Pliskin

0-4 Sheffield.

I thought he looked better than Thomas going forward, just made a couple of nervous mistakes.

With Fatawu, Mavididi, James and Monga that shouldn’t be the case….. this idea we lack creativity is a bit of a false excuse……

If you don’t have the resources to play your preferred style, you have to compromise…. You have to come up with a different way of playing. Marti isn’t doing this, he’s just continuing with his style regardless of the results and isn’t changing anything other than personnel. We’ve got a team of professional footballers, this notion of “they’re just shit” doesn’t wash, and frankly isn’t a good enough excuse to not act. It’s been said many, many times there are severe limitations within this squad, but it is still more than good enough to operate at this level better than it currently is. It is abundantly clear the players just aren’t getting on with Marti’s methods and style of play. Yesterday was a complete tactical mess, it’s basic football logic that if you leave your defence exposed, no matter their quality they will concede goals. It looks like we defend in a zonal system, so Marti has players defending set areas rather than what’s in front of them….. and this was before the sending off, Southampton just exploited the space left between the midfield and the defence and this has been happening for weeks and weeks…. It happened at the weekend, but Stoke just didn’t take their chances, sooner or later we were going to get pasted by a team that were having a good day in front of goal…. We give up far too many chances, and it’s not through quality, it’s through tactical instructions from the manager…. If the players don’t get or aren’t getting on with the managers preferred methods, the system falls apart, they need to be inspired by the manager and believe in his product to then go out and produce it…. Many of these players have done this previously and can do it again, regardless of their personal inhibitions, they can be inspired to play to a heightened level…. Limited players have been inspired to perform to a better level countless times over the years…. It’s just basic Psychology to get there. Players don’t hate playing for clubs because of the clubs, it’s 90% of the time down to who their supervisors are and the environment they create… again the notion “well they earn loads of money so that’s not an excuse” again, doesn’t wash, they’re human beings like you or I, who happen to be footballers, they have the same shortcomings as my other person which has a major impact on their performance. In an ideal world we would change the ownership and the players, but that isn’t an option, especially sort term….. A manager can made the world of difference, ultimately they make or break the group, any group of people can be inspired with the right manager, unfortunately it’s the only thing you can change with relative ease, and you can’t just do nothing.

Justin and Kalechi also didn’t feature all the time……

Just play 10 men. No point playing Thomas.

If Marti is still here, easy Sheff U win.

Stolarczyk Ricardo Faes Vestegaard Winks Hamza Fatawu Mavididi Daka All played under Enzo. James, Skipp, BDR and Ayew have all performed comfortably at this level before. The comparisons are only drawn because some seem to think the squad is completely different to that Enzo had…. It’s largely the same with some differences…. So that argument is flawed. Is the squad weaker? Yes it is, is the league weaker than it was then? Absolutely it is. Should this squad be doing better than it is…. Absolutely it should. Can a manager with good man management skills get more out of his group and with the potential to strengthen on January do better? Yes. Even if we got deducted 9 points, we could still have a go at the play offs…. Before beating Stoke we had won what, 2 in 12 or something and ended up 3 points off the play offs? It is easy to just disregard everything and just flippantly say “well the players are shit so it’s pointless sacking him”… the evidence is irrefutable that Marti is making us worse, tactically he’s not got a clue, he’s trying to play the same formation, regardless of the personnel available to him, because he’s setting the team up to play in his image, rather than focus on the strengths it does have. The reality is, Top isn’t going anywhere, nor is Rudkin, and if on 3/4 years we haven’t managed to shift the deadwood out, how are we going to do it in January? Marti has never managed to grasp the dressing room in the time he’s been here, not one single player has shown signs of improvement, some have even regressed…. It’s clear they aren’t having his philosophy and it’s clear he doesn’t know what to do with the team. If Marti was left in post and we just carried on losing games, and went down and did nothing, people would too have something to say about not trying something different. Managers are expendable, they’re short term solutions and are there to be got rid of if things aren’t going well…. Even with money, Marti wouldn’t achieve anything, he’s a poor coach who eventually lost his way at QPR, so the warning signs were there.

Offer a better explanation and we may take you semi-seriously.

Like watching a dying goldfish draw its last few breaths, but a bit worse.

We were dung on Saturday too.

But that’s the reality, Top isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Rudkin…… so that renders that option unviable. Enzo whether is was a lucky appointment or not, worked….. a manager with better man management skills than Marti can at least get a better product in the pitch, there is still quality in this squad regardless of our feelings towards it…… any player can be motivated to be better, but it needs the right type of character in charge. This club is riddled with issues, and Marti is one of those issues, he’s garbage, but he’s the easiest part of problem to change quickly. It’s either he goes, or we go down.

Is it not? Nothing at all? Marti is doing nothing wrong? Do explain?

Like every other game?

Oh **** off with this bollocks. Marti is shit, he sets the team up exactly the same, regardless of personnel available, his subs are disgusting all of the time, and his football is boring. This side may have deficiencies, but there’s a large portion of Ben who have won this league before, played in Europe and are internationals…. Plus we’ve got exciting young players. At this stage of the season, we’ve seen not one single player improve, and we’ve seen plenty get worse. Marti is a dreadful coach and a dreadful manager…. And a manager who has a degree of good man management skills, will get this lot playing better than this.

It’s been said before, I know we have some weaknesses, and our boardroom is run by gibbons, but for **** sales this evening even worse that I imagined. Marti is tactically inept, he simply has to be sacked, tonight.

He’s worse than Cooper and RVN put together.

If Marti wasn’t completely tactically inept, he might have tried a different formation for a change instead of shoe horning players into unnatural positions for them…. A result like this has been coming, red card aside, we’ve been shit all season and getting away with it….. just needed one team to have a good day in front of goal and it’s goodnight Vienna. Hopefully this buggering will be the last we see of this dreadful manager and his hideous tactics. And Top can **** pff with Rudkin and take his shit beer with him.

Crossing everything for Aluko! Come on son!

Yep….. the last great thing ever to happen was our PL win….. nothing will eclipse that I don’t think. Games dead, it needs ripping apart and starting again…

Football is dead…. What on earth has this sport become?

The whole thing was an orchestrated PR stunt, it’s free beer and cake gate again, and the KPFC fans just lap it up by the bucket. ****ing embarrassing. That whole weekend is just a massive red herring, he will come away from that thinking everything is okay, and continue to plunge the club into more disarray….. the potential points deduction will certainly bring him crashing back down to earth again……… I’d personally prefer a substantial fine for him, it’s his fault, why make the overall club and fans suffer with points deductions, slap him with a massive fine and he might decide enough is enough and **** off……………..

I don’t think thumped, because they’re just another poor championship outfit, I thought we would lose purely because of the system Marti deploys really hinders our attack.. The team look to me as if they don’t know what they’re being asked to do, we play when it’s not practical too, and then try to be direct when it’s not practical too, we never seem to get it right. The two goals however actually came from two breaks of play in the transition, and for me it highlighted how easily we can actually breach an opposition with the pace and ability we have on the counter. Id be happy if we were genuinely dog shit, but as easy as it is to dislike this team, there’s still enough quality within it to not be where we are. We should be competing at the top end of the table. I do respectfully disagree with the notion of the defence. Vestegaard, Faes and Ricardo all operated at this level perfectly fine at this level last time, and it is the same by and large, so there really are no excuses, I wouldn’t say they were sussed out, I think it was a combination of Enzo’s stubbornness and naivety on his set up that caused us to tail off rather than the individual ability of the players. There’s definitely fragilities within the team and potentially a hangover from last season, but surely a half decent coach would understand this, and deploy their tactics in a way that benefits the team? The threats we do have in the team, we don’t base our play around them, every time Fatawu and Mavididi get the ball, the game is at a walking pace, they’re having to generate their own momentum all of the time, and it’s one of the reasons neither of them are offering any consistency, they’re being expected to create something from nothing all of the time….. We’ve got to start looking at playing a slightly different way, yesterday proves that we can play through teams in less passes, and we can be effective in the transition, rather than triangles in our own half that eventually go back to the goalkeeper….. I know all of the issues are down to Top and Rudkin, but that isn’t changing, and we can’t make wholesale changes to the squad either, because of them, so options are fairly limited… I’m not naive enough to think that what I think is actually the gospel truth it isn’t, we’re treading water, and it’s starting to look like a sink or swim situation…..

It’s difficult to attain yes, but it isn’t unattainable, nothing is….. there are still managers out there who can do this….. we see this when teams have a sudden but consistent upturn in form…. As Forest did under Cooper, who arguably would probably be better for us in this current climate. It’s only difficult to envisage because of how things currently are….. but we only have to cast our minds back a few years to see what Enzo achieved…… any player can be inspired, regardless of their feelings. Yannick was want away, and Enzo managed to get him back onside…. Its how the manager motivates his group as to how this is achieved….. Its clear Marti isn’t a good man manager, the body language from the players has never improved, probably bar Winks who at least is showing willing again. It’s difficult but I maintain a manager who focuses on the players individual skill sets and sets the team up to maximise these will do better than a manager who is trying to play to his philosophy even when it’s not possible to do so, which what Marti is doing. As I’ve said, he should never have really been appointed, but he has but backing him long term will be a mistake too in my opinion…. Two things are going to happen 1) We get promoted and try to use the PL to rebuild, because you can’t rebuild at this level, especially when you’re making mistakes financially and tying your hands… 2) We fail to get promoted and drift into mid table obscurity. Rebuilding at this level is a myth, any team that does usually does following a change of ownership, with a fresh injection of investment….. otherwise the longer you stay at this level, the worse it gets, the more your financial strength reduces and the less appealing you become….. it’s why many teams have been lost the miserable black hole that is the EFL, which really is a purgatory for football…… an eternal stale waiting room…. The latter is now the more likely, because we’ve ****ed up yet again, but if you want to rebuild, you have to do what the likes of Burnley have done, and Leeds of recent years and bounce around the divisions for a couple of seasons to get that financial backing. It’s a difficult scenario, and I do agree with what you’re saying, you’re not wrong….. it’s just there’s still an opportunity to be better with a manager that suits our current skillset, which is limited, but we still have some good players…… But, it’s all immaterial due to the mess behind the scenes, which renders everything above possibly impossible..…..

I do agree.