Kitchandro

The home game? That was the winner in the 1st leg. The whole tie was shockingly officiated though. 2nd leg was one of the best games I’ve ever seen, they were a good side but undoubtedly the balance of refereeing decisions cost us a place at Wembley. 1st leg - At least 2 (arguably 3) blatant handballs not given as penalties, plus the free kick you mention. 2nd leg - Their equaliser (penalty) was given after Chopra was at least 2 yards offside (we were looking very comfortable at that point). Chopra stamp on Wellens’ face, no red. Knee-high tackle on Berner when we’re breaking and he’s bearing down on the last man, no red. Even one of those decisions would have been an absolute robbery, to have 5 or 6 over 2 matches, shocking.

We can’t ignore the fact that PSR rules benefit bigger clubs with bigger revenues. Whether you think that’s better or worse than the richest billionaire owners being the most important factor in a club’s success is another matter. But we can be sure that everything football has done over the last 30 years has made it less competitive and more difficult for medium/small clubs to compete. That could be addressed with a wage and transfer spending cap that’s the same for every club in line with the poorest club in the league, but that would be too ‘fair’ for the bigger clubs to accept, so we ended up with this instead. I agree though, the club have known the rules so there are no excuses and getting away with it on a technicality doesn’t change the fact we’ve pissed so much money up the wall. The suggestion is we’re essentially asset stripping the playing staff and just buying players for the sake of it, almost to make it look like we’re trying to stay up. Whether we actually get a charge is irrelevant, it’s clear we are not doing the business we need to do to stay up and that’s years of negligence coming home to roost. In reality we are down unless we sign several players good enough to walk into the starting 11, and when we do go down we’ll be left with a squad of very little potential and a likely points deduction. The club is absolutely dead. I mean it wouldn’t be if we were just crap but going down to support them was still fun, but no, the club ruined that too.

Agree about Perez, one of the worst value for money signings ever and arguably single-handedly cost us the Champions League with his predictable miss against Chelsea. But Castagne? Decent player for us overall, far better than Chilwell and played on the opposite side?

Everyone says RB but not LB, which I find odd. Kristiansen and Thomas are both nowhere near up to this level. If it was possible I wouldn’t play any of the defenders on our books! EDIT: seen you’ve put LB in a subsequent post, my bad! 😄

Have people forgotten how crap Chilwell is? Even Thomas looked better than him at the time he played for us.

It’s so depressing. Signing players for the Championship means we’ll have a squad that looks right at home in the Championship. It’s a flawed strategy. I can’t believe how pathetic our attempts to stay up have been.

Why are people skating over the Wolves game like it wasn’t an absolute fiasco which has made our relegation far more likely and reflected terribly on the manager? If anything that match alone is enough to judge us on. This is like when people were saying draws against Everton, Leeds and Newcastle were ‘good results’ when they effectively relegated us. ‘Only really’ - no, it’s a massively significant match which the manager got horribly wrong. It counts.

My issue with Ruud is if you do the things he’s doing, you’re more likely to lose than win. Let’s say we bring in 2 full backs and a centre back, and they are the best business we’ve done in years. And let’s say Ruud manages to get them organised as a unit and they start making good decisions. You’ve still got a big problem in that Rudd obviously doesn’t have faith in the team. His decision to go with Ayew over Buonanotte today says an awful lot. He can’t say he didn’t know Buonanotte was a better attacking threat or that we don’t play better with him in the team. He now knows that. I don’t care if Ayew contributed to the goal, the fact remains he’s slow, limited, and we play better with Buonanotte in the side. Let’s not convince ourselves we think Ayew is an asset or better than him. He’s a negative choice. The manager is saying that he doesn’t believe the team can beat the opposition. He believes we can ‘grind out a result’ but not be better than them. We’ve seen time and time again this causes two problems. One: the players lose confidence in possession because they feel that the manager doesn’t have faith in their ability. Two: we naturally get too territorially deep and invite pressure, statistically giving us more chance of conceding due to the areas the ball is in most regularly. So not only does the manager think our attack is worse than the opposition’s, we’re also getting near their goal less. Surely even under his own reasoning that makes conceding goals far more likely than scoring them? In this scenario we’ve accepted our position and struggle to get out of our half, and putting pressure on a leaky defence is only going to result in conceding goals. It’s just basic percentages, even with better players. We’ve seen this so many times. This was a big reason we regressed under Rodgers, it’s the reason we didn’t progress under Puel despite good signings and it’s why a very talented side was bottom with 2 months of the season left under Pearson in 2015. In fact it happens to some extent every season bar the best season in our history. We can all acknowledge the squad needs strengthening, but this is why I’m not convinced it will make any difference. At some point you have to back the team to win, Ruud has shown he’s not going to do that. He will look the facts in the face and decide Ayew the cart horse is the ‘safe’ and therefore better option. We will continue to throw many points away because of this thinking.

What we deserve for being passive and trying to draw rather than win. Mistakes from managers and players are dooming us, no excuses.

Sorry but if we lose this he’s earned the sack. Bringing Ayew back in for Buonanotte after the difference in the last performance is stupidity and we deserve everything we get.

Sorry but I disagree - if you’re getting paid as much as these guys at this level, you should be doing everything you can to know everything you can. Considering the likes of Faes can’t realistically be judged on his championship performances as opposed to his premier league ones, and considering Ward’s crimes two seasons ago are extremely relevant to why he shouldn’t have given him a chance against Wolves - Ruud has shown himself unprepared for the job and we have already lost valuable points because he doesn’t know what his best (or worst) team is.

I agree we put in several shocking performances that season (we generally performed against better teams but not the average ones). The difference is that side was very talented and capable of going on a run. I thought at the time we were much better than bottom. This one has been poorly managed as well, but the players are crap. I don’t think we’re underachieving that much, we aren’t clearly better than 3 teams even at our best. We can stay up if we improve significantly (defensively especially) but we’re likely to go down.

That defeat was entirely down to our own mistakes at both ends of the pitch. Signs of a relegated side when you can’t defend and can’t take chances. The back four are absolutely shocking and bring the rest of the side down. Awful players individually and there’s no organisation with Haaland constantly unmarked. El Khannouss and Buonanotte both stood out positively (apparently they can’t play together), but Mavididi drove me mad all day with his refusal to take on his man but that was symptomatic of the whole team being ponderous in good positions. Vardy (especially) Buonanotte and Justin all should have scored today. Looked like they were scared to miss and made poor decisions. Maybe the most frustrating thing is that if Ruud had played that side against Wolves it might have been a completely different game. That is midfield people wanted and it was better than Man City’s today. Shooting ourselves in the foot springs to mind.

We’ve given up.

They are there for the taking but so are we. Both sides terrible defensively, we need to have a bit more bottle when on the attack and stop going backwards. The back four are a disgrace, if they were up to the level of the midfield and Vardy we’d be ok.

Can’t complain with the lineup, just hope we make the most of it and try to score more goals than them because we can’t possibly keep a clean sheet.

Daka’s been awful for several seasons, generally can’t hit a barn door. He struggled in the Championship for god’s sake. At this level he absolutely is abysmal. It’s just a shame he doesn’t stand out as such because several of his teammates are as bad.

We will shit ourselves and play for the 2-0 defeat. Meaning we’ll lose 4-0.

First half was ok, second really poor. I know they’re a very good side but you’ve got to try and cause them some problems. There wasn’t any belief. I don’t like RVNs lineups and I don’t like his subs. Not looking promising.

If getting relegated is going to be a major disaster then we are better off planning for this season. We are 4th bottom remember, not adrift by 10 points. Let’s make a fist of it by buying some decent players and getting a manager in who plays our best players with some decent tactics. The idea that no one could keep this club up is false. There’s a plethora of examples of teams looking terrible and improving markedly with a couple of good signings and a manager who knows what he’s doing. If you’re saying that’s never going to happen I agree with you, the people who run our club are hopeless. But they won’t plan well for next season either. So given the choice I’d rather go for it and try and stay up.

People need to realise what these billionaires are like - especially ones born into it. They are egotistical and out of touch. This has gone far beyond mistakes, too much loyalty or being out of his depth. The club is a vehicle for his own ego, hence why he keeps yes men around just to massage it, hence why he likes being the face of success but dismisses criticism as ungratefulness. The argument that he cares is a nonsense. He cares about how he is perceived, if he cared about the trajectory of the club he would be hands on enough to know what’s wrong and make bold decisions before things got out of hand. That’s on the footballing side, the financial and marketing side is a whole other set of fiascos.

I’ve seen enough. The manager cannot do the basics. Wrong appointment regardless of how poor the squad is, if you don’t pick the best players from it then you can have no excuses.

I’ve seen enough. If you can’t do the basics, like pick the best outfield players at your disposal, and basic defensive organisation, then you’re no use at all. I’m not saying sack him, I’m saying he should never have been hired.

No, it is the lowest of the low. Footballers have died on the pitch due to head injuries. It’s a serious thing not something to be trivial about just to get someone else in trouble. Anyone pretending to be injured in any way gets absolutely no sympathy from me. It’s disgusting.

The atmosphere is atrocious and so is the match.