NowDoINotLikeThat Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 3 wins at home all season. The last being against Norwich in early November of last year. 6 wins in 23 games is simply awful. A certain other manager has won 7 games in 11 already.... McLeish's stats are embarrasing. :oops: We played some entertaining stuff tonight and should have won but we didn't after an awful start against a makeshift QPR team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrummieVillan Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Brilliant passing attacking football in the second half, I was pleasently shocked and it was really easy on the eye plus we were incredibly unlucky not to win tonight. Over all season though the stats are shocking. If we can produce the football we did tonight (second half) over and over I am confident some results will fall at our feet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coda Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 6 wins in 23 games is simply awful. That's the fourth time this evening! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Window09 Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I am still a critic (still don't think he is the way forward) but I was happy with tonights performance. He gained some respect from me for signing Keane, who I thought was definitely past it. We are actually attacking teams and I have noticed that Given in particular is no longer just booting the ball forward (he loves that). I believe these are positive signs. He has to drop warnock and collins and not offer dunne a new contract . Houllier knew these players had to go and if Mcleish clears them out then I will be with him too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Unfortunately several people around me clearly didn't like the tippy tappy passing out of defence and were urging the more direct fare that they have become accustomed to over the past years :shock: Was that in the first half when we were dicking around with it in and around our own box? Come on: there's 'long ball', 'hoofing it' and so on and then there is clearing the bloody thing out of a danger zone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mantis Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I'm probably alone here but I actually came out of this game more frustrated with McLeish than before. Yes we fought back well in the second half but why the hell did we have to go 2-0 down before waking up? We're clearly capable of attacking, so why didn't we do it at the start of the match instead of at the start of the second half? Also, what on Earth do they do in training? For large portions of the game the movement among the players was non-existent. I know a lot of them aren't that technically gifted but they can do better than that. Defence goes without saying. Why persist with useless players like Warnock? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ponky Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 To be fair I thought this second half was how McLeish WANTS to his team to play. I think he has a hard time convincing them to play that way and it takes going 2-0 down to get some life and response out of the players. I think he got his front five pretty right tonight. There are clear problems with the defenders though and it seems to me they no longer have confidence in each other and he can't really seem to get them to play as a unit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ponky Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Defence goes without saying. Why persist with useless players like Warnock? For who? He did the right thing against Wolves and dropped Warnock to the bench and his only viable option, Clark, got torn to pieces. His hands are pretty much tied in that respect. Hopefully once Lichaj is back to fitness that problem will fix itself up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macandally Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 To be fair I thought this second half was how McLeish WANTS to his team to play. I think he has a hard time convincing them to play that way and it takes going 2-0 down to get some life and response out of the players. I think he got his front five pretty right tonight. There are clear problems with the defenders though and it seems to me they no longer have confidence in each other and he can't really seem to get them to play as a unit. If thats the way he wants his team to play, why not start with Bannan rather than Clark? Why only start pressing higher up the pitch when two down? Why only throw the proverbial kitchen sink at them in the 2nd half? I think McLeish would rather play a tighter game where the football is controlled otherwise we would be going at teams from the off. We are not as most of our first half performances this season have shown. We only go for it once we are in the shit! Half way throught the first half I was watching QPRs two banks of four dropping into place when they lost the ball, whilst we seemed to run round like headless chickens. How long has Hughes been there? Despite the attacking quality we have, we still sit back too much and are not as organised tactically as we should be. Simple as that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjames333 Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 We obviously have some problems at the back but we looked very good attacking tonight in the second half. There are glimmers of hope that maybe it is all going to come together at some point soon. I'm just concerned that our good attacking play will come to an end once Robbie Keane leaves us. At least now I fancy us to win matches unlike a couple of months back when I couldn't see where our next point was coming from. Far from convinced of McLeish but maybe more willing now to give him more time to prove us wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetrees Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Unfortunately several people around me clearly didn't like the tippy tappy passing out of defence and were urging the more direct fare that they have become accustomed to over the past years :shock: Was that in the first half when we were dicking around with it in and around our own box? Come on: there's 'long ball', 'hoofing it' and so on and then there is clearing the bloody thing out of a danger zone. No, last 10 minutes around the halfway line, whilst under no pressure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetrees Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Oh i had forgot you are the bizarely MON obsessed and continual odd "MON was crap" and to blame for everything poster of the board. Something else that you post wrong. The bizarre obsession with O'Neill seems to come from the people who cannot accept that he has gone, and have not been prepared to give either of his successors a chance. A certain other manager has won 7 games in 11. I rest my case :winkold: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon_c Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I don't think this point is about MON, but more any manager but AM. Does anyone think Sunderland has better players than us? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrentVilla Posted February 2, 2012 Moderator Share Posted February 2, 2012 I think people were prepared to give Houllier a chance, he lost the good will of the fans though through a combination of poor results and even worse PR. As for McLeish while there are some who were not prepared to give him a chance I think the vast majority were and probably still are prepared to do so. Just because someone points out the impact of O'Neill on Sunderland and the fact he has won more games in his short stint in time that McLeish has won since the start of the season doesn't mean they are obsessed. I think it just highlights the fact that McLeish really isn't doing a particularly good job. Anyway enough on O'Neill. I'm really baffled why people presume that McLeish will sort the defence out in the summer, he has made little impact on the defence this season. The only defender he has signed has been poor and certainly not improved that aspect of the team, I'd also argue that buying a RB was given our limited resources a mistake as I said at the time he should have signed a LB. I know he signed Enda Stevens but I don't think we will see him in the team this season. There is a myth that McLeish built a great defence at Birmingham but it simply isn't true, Dann and Johnson are average PL players who in Foster and Hart had a good and then great keeper behind them. In front of them they had an entire team built from the front to the back to defend and be defensive, they often played 4-5-1 even at home. It wasn't a great defence it was a defensive team. McLeish has attempted to employ the same tactics here, he has tried to use his negative men behind the ball tactics and defenders in midfield most noteably away at Spurs and it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked in terms of results and it certainly hasn't worked in terms of the fans and so in recent weeks we've seen a bit of a change in this approach and we've become more of an attacking threat but the defence has become more exposed and in term more shambolic. I've seen nothing from McLeish to suggest that he will build a great defence here or that he is particulary great at coaching defenders because I can't see any improvement in any of them. On the basis of the signing of Hutton I'm not particularly confident in his ability to sign good defenders either. It also concerns me that our entire attacking threat in recent games is seemingly based around a player that will be back of to the US in 3 weeks. I didn't think signing Keane was a good move in part because I thought he was past it which I was wrong about but also in part because I don't think in the long term it will help us over the remainder of the season. I agree with those who say we played with lots of attacking threat in the second half but we still got a rather shite result against one of the worst teams on their travels. We still failed to win at home for the 6th game in a row and we've Man City up next at Villa Park, we still can't defend and we aren't improving as a side. At the moment I just can't share the optimism some feel about McLeish's tenure because I just can't see any basis for it. His record of 6 wins in 23 is simply terrible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I remember people saying that they wouldn't care about the results as long as the football was entertaining or at the very least that we attacked the team. We were unlucky not to get at least one penalty and on Warnocks superbly placed goal. On to the next game I say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrentVilla Posted February 2, 2012 Moderator Share Posted February 2, 2012 Well at the moment we have neither entertaining football or results. However well we played in the 2nd half yesterday that is 45 minutes of football in a season jam packed with **** terrible football in which we've failed to have a shot on target in entire halves of games. Yesterday the 2nd half was a game of attack v defend against one of the worst sides in the league away from home who were desperately trying to hold on to what they had. As for people saying they didn't care about the result as long as the football was entertaining, I'm not sure who they are but I doubt they meant they didn't mind about the results for half a season so long as we played entertaining football for 45 minutes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demitri_C Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 For who? He did the right thing against Wolves and dropped Warnock to the bench and his only viable option, Clark, got torn to pieces. His hands are pretty much tied in that respect. Hopefully once Lichaj is back to fitness that problem will fix itself up. enda stevens agree with everything trent said. very poor manager and his win ratio is absolutely absymal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I was referring to this game in isolation. And we were almost as dominant in the first half as we were in the second, and even had a goal to show for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eames Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Well.... "are you not entertained" Huge credit to AM for last night and further proof that sadly, an ignorant majority of our "support" will never accept him or his methods, regardless of what he does. Mark Hughes ladies and gentlemen lest we forget was touted as the man we should get. He now has another job, with a healthy transfer budget.... and yet, because we drew 2 -2 with them we are still shit? You can't have it both ways folks. Either AM deserves massive credit for last night (the best football we've played since Voldemort left) outsmarting a "better" manager and out playing his team OR you need to agree that Hughes and QPR are actually shit, and that we were right not to appoint him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pilchard Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Either AM deserves massive credit for last night (the best football we've played since Voldemort left) Who gets the meassive credit for the first half? Or was that just unlucky? And the fall apart at Arsenal? Again, just unlucky I suppose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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