Big_John_10 Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 (edited) Have you read any of BJ10's posts at all? They're hard to miss because he comes onto every.single.thread and turns it into the same attack of Lambert and repeats it every time someone else suggests that it's not all his fault. There are 25 threads on the front page of VT. I've mentioned the defence in about 5 of them, all funnily enough threads that relate some way to the defence. So what you've posted isn't true. Secondly you've obviously missed my opinion on our owner for the last few years, an opinion I also used to receive grief for until recent events. Randy Lerner takes a huge amount of the blame for our current situation that we find ourselves in. There are things I blame Lerner for but IMO our main issues this season have been poor formation choices and an absolutely awful defence. Two main things that I believe the manager has to take responsibility for. If we were getting good results thanks to our formation and this defence was keeping clean sheets he would be getting a lot of praise on here, so I don't see why he's not responsible for it not working. Lambert should have kept the "experienced" players 90% of us agreed last year needed to go 90% wanted them to go because we believed they would be replaced with better. I doubt many fans wanted them to go just for the sake of it seem to imply that he's the only thing that's kept Villa out of the top 4 this season Who has done that? Edited April 24, 2013 by Big_John_10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briny_ear Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Collins has had a pretty good season for West Ham hasn't he? Yes. He also had a great pre season with us. Lambert must have shipped him out because of attitude because he was playing just fine. Lambert doesnt mess about. He knew he wanted rid of half the squad and has a zero tolerance for attitude or lack of commitment. I respect that in him. I still think he did too much too quickly though, would it really have hurt to keep some of our experienced players and not piss em off or ship em out? Anyway whats done is done, we just have to hope for the best now. Scary as hell though. Except I question increasingly whether his "zero tolerance" for lack of commitment is quite as noble and progressive as people are assuming. Basically, when you look at the players he has excluded from the squad, it looks as if he has a problem working with older players*. He is maybe more comfortable with young rookies and raw talent. We have felt the consequences of that this season, sometimes painfully. Any successful manager needs to make the best use of all the resources available to him and I question strongly whether Lambert has demonstrated he can do that. Football talent often comes in the form of stroppy, egotistical individuals with "attitude" and the good manager gets that working for him. A good test for me would be whether Lambert could get the sort of performances out of Berbatov that Martin Jol has managed. My bet would be not. *[This of course is just my speculation. I recognise he may simply have accepted instructions from Lerner/Faulkner to exclude and try to drive out any players whose salaries were regarded as too high.] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samjp26 Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Collins has had a pretty good season for West Ham hasn't he? Yes. He also had a great pre season with us. Lambert must have shipped him out because of attitude because he was playing just fine. Lambert doesnt mess about. He knew he wanted rid of half the squad and has a zero tolerance for attitude or lack of commitment. I respect that in him. I still think he did too much too quickly though, would it really have hurt to keep some of our experienced players and not piss em off or ship em out? Anyway whats done is done, we just have to hope for the best now. Scary as hell though. Except I question increasingly whether his "zero tolerance" for lack of commitment is quite as noble and progressive as people are assuming. Basically, when you look at the players he has excluded from the squad, it looks as if he has a problem working with older players*. He is maybe more comfortable with young rookies and raw talent. We have felt the consequences of that this season, sometimes painfully. Any successful manager needs to make the best use of all the resources available to him and I question strongly whether Lambert has demonstrated he can do that. Football talent often comes in the form of stroppy, egotistical individuals with "attitude" and the good manager gets that working for him. A good test for me would be whether Lambert could get the sort of performances out of Berbatov that Martin Jol has managed. My bet would be not. *[This of course is just my speculation. I recognise he may simply have accepted instructions from Lerner/Faulkner to exclude and try to drive out any players whose salaries were regarded as too high.] KEA is 28, Vlaar is 28 too - he obviously knew the age of these two before he signed them so I don't think it can be put down to age alone. I think it is more to do with egos and what not, we obviously don't see us training every day but I can imagine there were quite a few who have been 'exiled' that don't put in as much effort as the younger players. A major problem we had last season was that players just looked like they couldn't be arsed. N'Zogbia was this way as an example, but obviously Lambert has seemed to get something out of him now, although he definitely still needs some work to be the player we thought we were getting from Wigan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeyAnty Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 The main reason why the defense has been so bad this season is because they have absolutely no support in front of them. Perfect example, goals against UTD started from Rooney in the middle being given 20 mins on the ball to pick out 20 mile passes. No defense is going to be able to cope with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon_c Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 The main reason why the defense has been so bad this season is because they have absolutely no support in front of them. Perfect example, goals against UTD started from Rooney in the middle being given 20 mins on the ball to pick out 20 mile passes. No defense is going to be able to cope with that. I think this point is underlined by the second half v Utd. When El Ahmadi was bought on with clear instruction to close down Rooney, their threat after this looked a lot less dangerous. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big_John_10 Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 The main reason why the defense has been so bad this season is because they have absolutely no support in front of them. Perfect example, goals against UTD started from Rooney in the middle being given 20 mins on the ball to pick out 20 mile passes. No defense is going to be able to cope with that. I don't think the midfield has helped. But again Lambert has signed 3 midfield players. Sylla is someone who seems to be a midfield player who protects the defence but often gets played in attacking or wide positions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Collins has had a pretty good season for West Ham hasn't he? he has been decent but nothing special. still has a blunder in him but gives everythign. id take vlaar over him but not Clark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeyAnty Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 The main reason why the defense has been so bad this season is because they have absolutely no support in front of them. Perfect example, goals against UTD started from Rooney in the middle being given 20 mins on the ball to pick out 20 mile passes. No defense is going to be able to cope with that. I don't think the midfield has helped. But again Lambert has signed 3 midfield players. Sylla is someone who seems to be a midfield player who protects the defence but often gets played in attacking or wide positions. Yes i agree, and tactically he is to blame, but he cant be soley to blame for the quality of the midfielders that has been bought. In general in life you get what you pay for with a few exceptions. Lerners/Faulkners wreckless spending and then slamming on the brakes and depleting the squad has a massive part to play in the mess we are in. If we manage to stay up i think the fans should demand Faulkner is gone. Can anyone actually tell me what he does? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PussEKatt Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 So,Lambert has had nearly a whole season to get it right.How long is it going to take ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MagicMushroom Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 (edited) . Yes i agree, and tactically he is to blame, but he cant be soley to blame for the quality of the midfielders that has been bought. In general in life you get what you pay for with a few exceptions. Lerners/Faulkners wreckless spending and then slamming on the brakes and depleting the squad has a massive part to play in the mess we are in. If we manage to stay up i think the fans should demand Faulkner is gone. Can anyone actually tell me what he does? I agree with every word of this. Sometimes, a team reflects just how badly a club is being run off the field. If we all take our differences and whom we blame for the current position we are in to one side, put our hand on our heart and think about everything that has transpired over the last 3-4 years, then in all honesty, theres only one conclusion we can make. Whatever happens between now and the season end, all eyes are on them.This club should not be fighting relegation, this club deserves better than that. Edited April 24, 2013 by MagicMushroom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smetrov Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 . Yes i agree, and tactically he is to blame, but he cant be soley to blame for the quality of the midfielders that has been bought. In general in life you get what you pay for with a few exceptions. Lerners/Faulkners wreckless spending and then slamming on the brakes and depleting the squad has a massive part to play in the mess we are in. If we manage to stay up i think the fans should demand Faulkner is gone. Can anyone actually tell me what he does? I agree with every word of this. Sometimes, a team reflects just how badly a club is being run off the field. If we all take our differences and whom we blame for the current position we are in to one side, put our hand on our heart and think about everything that has transpired over the last 3-4 years, then in all honesty, theres only one conclusion we can make. Whatever happens between now and the season end, all eyes are on them.This club should not be fighting relegation, this club deserves better than that. agree 100% - its just not healthy when the custodian of our club attends about 5 games a season. - until that changes - not much else will Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOF Posted April 24, 2013 Moderator Share Posted April 24, 2013 So,Lambert has had nearly a whole season to get it right.How long is it going to take ?I think you've encapsulated the modern fan in two sentences there Puss. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morpheus Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 I daresay with how much you and BJ agree, you should just give him a.... I'll see myself out Maybe you should give yourself the same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smetrov Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 So,Lambert has had nearly a whole season to get it right.How long is it going to take ? I think you've encapsulated the modern fan in two sentences there Puss. He has a long time to get it right. What I am looking for is things movin in the right direction defensivley. no clean sheet in 23 games.....im not feeling it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOF Posted April 24, 2013 Moderator Share Posted April 24, 2013 So,Lambert has had nearly a whole season to get it right.How long is it going to take ?I think you've encapsulated the modern fan in two sentences there Puss. He has a long time to get it right. What I am looking for is things movin in the right direction defensivley. no clean sheet in 23 games.....im not feeling it.I'm looking for things to move in the right direction on the pitch in general. We've already discussed the 2012 v 2013 form. Results are picking up so I'm feeling it. We just need to see this season through ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Papillon Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 To suggest we miss James Collins and that he is better than Ron Vlaar is just hopeless speculation. Collins is very prone to doing personal mistakes and he is often guilty of rash challenges and hopeless tactical choices, often resulting in chances against, penalties, free-kicks in dangerous areas and yellow cards (8 this season, which is joint most at West Ham - a very physical side). He is the archtypical British defender, but he doesn't have a single tactical gene, he just sees the ball and tries to win headers. Whenever he played for us I never trusted him because I was always dreading a late penalty or a stupid challenge that would create something for the other team. Now Vlaar hasn't been very, very good for us this season, partially because he has been injured, because we have changed the side a lot and because well, the rest of the defence is very inexperienced and lacklustre. Imagine trying to tie up a defensive unit when you have Bennett standing 40 yards ahead of you attempting to do a wicked nutmeg that fails and then you have to sort out his mistake. Vlaar is tactical, he goes for and wins headers when he should do and he knows he has to take out room behind him because he isn't the fastest. He is seldom caught in an awkward situation where he has to foul a player to avoid letting a goal in at the back and he seldom makes clumsy tackles inside our box. My main impression from him this first season is that he is a good header of the ball and a very solid tackler, he is oftentimes positioned correctly and doesn't get involved in trouble like Collins. One yellow card to him this season as well, which indicates he knows when to tackle and knows when not to do so. Looking at excellent and/or experienced stoppers such as Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, Vincent Kompany and even John Terry you see that they seldom collect yellow cards and avoid making the other teams score from set-pieces outside the box. Now, this is just my personal opinion and some great stoppers collect more yellow cards, but it just my hunch to see that the calm ones can analyze a situation quicker than erratic players like James Collins. I am glad that he is gone and I am very glad we have Vlaar instead. Our defensive troubles are down to many other factors and Ron Vlaar is clearly not the biggest problem. Nathan Baker for example is a decent talent, but scoring that own-goal and clipping Suarez for their penalty were just examples of how an inexperienced player can do very well for a most parts of the game and then doing something stupid. James Collins is like that all the time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOF Posted April 24, 2013 Moderator Share Posted April 24, 2013 Excellent post Papillon. Sums up my thoughts on both players very articulately Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevangrealish Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 I agree I think Vlaar is a better all round defender than Collins but so far we have struggled a lot in the air with both Clark and Vlaar who find it impossible to win headers. Collins and dunne were both superb in the air... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big_John_10 Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Can anyone think of any examples of good defenders who play for teams that let in the amount of goals that we do? I'd say there aren't many examples because usually having good defenders means you have a good defence. I'm told on here that both Lowton and Vlaar are good players yet we concede close to 2 goals a game when they play together. Vlaar has a better reputation than Collins but I've seen nothing to suggest he's a better defender. He hasn't been helped through injury or playing with inexperience but again that's down to how the manager has decided to build this defence. I would imagine we'll see better off Vlaar if we sign a decent partner for him but that remains to be seen right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big_John_10 Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 To suggest we miss James Collins and that he is better than Ron Vlaar is just hopeless speculation Missed this bit. Is it really? I'd say with all the evidence it's far more hopeless speculation to suggest we haven't missed him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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