cityfanlee23

Did not see that coming at half time. Great performance, 33% possession well managed from Enzo today, once again Southampton are absolutely awful. We took them to task with ease in the end.

You’ve won the forum with this, cracking effort mate 😂

Im on my phone and I was smiling before I even opened this link as I knew exactly what it was going to be before seeing it, not disappointed at all 😂

When I see this I imagine Bruce Forsyth or some other 90s gameshow host saying "Here's what you could have won!": But instead we end up going home with a toaster

If we got promoted, I'd like to see us go for some ambitious targets, unlikely to work but I'd love to see Paolo Fonseca in the premier league, AFAIK his Lille contract runs out in summer and he plays an attacking style which is quite exciting to watch. But it really would depend on whether we get a points deduction and whether he would have confidence in finding some cheap gems from France to come. The likelihood is he would end up at a mid table squad that wants to push for Europa League.

The way I’m looking at it, we need promotion to atleast delay a financial meltdown at the club, but in the summer we need a complete overhaul and need to be looking at going back to the foundations left by Pearson and Puel, cheap players that we can sell for a profit. This will likely result in relegation from the premier league but the return to the championship will be on a much sounder financial footing where we can still compete and try to get promoted again. So for me it’s about going up now, and bringing in a manager who is pragmatic, young and hungry and basically give them a free hit on relegation (providing we look like we are building/progressing) Then if we get relegated we will have a manager capable of building and getting us back up. If McKenna doesn’t go up with Ipswich and we get promoted, I’d happily give him a few seasons and allow him to get relegated and rebuild in theory.

Honestly this season on so many occasions I’ve hated him, watching him lazily walk around the pitch and seemingly not caring. I’d love to see Cannon get some game time given we will be relying on him next season if we don’t go up, but right now we need experience. I’d play kel. It can’t be worse than 50p head.

There were quite a few polls/threads regarding where people thought we would finish at the beginning of the season. Thought this would be interesting for context of a lot of people’s expectations. Could have done with a bigger sample size tbh

I’d need to fish it out to be honest there were some polls done ages ago, can’t remember the results

I did. Top 2 was absolutely on the cards. Many others felt the same was achievable too.

Is this because we don’t actually have any money in the bank or because we have already exceeded our fair play limitations? If it’s because we have money in the bank but we’ve exceeded our limits then just pull the trigger, we are already going to get a deduction if we stay down.

I assume you’re joking but to be honest given our predicament I’d take him. If Top is obsessed with possession football, then Puel is atleast someone who knows how to find a good player for relatively cheap which is something we are desperate for. I’d atleast have confidence in him not to financially destroy us trying to get promoted if we fail this season. He would also give Nelson, Braybrooke, Alves etc a good run.

This is something I’ve been feeling recently. We’ve collapsed from a position of strength, the literal future of the club is heavily reliant on promotion, and we very well could tumble down the league into league 1 if we have to sell everyone and get a points deduction, with this in mind, every single time Enzo plays this boring, predictable and toothless brand of football and refuses to change, he is quite literally putting his own ego ahead of the future of our football club. His ego is more important than the badge.

Yep I think you’re completely right. So all we can do is hope someone can come in and drag us through. Danny Röhl is currently working in a very similar situation, that squad and club has absolutely no right to be on the fringes of safety, the club is rotten at the top but Danny has come in and almost built a seperate entity where the dressing room is a fortress and he’s shielded the players from the circus, players were not even being paid when he walked through the door, but he’s a really likeable guy and the fans have got behind him and his players whilst completely revolting against the ownership

It’s not a case of not being able to though is it? I think we have the money to be able to sack him, it just puts us further in breach of financial rules, but I think monetarily we can do it right?

Issue is, if they really don’t intend on selling then we need someone like Nigel in the club to offset their clown show. I’d like to see someone like Pearson come in and manage us, but if we can’t do that someone at board level like Claude Puel as DOF. If the ownership aren't going to sell someone has to come in to babysit them. Would be sad to see Pearson come in and his legacy be tarnished this time around, but we might just need him or someone like him next season if we spurs this.

The crazy part is, Kristiansen has done far better in the Serie A than Justin has in the championship, if we had kept Kristiansen and played him as a traditional full back as he wanted, we would have had Mavididi being overlapped by Kristiansen, and Fatawu being overlapped by Ricardo. Literally the best left and right flank combo in the history of this division. Instead we are fixated on inverting them into central midfielders, which congests the middle of the pitch, but also nullifies our own wingers as they have no support. Tonight’s goal was a perfect example. Ricardo was in midfield, and the goal came from the exact place he would have been defending if he wasn’t being inverted. Instead we ended up with nobody at right back and Faes backing off his man and giving him space to shoot. Don’t invert Ricardo there and we likely don’t concede. Obviously doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t have then conceded a different way, but it’s just so easy to break us down, we are so predictable, everyone with eyes can see we are massively exposed there except Enzo and his fan club.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there is emergency meetings going on tomorrow.

At this point I think it’s a bigger gamble to try to stumble over the line with him than to get rid and give it to a manager with a bit of bite and offer them a bonus for promotion. It’s got to the point I genuinely do believe we would have a better chance if we gave the job to Pearson or even Warnock for crying out loud. Atleast they would go in and remind everyone who the hell they play for and what’s at stake if we don’t run through brick walls for 3 points. I just cannot see us even stumbling over the line at present, we are predictable, boring, and ineffective and we have a manager with nothing to offer to change that it seems. Steve Cooper would be worth a shout for the last few games and if he fails it won’t harm his prospects.

I’ve said multiple times that I highly rate the work of Danny Röhl at Sheffield Wednesday, if you thought we were poorly run you really need to see what’s going on there. Owner took ownership of the stadium to try to make the club compliant on finances, ended up with point deductions and relegation, goes through managers like Watford, and has basically refused to invest in anything into the club, he asked the fans in I think January time to pay the clubs tax bill or shut up. And Chansiri has just released next seasons ticket prices for potentially league 1 football. For Danny to come in and have this League 1 squad on the verge of survival having taken over with them about 10 points adrift or whatever it was is a phenomenal job.

I completely agree with most of this apart from the long term project bit as I don’t want that at all. But regarding expectations, if I remember rightly at the beginning of the season we had polls asking where people think we would finish and a very large portion of the fans put that we would either finish in the playoffs or miss out on them completely. (I voted top 2) So fast forward a few months and we find ourselves 14 points clear of 3rd and suddenly we were outperforming a lot of people’s expectations by an enormous amount. Which led to the vomit inducing messiah status he was given for so long, where any valid criticism was responded to with a dogpile. It felt quite cult like how many were talking about him. But if you had expectations of a top 10 finish, and suddenly you’re winning and 14 clear of the playoffs it makes a bit of sense why there was such a love in for him. Then on the flip side, those of us that didn’t fancy his style from the first few games, to then surrender such a lead and be on the brink of financial ruin should we not seal promotion, that is a huge failure from a position of strength.

No, I’m comparing Peps first season. edit: Sorry I see what you meant, I mentioned Pep using 4-5 different formations as an example of Pep proving he is dynamic. But in his first season he changed multiple things about his system in his first season. 16/17 he used: 4141, 4231, 352, 442, 433, he has continued to use 3-4 main base formations every year. Again, we can’t even overlap wingers.

Pep was dynamic and played multiple formations and multiple different styles. This season alone he's played 4 different formations (5 if you count the club world cup), peps wingers invert into the centre, and when that isnt working they overlap on the wing, Pep has CB's that are competent playing as a defensive midfielder. Pep changes formation and style fluidly throughout the match. Enzo does not to any of that. There is a monstrous difference between the two managers, I know you're not making a direct comparison between Pep and Enzo so please don't think i'm saying that, I understand that Pep took a season or so to really click. But pep has showed he is dynamic and pragmatic at multiple clubs in multiple countries with multiple teams. Enzo refuses to even overlap a full back. At present there is no evidence it ever will click, let alone instantly.

I think you're right, but also I think it's a mix of philosophy and ego for us. Pep has stuck to the philosophy but he has played 4 very clear formations this season (5 if we want to be pedantic and include the club world cup) and all of those formations are fluid and change mid game, pep plays Inverted full backs who slot into midfield similar to ours, and if that's not working he shifts them into overlapping full backs to support the wingers, or for example he will play a sort of hybrid 352, and if he's short in midfield, he allows Stones to venture forward and the wingbacks slot back into a back 4. Pep is dynamic and pragmatic, Enzo is unfortunately not.

I commented just after you and I think you've hit the nail on the head here, he does try too hard, but I think often he does that because the vast majority of his passes (78%) are sideways or backwards, IMO because the inverted wingers result in opponents congesting his area of the pitch limiting his options. I think this is a fault of ours as a system rather than Winks as an individual. It's hard to tell how good he could be if given space and freedom during a match.