honeybradger

I know he's injured but I think loaning Will Alves out was a mistake (not taking the foot injury into account). He showed at Cardiff that he's a bit of an impact off the bench specialist and offers something different to our other wingers. I think he would have gained us points where our other subs have failed to so far this season. If Cifuentes genuinely came into the club with the intention of integrating the academy players im sure he would be reaping the rewards in comparison to where we are now.

Playing talented players in a below average team does not ruin them, where have you seen an example of that? Birmingham weren't good when Bellingham broke out, same for our own Jordan James, Reading weren't particularly good when Olise was playing, Blackburn not great when Wharton was playing, Qpr not great when Eze was playing, Oxford United not great when Nelson was playing. You talk about what supporters can and cant control, but the club and manager also cant suddenly flip the quality of the squad on it's head and start winning, the only thing the club have in their control is to start planning for the future and start building the spine of the team around our academy golden generation.

Monga has been better than Ayew and Mavididi so not sure how you can say he is way off being better. He has been our best choice at left wing this season. Even if he wasnt better he is 16, they are 34 and 27. He is allowed to perform at this level because this is just one step for him on the path to improvement, the alternatives to him arent going to get better, therefore their performances are more unacceptable e even if they perform to the same level.

Did i defend Thomas? I'm just saying the pass was very good.

The players are not playing poorly, they are poor, there is a clear difference. No point in giving confidence to the poor players as it's wasted on them, we need to give confidence and experience to the talented academy players as they potentially have a future of being good.

Bit harsh on the pass, it's pretty much perfect. We dont play passes as good as that into our forwards any more.

So you would persist with Thomas, Ayew, Daka, Carranza, Faes, Okoli etc ahead of the academy players because we dont want to put to much pressure on the first team. to the side. We need to rebuild the squad this season, it's not about results, a lot of players have simply overstayed their welcome.

Hopefully it is starting to click for him that these players wont deliver him. Need to start bringing Nelson, Aluko, Page and Evans into the fold.

The difference between staying up and relegation this season and i am being 100% serious

Ill be honest i dont want a new manager. All that is going to happen is that someone comes in who is not familiar with these players and passes out a fresh round of clean sheets. We need to persist with a manager who has gotten familiar with how terrible this squad is and understands that it needs gutting. (or grows to understand that the squad needs gutting, which is what im sure is happening in Cifuentes's mind at the moment) Also the additions of Ramsey and James are two of the few positives we have had so far, I'm worried we bring in a Cooper type manager who just brings in more trash that needs to be shifted.

Just a lack of individual quality across the board sadly

Far better than we are now

Stolarczyk our best player this season

As one of Wink's biggest critics he has been very good defensively today

He hasnt played u21s football in years i dont think. He's well past that and it would be borderline disrespectful to send him back considering we allegedly fended off PL interest for him. He's hit a brick wall in terms of getting into the first team though sadly.

Who's ready to go 3-0 up then lose 4-3

Okoli isnt amazing either but at least he puts his body on the line to keep the ball out of the net whereas Faes is all over the place.

This is likely the reason but sadly it's another mistake from an ownership that has been taking too many reactive, short term decisions which is how we ended up in the situation rather than making proactive, long term decisions.

We're not on track for promotion anyway and if anything we've gotten lucky to start the season. It's becoming clearer every week that these experienced players are not going to deliver promotion. Might as well actually trying to build something rather than trying to restart a fire that has run out of fuel.

It would be nice if we gave Aluko a go. His runs into the penalty helped open up defences in pre season and he was even playing at centreback them. Think his athleticism and dribbling ability would be useful.

Why are we comparing ourselves to Coventry who are 1st and ahead of ourselves by some distance. We are 9th, a more apt comparison would be to Cifuentes's previous team in QPR who are now sat above us at 8th. Both managers been in position for a similar period.

Might be unpopular but I still wouldnt be particularly hot on him if we were winning most weeks and challenging for the automatic positions. What is the point in going up if it is with the likes of Faes, Ayew etc as our key players, we're just going to have another terrible season in the PL like last year where we are massively out of our depth if we go up that way. The primary objective of this season has to be to integrate the academy players and shift the high earners who we know arent good enough. A rebuild where we actually bring some life into this team. The fact that he has created this separation between academy and first team and is still floundering at achieving his own goal of promotion at any cost, including the cost of the long term future of the club, doesnt leave him in a good light.

Pedantics mate, youre romanticising a player who doesnt play for us anymore at the expense of a player who is performing well for us right now. Stolarczyk is one of our best players, even if Hermansen was as good as you remember, which may or may not be how it was in reality, what's the point in comparing him to the Hermansen of a year ago. Alternatively Hermansen could still be with us and be playing like he was at the end of last season and this season with West Ham which would be worse than what we have in Stolarczyk now. Let's just celebrate Stolarczyk for being one of the few players preventing us from being a complete embarrassment currently.

I honestly think he's not far off where Hermansen was for us at all. Hermansen has gotten the same face lift that Faes did where because he was involved in our championship promotion season people seem to have a false memory of him being completely imperious last time in the championship, which he was not. He had plenty of times where he passed straight to the opposition in our penalty area or where he failed to claim a cross, which Stolarczyk is far superior at. Don't get me wrong Hermansen was good in our championship season but it's similar to how people were saying Faes was 'our best defender' and need to start if we want to be promoted. Then when Faes started games we all came back down to Earth that he wasn't all that special at this level. Hermansen was never the reincarnation of Neuer that he is being made out to be nowadays but since it's been a while since he's started for us he's gotten better in everyone's minds. He was only ever as good as Stolarczyk is now, which is one of the best in the championship but not some world beater.