Tom12345

Not really. Mads may break the press but then we passback to wait for the opposition to settle as we feel it is unfair to play while the opposition is out of shape.

He is turning out to be another Rodgers.

We should. But how many shots have we actually shot on target. Same as Birmingham. We are just too scared to try. Doyle made a long cross ball to Fatawu and he was talked down to by Maresca. Doyle should have been encouraged for trying. Instead he will just pass backwards from here on.

It is not amateurish. It is Maresca. Weak mentality. Why did we even let Birmingham get back into the game. Just keep attacking. Who cares if we lose the ball in their own half. Better than let the other team play in our half. Sick of this.

Same here. As soon as scored. We stop trying as hard. Fuking hate it. Damn Mareseca.

I hate this sort of football. As soon as we scored, we hesitate and start to try to care more about not losing the ball and take the foot off the pedal. Fu*king unbelievable suicidal football. Inviting pressure for no reason.

Don’t get why we don’t have Albrighton as an option off the bench. His crosses are what could help change how we play if we need to change.

I don’t know why the hate. It is not that the owners have not put money in. Loss after loss season after season. Wrote off hundred of millions of debt the club owed to the owners. I don’t see any fan putting up money of that sort. Yes, we could be a bit smarter with our transfer and player dealings in recent years, and they mismanaged with Brendan, but they are not the worst?? What about Man City and Chelsea with their financial fair play? The bigger problem here is that the rules are stacked against clubs like us who want to challenge before we become sustainably “big”. Hard to do when you need to invest a lot before you become “big” and if you fail then you not only lose a lot of money but they stamp down on you and punish you even more to make sure you never get up again! How can you ever compete with the Man City, Chelsea, Man U etc? The anger should be directed at the PL and the big clubs!

To be fair, if it wasn’t for the covid break and Brendan, we should have finished top 4 that season and went on to become a bigger and more profitable club. Given where we were, it was not a crazy bet. But then who would have thought that Brendan could so stuff it up with the choke. If it was Brendan in charge of our 15-16 season, we would not have won the PL given he would have cared more about himself and kept telling everyone his players are crap etc and undermine their confidence and belief. After the second choke however, management should have been decisive and sacked him then instead of giving him another season and a half.

Good point. We suffered our losses not because of us paying a lot to get an advantage, but because we underperformed and suffered relegation (and therefore loss of revenue associated with that).

How important was that Leeds lost turning out to be even though Maresca said it was just a game. If Daka’s goal was not ruled offside incorrectly, or he took his chance, or we didn’t self implode, we would be 6 points better off against Leeds.

I heard that before.

His main fault is he is afraid of holding on the ball for too long and would panic and make a back pass whenever possible.

It doesn’t matter. Hamza will pass the ball back 20 yards after winning the ball up top. He is really keen to make sure we play fairly and wait for the opposition to well and truly settle into their formation before we start our attack.

It is because Hamza is not that good and Marseca has overtrained them. This is the most frustrating part. We now play high risk but no reward football.

Yes, unfortunately. I don’t feel comfortable losing so many games in a season and be automatically promoted, especially given the run Leeds has been on and Ipswich seems to be at it again. I hate to count on others to determine our fate. We have seen that with last season. We started off having fate in our hands, and then fans started to say it is ok even if we start losing more as others will also falter. In the end, we ended up here in the Championship. Same as the seasons where we finished fifth with us dropping outside of Champions League positions.

Exactly. It used to be that we draw the opposition in and then break free to attack. Now whether they get sucked in or not they just need a back 4 or 5 to sit back and watch us pass backwards and ultimately lose the ball. It is like crying wolf. You can only trick others so many times because they figure it out.

Souttar

While I really wanted us to win, given we lost this after a red card, it is not all bad. We can make ourselves believe we performed ok against decent PL opposition and were unlucky that we got down to 10 men. Hope that won’t shoot our confidence down further. We can now concentrate on the League and try to win every single game from here. No distraction and no more bloody game manage please. Just go all out attacking and pressing until the final whistle. We have the players to do it. We just need to believe and not fear.

The Leeds game we lost was pivotal. There is no hiding from that. We bottled that one too when we should have put that one to bed before they made their late comeback. Very symbolic of our season. If we won, we would still be in the lead and psychologically we would be in a much better place. Now Leeds has the belief and momentum it is hard to see them dropping many points from here. Unless we get in a 9-0-0 or 8-1-0 run or worst 7-2-0 run, it is hard to see us finishing top or even second.

It is always Hamza’s fault. He is so afraid to take the responsibility to pass it forward. This negative mentality is why we bottle. Winks is visibly annoyed sometimes when Hamza does this. And Faes gets super annoyed when Hamza does this to him.

At this stage of the season it may be too risky to change tactics or formation, although it would have been good if Enzo has a plan B which does not involve passing backwards and defending. It is noticeably a big issue now for us to create chances and carve teams open. I would hope Enzo can let his team play freely a bit in the final third. Too often we get into good positions on the counter, catching the opposition out of shape and then we pass backwards. The biggest culprits these days are: Hamza (he often does not even look forward), and Mavididi (he was always going for it before but he must have got told too many times to “make better choices” and as a result he has become too hesitant). Unfortunately, their positions mean that they often ruin play. KDH tries to be the creative outlet but he really needs to learn how to pick the perfect weight and angle of his final pass (just like how Maddison struggled in his first 2 or so seasons here but he came through in the end). So at this stage, unfortunately given the way Enzo has focussed only on one tactic, we have to work on these “smaller” things but things that affect the mentality massively. Just stop telling them to worry about making mistakes and pass forward. Better lose the ball trying then passing backwards and then lose the ball anyway which we do very often these days. Also, Enzo needs to pick the right players. Hamza is not a good IRB. He is too negative when going forward and is just not good enough like Ricardo is. I rather he uses Albrighton. At least he can make those long range passes - at the moment, only Faes and Vesty are doing that but they are bloody centre backs! Why not send our best long range passer on the pitch to make those passes! By the way, Albrighton can’t be much worst than Vesty when it comes to defending. Also, Yunas is obviously ineffective in this formation as a RW. If he comes on, why not slot him in instead of Winks or KDH. Also, why not try something different player wise and move Mavididi to the right and play Albrighton on the left some times? I don’t think Fatawu plays well on the left. We are now too predictable for the opposition so even though we don’t know another formation try using different players then?

Financial Fair Play. Nothing fair about it when clubs like Chelsea can spend a billion and we can’t even sign Sansei for a few million. I am pretty sure Chelsea can’t be making money either. In any event, if they are interested in “fair”, shouldn’t it try to do something about salary caps, transfer caps etc instead of picking on making sure small clubs can’t spend.

Unfortunately he didn’t have Souttar. He could play Crouch for us.

The subs killed any chance we could have won. Yes we were 10 men down, but with no creativity left on the pitch, Enzo’s changes meant we were destined to lose. It was an uphill battle anyway, but it is a cup tie and simply trying to defend was not going to give us any chance. But the biggest error was playing Vesty today. We should have started with Coady instead. Vesty costed us 2 goals - first and third. Simply too slow against Premier League opponents.