cityfanlee23

Right now id back him to get more out of the squad offensively than Marti is. We haven’t had more than 1xG this season yet, all we do is play it to the wings and either pray for absolute magic or just cross it in to nobody. Every time we play decent football it’s nowhere near the opponents goal and usually it’s played around Ayew having his back to goal. Why this man continues to play Mavididi over Monga and keeps putting Ayew upfront instead of just giving Carranza a start is mindblowing (although I can understand we are limited upfront) Before that it was Skipp and Soumare for how many games? Nelson still being overlooked… The team is low on confidence and I agree it definitely still needs a lot of work, but Marti isn’t helping himself.

Rohl is still available…

Has anyone got a decent link, I’m out at the moment and mine is garbage

We 100% had the better chances.

Problem is, Coventry saw this a mile away and quite often nullified Fatawu and Mavididi, and we just didn't offer them much support. Fatawu looked dangerous at times, but Cov often kept him quiet.

Completely agree with all of this, despite not thinking Ayew has played bad overall, I think he's done well if his job was to hold up the ball and slow the game down and help us control the tempo. Sadly though he often breaks down our attack before it's started albeit he does have flashes of doing the right thing. If Carranza is decent and he can start and score us 20 goals this season, Ayew is the perfect player to come on when the opposition are building into the game to really slow it down and regain control of the game. As an out and out goalscoring striker Ayew just isn't it.

So that negates your point unless I've misunderstood? I said Coventry today were nowhere near as good as they have been in previous games, you then seemingly countered that by pointing out they have had an easy start which explains the amount of goals they have scored/how well they have played, or was that not your point? If it was, then surely pointing out the fact we have had just as "easy" games as them, shows that Coventry were indeed "off" today compared to previous matches.

My bad confused myself, they played Milwall in the cup, they played Oxford. The point being if you think they have had one of the easiest starts in the division, it's no easier than ours really. We've played 3 teams that are currently 18th or below.

They've played QPR, Norwich and Oxford. QPR are 8th, Norwich 12th. they did play Derby and Hull which you'd consider easy, but we have played Oxford, Wednesday and Charlton. Our start has been just as "easy" as theirs, in fact, we have played 3 teams that are 18th or below so far. Edit: They played Milwall in the cup, not the league.

Thought we were okay, we have something to build on from today, but once against we have a poor 30-40 mins in the first half, we had a lot of shots but didn't manage to create that many clear cut chances, and when we did we fluffed it. Dominated the game overall, but Coventry were nowhere near as good as they have played this season, some of that is down to how we dealt with them and some is down to them just being off today. Overall It's frustrating because the football isn't as chaotic as I was hoping from an entertainment perspective, and we just don't create enough great chances, 17 shots today, 9 on target and we should have won comfortably. Ayew is a good player as this level, he holds the ball up well and often puts in good passes and contributions in transition but he's just not an out and out goalscorer, IMO he should be a sub, bring him on when we are winning and want to slow the game down when the opposition start to build into the game later on, we need to be playing someone who can run at teams from minute 1 and grab us a goal. Mavididi probably needs a couple of games as a sub as it's just not clicking for him yet. I was expecting possession football from Marti but I was also expecting chaotic games where we win 5-3 or 4-2 because we press hard, attack in numbers then maybe leave ourselves open at the back, so far this season it's been nowhere near entertaining imo. But I am someone who absolutely detests the modern obsession with keeping the ball at all costs and much prefer the Klopp style of football.

Annoyingly that was the thing I never expected to feel. I absolutely detest the recent possession obsession in football, I think it's destroying the game from an entertainment sport, but with Marti it felt like we had one of the few managers that wanted to turn possession into hard pressing, gut busting attacking football. I expect us to be involved in loads of 4-2/5-3 scorelines where we dominate the game and score goals but concede a few from being left open. The football is garbage, the players are being completely stifled and we are way too easy to contain. I've been massively impressed by Marti's attitude, the way he talks about the game, the way he is engraining himself into the club/area. But the football is just awful so far, it needs to click soon enough, I watch football to be entertained, if we are winning games but it's boring to watch, I don't really care about the results. Give me 60% win rate and fun, explosive football over 70% win rate and passing sideways all game, we have the talent to win these games, in reality we struggle to create anything then rely on a single moment from a player, It feels like for the majority of each game, we are only 1 bad ref decision away from a bad result. We need to be better as a team.

We haven't had over 1.0 xG so far this season.

What is our xg? feels like 0.5 or something ridiculous.

Shouldn't need to hate him. He isn't going to refuse to play. Blame the person who keeps picking him.

I wouldn't call that moment a "player decision" he did what every player would have done he just executed it poorly and should have finished it, he needs a few games on the bench. The fact that moment is so rare in a team with our talent is a tactical issue set by the manager. If the players are unable to play the system, adapt the system to the players.

He has been poor, and yes it's an absolutely horrendous miss, and we should absolutely be finishing chances when they are few or far between in games, but this is every single game pretty much, we play poorly and rely on a single moment. It's our fault as a team and coaching staff but obviously player needs to take the chance.

Nah, what's costing us the game is this awful tactical system that is stifling any attacking talent we have. We create 1-2 good chances in almost 60 minutes then abuse the player when he misses.

This is just garbage. Our results rely on players taking the single good chance we create in 90 minutes.

Someone please give me the nudge, let me make the call

If he learns from them he could be here a very long time

It's a pretty fundamental problem when your manager is starting off every match by putting us at a needless disadvantage on purpose. For me this wouldn't be a slight criticism, he needs to wake tf up. We've been awful in pretty much every first half i've seen since pre season. If we started the first 25 mins off on the front foot today we come away with 3 points imo.

That was a very good goal, brilliant play from everyone involved, why can't we do that consistently?

Can I make the call yet?

Yeah, the performance can somewhat be ignored for the 2nd half because it's a completely different game with 10 men, but the first 25 minutes looked exactly like the majority of our performances this season. Really can't state enough that I do like Marti and I like what he seems to be representing, but his system on the pitch has been dogwater so far. Even if we pick up points, I'm here to be entertained and we have NOT been entertaining.

The best way I could explain it is the Bannan/Winks challenge, both players went in similarly, Bannan leaned back and his foot/studs came up and became exposed, which puts his foot in a position that increases the chance of breaking a bone or seriously injuring a player, Winks on the other hand kept his toe pointed down for most of the challenge, so his studs were far less exposed and less likely to cause real damage If your momentum in a tackle leads to your leg raising and your studs facing up as you naturally lean back, I'd consider that out of control. If you can keep your leg down and your studs facing towards the ground you're in control. As I say, I wouldn't have given a red there, but if we want players to make sure they are fully in control of their tackles, players need to be punished, Ramsey put himself in a stupid position where it was left up to the referee to make a call, without VAR those calls can be even more difficult to make.