Relive every moment of every first team game since the beginning of the 2005/06 season. Our archive of matchday threads originally posted in the General Discussion Forum.
prophet:marginal wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 1:55 pm
Are you implying that you imagine that he wanted to give Kehrer, Ben and Soucek a rest, so that they could 'go again' at the weekend?
Antonio, for sure; he's getting on and had put himself about a bit.
But the other three surely can't be in the first 11 at the weekend! Kehrer is appalling. Soucek has lost all his mojo and must surely be able to hear the moans and groans and Benrahma offers his full back no support at all.
Possibly give some a rest, and also give some other minutes.
I am hoping he was giving Coufal, Cornet and Downes minutes rather than resting Soucek and Kehrer. But it wouldn't surprise me to see them both in the starting line up on Saturday. In fact I would be a bit surprised if Soucek wasn't.
Colours never run wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 6:49 pm
En route and hoping we're brave tonight taking it to Newcastle. Otherwise I fear the result if we allow them too much of the ball as they will capitalise and beat us. Sitting back against this Team will ask for trouble and goals scored against us. Come on you Irons!
Looking back my fears came to fruition after that 5-1 mauling at Home to Newcastle.
Colours never run wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 2:58 pm
Looking back my fears came to fruition after that 5-1 mauling at Home to Newcastle.
To be fair, it's not like we even sat back. We were bang up for it and hit the post early on. The crowd were as up for it as I'd heard or felt in a while.
We just got absolutely sucker punched from horrendous mistakes.
HammerMan2004 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 2:11 pm
As I said before the match, if we're going to end up with a handful of touches in the opposition box, I know which striker I'd rather they fall to.
Emerson burst through into their box last night, Antonio just ran in the same direction in his way.
Having the big, strong, handful up top on his own means **** all when he constantly throws himself to the floor, or can't bring teammates into the game.
I still think he's a better bet than Ings up front, sadly
Our defence looks like it’s never met. The midfield 3 do not compliment each other and we can’t score goals from either open play or set pieces.
This is a team structure/organisation piece, and it’s been the same for well over a calendar year.
Moyes has been our best ever manager in my lifetime, but it’s no longer working. We can’t get rid of the ownership, much as I think that’s the only real way we ever improve, so Moyes has to go.
I’m going to Fulham, but I don’t want to. What a miserable season.
EastVillageHammer wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 3:02 pm
Our defence looks like it’s never met.
In many ways, they haven't. This is an entirely new defence (apart from Zouma) which brought us 6th/7th place finishes. I'm not convinced that brining back Coufal, Cresswell, and Oggy would make the difference, but we cant keep playing this style of defence, and hope it gets better.
HammerMan2004 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 3:00 pm
To be fair, it's not like we even sat back. We were bang up for it and hit the post early on. The crowd were as up for it as I'd heard or felt in a while.
We just got absolutely sucker punched from horrendous mistakes.
For large chunks of the game we did sit back. The Team on the front foot for most of it was definitely Newcastle and as indicators of that is Newcastle enjoying 58% possession, 144 more passes and more than double the efforts at goal than us as the Home Team.
I don't think we sat back at all last night. We were pushed back. The last 15 of the first half we pushed them back and everyone around me was looking forward to the second half. That didn't quite go to plan
Sitting back inviting a lot of pressure also ties in with the lack of pressing we do these days. We don't apply pressure to the opponents anywhere near enough to take control of a game. We just passively sit off Teams, 11 men behind the ball waiting till the opposition hopefully make an error to concede possession back again a lot of the time. We should be the ones constantly in the oppositions faces, letting them know we're there and wont make it easy amd yet all I'm seeing for most of the game is ball watching statues clueless as to what to really do next. Sick of it.
And it's not just against decent sides at Home too, we even allowed Southampton 57% possession with 141 more passes than us on Sunday.
Colours never run wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 3:58 pm
Sitting back inviting a lot of pressure also ties in with the lack of pressing we do these days. We don't apply pressure to the opponents anywhere near enough to take control of a game. We just passively sit off Teams, 11 men behind the ball waiting till the opposition hopefully make an error to concede possession back again a lot of the time.
Absolutely agree. I can't think of any other Premier League side who are worse than us at closing down and making challenges to win the ball back or putting off an opponent who's in possession. We give yards of space to every opposition player....and guess what?...eventually one of them will find a very telling pass. If the ball does break we are so set off of opponents, like statues, that our reaction times to actually get going to collect a stray pass are very often pathetic.
Also, name me another side who, losing 1 - 3 at home, wouldn't go all in and actually play 2 up top. Yeah, that might backfire by having a go but we swap like for like and still lose another couple of goals. At least try and go for it. Can't be worse than it turned out.
18 months ago I thought we had got the defence absolutely sorted, I thought we had quality and depth and variety. I don't trust a single defender we have anymore, not one and the finest example of this is Vladimir Schemmel Coufal, just what the hell has happened to him? From Czech Cafu to 02/03 Schemmel x Robbie Stockdale, hell of a transformation.
Jumby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 6:04 pm
18 months ago I thought we had got the defence absolutely sorted, I thought we had quality and depth and variety. I don't trust a single defender we have anymore, not one and the finest example of this is Vladimir Schemmel Coufal, just what the hell has happened to him? From Czech Cafu to 02/03 Schemmel x Robbie Stockdale, hell of a transformation.
We were stupid to sell Diop and Dawson when we did. Both now doing very well for their respective Clubs and we'll see that on Saturday at Craven Cottage.
He's salvaged a vaguely respectable score with a strong finish but for the best part of 65 minutes that was an absolute horror show from Lucas Paquetá.
