. 

We have to take these chances, west ham don't give you many, we have to take them. If either of those goes in last night, I'd wager we go on to win. So for as much as the midfield got walked through too easy, we have to note the other end too.

[KentVillan]

1 minute ago, nick76 said:

(c) they might have an overall better team/squad than us hence why they are fifth this season.  It’s close between the teams but you can argue that.

True, but stamina and moving the ball quickly are part of that, aren't they? I think earlier in the season this kind of domination wouldn't have happened, because McGinn and Barkley would have been sharper.

I imagine we'll be seeing a lot more of Sanson now, and possibly more game time for Nakamba, although I'm not sure he's the answer.

[DCJonah]

30 minutes ago, GingerCollins29 said:

I never said i don't expext us to have bad games but i'm going to moan sbout it because we should be beating those sides with the team we have now.

Or do you want me to applaud them off for making lingard look like ronaldinho?

Why should we be beating West Ham? 

There aren't many teams in the league that I think we have a right to say we should be beating. 

And ultimately we have beaten Liverpool, Leicester and arsenal, so why feel the need to moan if we have a blip here and there. 

I just find it strange how desperate some are to do it. 

I got it in the past, with some of the managers we've had. But now? Makes very little sense to me. 

[Sam-AVFC]

Don't know about others, but I definitely buy into the theory that not having a crowd has improved us this season. We're horrendously fickle as fans and I bet the team would have been booed off last night, which would have been nice for Sanson on his debut.