Pre-match thread

[VillanousOne]

6 minutes ago, TRO said:

We have one of the best managers....I'm being told we have a strong squad.....we need to go out and show we believe it.

De Zerbi finished last season, one point above us and having conceded more goals.... we never got going until Unai arrived, after 14 games, but De Zerbi became the darling of the press, fine.

We should take solace from that, and go out and B e l i e v e a bit more.....They should be the nervy ones, not us.....but only WE can change that.

Best manager  - check
Good starting eleven - check
Good squad - not even close - 50% of our fringe players have tanked and 50% are injured

Chambers, Lenglet, Olsen, Tielemans, Dendoncker (but mainly ring rust/lack of fitness), are dreadful stand ins.

Bailey, Torres & Duran need the A Team round them to help them look decent.

Missing Moreno, Mings, Carlos, J Ramsey, Buendia is really hurting us.

Not sure we need Phil, but letting A Ramsey go was dumb and possibly Archer also.

The other issue is Emery for all his genius does not know how to get the best out of the squad presently, although it is more that they are letting him down and him showing too much faith.

Edited September 29, 2023 by VillanousOne

[TRO]

16 hours ago, VillaChris said:

Yeah it's strange. I looked at the bookies odds and they have Brighton at 5/4 and us 7/5. Now of course Brighton are playing well so guess punters are just seeing it as continuation but they've also been playing well in previous years before playing us and we usually win reasonably comfortably. There's only a 3 point difference in the table.

Will West Ham be priced at 5/4 in a few weeks? They really do have our number in the respective match up and have already had a couple of good wins this season. I'm certainly less confident of even getting a draw from that game than Saturday. Can still remember the early home game where Moyes played for a 0-0, it was a terrible match and still we somehow lost from that goal that massively deflected and looped over Emi. Gerrard should've been sacked an hour after that match rather than waste another two months.

Its on the day....previous results count for nothing.

We come out in the right frame of mind and we can surely win this.

Personally, I fear West Ham more than Brighton.

[TRO]

4 minutes ago, VillanousOne said:

Best manager  - check
Good starting eleven - check
Good squad - not even close - 50% of our fringe players have tanked and 50% are injured

Chambers, Lenglet, Olsen, Tielemans, Dendoncker (but mainly ring rust/lack of fitness), are dreadful stand ins.

Bailey, Torres & Duran need the A Team round them to help them look decent.

Missing Moreno, Mings, Carlos, J Ramsey, Buendia is really hurting us.

Not sure we need Phil, but letting A Ramsey go was dumb and possibly Archer also.

The other issue is Emery for all his genius does not know how to get the best out of the squad presently, although it is more that they are letting him down and him showing too much faith.

I agree

You could be the best cook in the world, but if you haven't got ALL the ingredients its hard to make a good pie.

I see a clear distinction, in the players who are injured and the ones left fit.

The ones who have gone from the club, do not offer the ingredients, that the injured players have, so its subjective as to, are they a loss.

Phil, Cam and Aaron are all attacking players, we have an abundance of them.

[Marka Ragnos]

47 minutes ago, TRO said:

Its on the day....previous results count for nothing.

We come out in the right frame of mind and we can surely win this.

Personally, I fear West Ham more than Brighton.

Especially if played in London. 

Vs. Brighton, I think key is our backs marking Mitoma and Ferguson closely. But even more, it will take your "rottweilerness" further up the pitch, too, to make absolultely sure it never gets to the point where all we're doing is trying to stop these two nightmares. If we're struggling with Mitoma, if that's our main focus, we've already lost the midfield battle, after all. Whoever plays out wide on our right midfield is going to make or break our defense. Watkins and Diaby need to pester, pester, pester, but it may come down to McGinn or even Cash to short circuit Estupiñán before he passes to Mitoma.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Marka Ragnos

[TRO]

4 minutes ago, Marka Ragnos said:

Especially if played in London. 

Vs. Brighton, I think key is our backs marking Mitoma and Ferguson closely. But even more, it will take your "rottweilerness" further up the pitch, too, to make absolultely sure it never gets to the point where all we're doing is trying to stop these two nightmares. If we're struggling with Mitoma, if that's our main focus, we've already lost the midfield battle, after all. Whoever plays out wide on our right midfield is going to make or break our defense. Watkins and Diaby need to pester, pester, pester, but it may come down to McGinn or even Cash to short circuit Estupiñán before he passes to Mitoma.

I will go in to my seat with Peps words ringing in my ears.......We need "players who go after you, not wait for you".....without that mantra, we will struggle.

Fingers crossed, we will be "Prepared" for the former.

[duke313]

The team basically picks itself with the injuries we have at the minute.

Martinez
Cash Konsa Pau Digne
McGinn Luiz Kamara Zaniolo
Diaby Watkins

[VillanousOne]

11 minutes ago, duke313 said:

The team basically picks itself with the injuries we have at the minute.

Martinez
Cash Konsa Pau Digne
McGinn Luiz Kamara Zaniolo
Diaby Watkins

The options off the bench now are pretty dire

[juteface]

Need to be on form for this, I do fear Pau vs West Ham more though. 

[romavillan]

1 hour ago, TRO said:

We have one of the best managers....I'm being told we have a strong squad.....we need to go out and show we believe it.

De Zerbi finished last season, one point above us and having conceded more goals.... we never got going until Unai arrived, after 14 games, but De Zerbi became the darling of the press, fine.

We should take solace from that, and go out and B e l i e v e a bit more.....They should be the nervy ones, not us.....but only WE can change that.

It's a great match up in terms of the coaches, in another thread @JAMAICAN-VILLAN posted some head to head stats. De Zerbi in 38 games averages more than 2 goals a game and 66% of the ball, but Emery (albeit in 30 games) averages 2 points a game to De Zerbi's 1.6/1.7. For my money they're the two best coaches in the league based on their respective tenures so far. Look at what they have to work with compared to the Sky 6 in terms of squad. If anything the job De Zerbi has done is a bit more impressive really. We've not found our stride consistently this season but Emery has still got us on 12 points after 6 games. Brighton are flying, I doubt facing anyone but City woudl make them nervous at the moment.

As for darling of the press, I'd prefer that honour to go to a different manager than our own. We flew under the radar despite the amazing work Emery did last season, and I think that suits us best still. 

I agree we have to believe 100% in what we're doing, each player has to believe they know their role inside out and have faith in the knowledge that their team mates do too, we can't play how we want to without the players knowing without looking where the easy pass is to keep the ball for example. In terms of belief in winning, we showed that in spades against Palace, duff performance for 80 mins mostly but we didn't give up and kept at it and got 3 points. 

I'd still take a point

[romavillan]

41 minutes ago, duke313 said:

The team basically picks itself with the injuries we have at the minute.

Martinez
Cash Konsa Pau Digne
McGinn Luiz Kamara Zaniolo
Diaby Watkins

Looks like we won't but I'd try McGinn left, Zaniolo right or as the 10. I think Zaniolo would benefit from that a lot and that would give the team another dimension.

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

27 minutes ago, romavillan said:

It's a great match up in terms of the coaches, in another thread @JAMAICAN-VILLAN posted some head to head stats. De Zerbi in 38 games averages more than 2 goals a game and 66% of the ball, but Emery (albeit in 30 games) averages 2 points a game to De Zerbi's 1.6/1.7. For my money they're the two best coaches in the league based on their respective tenures so far. Look at what they have to work with compared to the Sky 6 in terms of squad. If anything the job De Zerbi has done is a bit more impressive really. We've not found our stride consistently this season but Emery has still got us on 12 points after 6 games. Brighton are flying, I doubt facing anyone but City woudl make them nervous at the moment.

As for darling of the press, I'd prefer that honour to go to a different manager than our own. We flew under the radar despite the amazing work Emery did last season, and I think that suits us best still. 

I agree we have to believe 100% in what we're doing, each player has to believe they know their role inside out and have faith in the knowledge that their team mates do too, we can't play how we want to without the players knowing without looking where the easy pass is to keep the ball for example. In terms of belief in winning, we showed that in spades against Palace, duff performance for 80 mins mostly but we didn't give up and kept at it and got 3 points. 

I'd still take a point

De Zerbi probably the only Manager I could currently think of or be ok with taking over from Emery if/when that time comes.

More than likely will be off to one of the big boys eventually though.

As Eddie Howe may simply be Newcastle's " Mark Hughes " etc you never know.

[andym]

I enjoy watching Brighton play, and i like De Zerbi; even more so because when he got appointed you got the usual dinosaur ex-pro pundits saying it was a bad hire because 'what does he know about the Premier League'. Good to see him proving those clowns emphatically wrong.

Its going to be a serious test as they have started the season on fire. Scored 3 or more goals in every league game except West Ham at home, where they got mugged, battering West Ham everywhere but the goals column (78% possession, 25 shots including 10 on target, 17 corners - they just didn't have their shooting boots on that day).

Maybe a draw, based on law of averages, as neither team has had one yet.

 

 

[Rugeley Villa]

Still hundreds of tickets left for this game. Don’t look like it’s going to sell out again 

[Tomaszk]

On 28/09/2023 at 11:57, Stevo985 said:

I'm slightly nervous about things at the moment.

I absolutely love Emery, I think he's the best manager we could have got at the time and I think he's doing a fantastic job.

My worry is with everything going on off the pitch, which is all a bit of a shambles, I think we are being propped up as a fanbase by the fact things are going well on the pitch.

 

However, let's be honest, we were shit against palace until the last 10 minutes, and we should probably have lost to Chelsea if they didn't have a man sent off. The Warsaw and Everton performances have been terrible.

My worry is despite our very good start in the league, I don't think we're a million miles away from a downturn in form. I think we've ridden our luck slightly over the past few weeks.
Now that's fine, and totally normal, especially with our injuries and Europe in the mix.

My fear is that the downturn in form will stop "propping up" the fanbase and things could turn nasty quite quickly.

Maybe I'm just being dramatic... but I'm worried

Feels like something could swing tomorrow to be honest.

I'm fully on board with the annoying clearings in the woods who think Brighton are incredible.

They could do us 3-0 with 70% possession.

Hopefully not and we continue our great form against them.

Let's see you Ollie.

[Marka Ragnos]

1 hour ago, romavillan said:

Looks like we won't but I'd try McGinn left, Zaniolo right or as the 10. I think Zaniolo would benefit from that a lot and that would give the team another dimension.

Will he press? We fail to press against Estupian, we lose. 

[Marka Ragnos]

3-2

There will be some goals and at least one red card. 

Edited September 29, 2023 by Marka Ragnos

[ender4]

29 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

Still hundreds of tickets left for this game. Don’t look like it’s going to sell out again 

Now that is surprising!

[Galway Lion]

30 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

Still hundreds of tickets left for this game. Don’t look like it’s going to sell out again 

Mainly returns probably because of the train strikes. 

[Rugeley Villa]

Just now, Galway Lion said:

Mainly returns probably because of the train strikes. 

Yeah there is that , but I honestly think demand is dropping off more than anything. 

[Rugeley Villa]

3 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Now that is surprising!

Yep, not great when we are on about going to 50k but I’d imagine there is enough demand on the waiting list to fill it as long as we don’t leave too many seats for general sale because they won’t sell by looks of it.