JacobLCFC1234

If the highlighted points are true, youve got an excellent chance of winning. Your defensive solidarity will probably nullify our "threat" up front. Its normally a case of getting into a good defensive shape whilst we pass the ball slowly and aimlessly giving you plenty of time to regroup, and then when you nick the ball back, that hard working strong midfield can break forward and expose the gaps we leave in transition. Loads of teams have done this already. Even Huddersfield from the division below managed this. Its pointless pressing us, just sit in your shape whilst we pass it predictably. Itll come to nothing. Itll most likely be a poor inswinging cross or speculative shot from fatawu thatll be the sum total of the buildup. Your forwards will probably get chances due to pure laziness and lack of concentration at the back. Sloppy passes you can pounce on, or deep runs no one can be bothered to track. Youll get in on goal a few times with good chances. We MAY trouble you in SPELLS throughout the game, but there will be spells you will get on top.

If its to be a 3-5-2, the balance of the squad doesnt really suit that formation well. 3-4-3 might be a better option, but even so where does that leave the wingers in either formation who are our most dangerous players? Youd have to really get a good balance in midfield to play either of those formations too, youd really want a third man in there as Soumare and Winks give zero effort out of possession.

Management is about getting the best out of people, and going round all day every day like an Australian Charles Bronson just doesnt inspire anyone. Thats why the qualities that made him an alright player (being generous) dont transfer into management.

you have a regular boo 4 times a year then And if a few hundred quid means nothing to you why not give it to a charity?

Come to the course an hour before your tee time, and go through a warm up, which ends with you hitting the club youll hit off the first tee. Itll make the first tee shot just like any other shot, and loosen you up for your round, Also remember you are only warming up, NOT practicing. so dont judge the quality of your shots. Just get loose and ready to play

So you pay the cost of a season ticket, just to go to away games. I dont know if youve realised, but the bleeped out word players are the SAME ONES that play in away games, its not a group of bellends at home and 11 different players away from home. If youre only there for the beer, you could maybe just go to a pub? Why am I even bothering to analyse you?

So when it comes to away games you are top in then? the protest only extends to when we are at home and youve already paid. Its like ive said and you wont take it on board but who cares. Your protest isnt doing the slightest thing. A meaningful protest would be doing something LOUD and COORDINATED inside the ground, to vocally show how many people have had enough.

So you sell the ticket so it doesnt look like an empty seat anyway, whilst going to work overtime to earn the money that replaced the money you spent on the ticket and then didnt go, when you could have just not gone, not paid in the first place, and then not had to work overtime, and socialised with your mates instead of working. You sound like a very confused individual.

Your "protest" isnt making any point whatsoever, the only person missing out is you, youre still paying for a thing youre not watching. Is top going to see your empty seat and go oh crikey, id better sell up now a disgruntled little foxestalker isnt coming anymore. No, he thinks youre a mug because youre still paying him regardless Hit him in the pocket and give your ticket up COMPLETELY

The whole league is basically trash. Theres no point analysing it. Theres no good players or teams. Anything could happen in any game. And then you could replay the same fixture the weekend after and get a totally different result. Form is irrelevant. Its why you regularly get results like Watford spanking Middlesboro without any prior indication they would. Or a team like Derby put together a few wins and as soon as they do theyll get spanked by someone any not win in 5. Just a boring random mess of utter shitness.

but yet you still keep on paying to NOT be there? whats the point of that

Why would you want to pay for a season ticket to NOT go? I dont get why youre debating whether or not there is a minimum attendance rule if youre deciding not to show up after spending hundreds of pounds in the first place

I think its an interesting point you raise because im sure Maresca was quoted as saying he did not like counter attacks as they are random, and dont conform to patterns of play. Counter attacks being, by definition, fast transitions. So maybe that was something instilled into the players at a time we were (relatively speaking) "good" that has stuck. Maybe.

If you combined Duncan Ferguson and Roy Keane for the actual football, but made him australian, and threw in a sprinkling of serial killer, youd be getting somewhat close

By "waving them up the pitch" you are suggesting Marti wants a more direct style than the players themselves are implementing? I just wondered what youre interpretation of the waving is, faster transitions? commit more men forward?

Youre talking like Marti plays, predictable like for like changes to systems and players. Theres things that could easily be changed, small tweaks that would surely improve us 1) Fatawu is the main attacking source in the team. He also gets isolated a lot. This leads to lots of situations where he receives the ball and makes a very predictable movement of shifting the ball onto his left foot and coming inside to either play an inswinging cross (usually useless) or shooting from distance (which will score a few scorchers a season, and the rest mostly a waste). The opposition know this, so they dont NEED to defend him 1v1, the left back can show him outside, or if he cant as long as the centreback comes over, Fatawu gets doubled up and pretty much runs into a brick wall with no good options. Why not utilise a run from deep to overlap or underlap Fatawu, this would mean someone has to go and defend the player making the run from deep and drags him away from Fatawu 2) The idea of "wide triangles" was tested out in pre season whilst we still had El Khanouss. Dropping into wide pockets to create overloads, leaving free space on the other side for a switch of play. Since losing Bilal, i dont see this happening at all. Just needs a little game intelligence and someone who can play the right passes. Could even be Ayew maybe, dropping into space, linking things up. 3) Ramsey has an eye for goal and can make Andy King/Lampard style runs from the number 10 position....Why not use him as a goal threat coupled with a player up front who maybe drops deep or plays a target man/hold up type role. Ayew maybe? hes not the worlds best footballer, he doesnt need to be, he just needs to be an outlet to hold up the ball and drag defenders away and theres space for Ramsey to attack the box and ghost in. 4) Defending transitions....do some shape work. When the ball is lost, do what the good teams in the championship do and recover your positions immediately, frustrate the opposition attack and slow it down, get into a compact block. If trying to win the ball back with a counter press just leaves disorganised gaps everywhere with players who cant concentrate or run, tell them to do the safe thing and get back into shape quickly, and defend from there. Theres four things already we could do that dont need wholesale changes.

Gattuso

Yeah it does actually. You take all those players and tell them to stop doing those things. If they dont, you drop them. If you see good qualities in those players but you see deficincies in them, e.g. strength, concentration or lack of finishing as you have pointed out there, you work on their deficiencies and if you cant make them better, even if its by a few percent, then you get rid of them. Then you pick tactics that work with the strengths the players DO have, and dont pick tactics that make them look worse or expose their deficiencies. if youve got players who are either only physically capable of strolling back from the half way line to defend a transition, or cant be arsed to run back to defend a transition, you either a) drop said player for someone who CAN run back if trying to win it high up, or b) play a system where player who cant run is not put into a position where he has to run miles backwards.

Based on the fact that hes always worked with talented youngsters and improved them albeit not in a managerial capacity, he has literally learned from arguably the best and one of the best man managers ever, hes never had the chance to shine but in his one genuine caretaker role at Hull he was getting them to perform competitively at the highest level on a squad of about 14 players.

I think Mike Phelan could do well if given the chance

Can I be honest about something that isnt the point of this thread.... Why is it when discussing football, fans talk in this weird present tense way all the time. Like saying "No chance they bring Martin here", rather than saying "No chance THEY WOULD BRING Martin here" Its like when people say "If the ref sees that"..... no, "if the ref HAD SEEN that" Weird how people talk like this about football, feel free to piss take away

I dont think theres parallels though in my opinion. Chansiri was literally running Sheffield Wednesday into the ground because he wanted to get back the investment he put in. So the whole infastructure of the club was left to rot, as well as the squad. I think with Top, im in a minority but on the business side of things, weve got Seagrave (its produced no success) and hes written off a lot of debt. Hes also still tried to make funds available where possible for managers. The difference being, he surrounds himself with people who do bad jobs, obviously Rudkin, and he has a hire and fire approach to managers that has no continuity or planning. I do agree with you that we are getting CLOSE to the Sheffield Wednesday comparison though if he will hang onto ownership expecting to get some sort of return financial or otherwise back without being prepared to invest, OR we continue to see bad boardroom football decisions being made. I still personally think this squad should be capable of being a LOT better than this, and thats the management and coaching staff. To not be better than Preston North End and Charlton Athletic is terrible.

To be honest, did Will Still really have the pedigree and track record behind him to be a success at Southampton anyway? He seems popular with fans, and has a good PR image around him, but his track record doesnt suggest he would take a club like Southampton forwards. Or to me at least. Id be much more confident the likes of Mark Robbins or Chris Wilder to get the job done. Managers of that ilk.

Unless there are buyers waiting in the wings to buy the club, who are willing to commit huge amounts of cash without the assurance of getting it back, and are willing to change the structure of the club to get a proper director of football in, im not sure hounding Top out is all that smart of a move. But Rudkin absolutely must go to be replaced with a DoF that can negotiate deals.

I want him to do well but id have to say Marti out, for a few reasons 1) You dont have the squad you would ideally like; thats fine. But literally everyone else is in the same boat. Weve just lost to Hull, Millwall and Blackburn. Theyre not exactly blessed with global superstars. They have some organisation, some drive to win, and some competency to make the most of what theyve got. We dont get the most out of what weve got 2) Why dont we get the most out of what weve got? because we are tactically one dimensional. We make like for like changes and they dont work. We expect Fatawu will create everything and he cant. We dont move the ball with purpose and play with a ruthlessness that will create chances. We dont have the talent to unpick defences with short passing, but we dont try and do anything else (except hope Fatawu does something magical). Every opposing manager knows this, adapts to this, and can do us in transitions (or just be better than us full stop). 3) Its the same crap ive watched before. Put YOUR stamp on it.Do something else. Give some other players a consistent run in the team. Dont claim youll give others a chance if youll just revert back to the players who we KNOW have let us down. And if this IS your stamp, youre going to have to do it a lot better than this.