orangecity23

You've shown that some people in here wanted Enzo out last year. There are plenty more of us, myself included, who never wanted Enzo out. Equally, one could make an argument that a large contigent of the Cooper In posters are pro Cooper because they convinced themselves that possession football is "tippy tappy shit" and Cooper will have us playing "proper" football. Let's dig up some old posts shall we, to see if my baseless conjecture is on the money? You only joined the forum at the start of the season, so we'll just have to take your word for what your opinions were when times were tough last season in the run in.

When you think about it, he's managed us for 9 league games, 2 league cup games and all of pre-season, and not once in that time has there been a full, solid, 90 minute good performance (possible exception - Tranmere at home in the cup). Even the good results feature one half that's an absolute horror show.

If it's all of our fault for picking the team with Fatawu and Ricardo in that's to blame, even though that starting 11 was completely fine for the entire first half, can I have all the credit for subbing Fatawu on last weekend as well please? I've always said Buonanotte is good too, so I'll take all that credit for the Bournemouth win too, ta.

In what world is he thinking Bouba Soumare is going to come on and change a game? If you asked Soumare if he wanted to come on and if he was up for it, he'd probably just nod off back to sleep.

I've been to every home game - and that makes me feel worse about Cooper. When you are at games, you get to see all the problems close up, like abysmal team selections, subs being left too late, the defensive problems caused by the lopsided Cooper formation, or Abdul Fatawu being inexplicably left on the bench unused while a rain sodden 39 year old Ashley Young gets left to go about his business unbothered for 90 minutes as we are desperately chasing the game against Everton. I find a lot of the "Oh, you are just being negative for no reason" chat on here is from people who don't watch games at all, they just look at the results for 2 seconds and go - "see, it's fine, I don't know what you are complaining about. We're aiming for 17th/were in League 1 not long ago/have a shit squad/what do you expect" etc.

Fair play to Ayew, he did well to score the winner today, and by all accounts, the Palace fans think he's a great sub when you are winning, thanks to his ability to win free kicks and slow the game down when you are looking to time waste. So lets get people in their best positions, Abdul starting and Ayew on the bench, where he can come on late and wind up opposition fans.

If only we had a right winger who posed a massive threat going forward, like that Fatawu guy who came on today, but who also had great defensive stats, workrate, and puts in a real shift covering the right back - a bit like that Fatawu guy we had on loan last year. Would really balance the team out, with a player like that on the right, and a player like Mavididi on the left. Shame there isn't anyone like that in the squad, in clear sight, that the manager has completely overlooked just like he did with Mavididi a few weeks back.

I got the impression that he was Billy bullshitting to explain away the 2 minute sub appearance vs Everton, and bringing him on in stoppage time against Arsenal, what a great development experience that was. He might be ready to actually start a game next year, we'll have to drop Mavididi or Buonanotte first though, couldn't possibly have all 3 start at the same time, not when the starting game plan that puts you *checks notes* 2 goals down against the worst team in the league is working so well. EDIT - just like that crap at the start of the season where BDCR was starting instead of Mavididi, or the spell of a few games where Buonanotte didn't start. Were either of those decisions justified or tactical brilliance, or just rank stupidity leaving out some of our best players for no good reason?

So Cooper is adamant his formation and "plan" is absolutely the way to go, but this business with a winger tucking in and Justin pushing up is leading to loads of chances down our right flank. It's almost like the Cooper system is fundamentally crap and doesn't work.

Cooper came round to do some maintenance on the servers, ended up taking out the brand new ssd drives and processor, then replaced them with a 20GB 3.5" disc he found in an e-waste bin and a Pentium II, because they were "more experienced". The Pentium broke straight away, but he insisted on not substituting it until 70 minutes later.

Any stat has a margin of error on it in either direction. If it was a midtable stat and we were underperforming it a bit, or overperforming it it wouldn't be a big issue. The issue is that all of the base stats are abysmal. It means we HAVE to overperform it to deliver the heady heights of 17th, because all it will take is a little injury to Mads and a few games of Danny Ward, or a Vardy injury meaning we are relying on 3 goals a season Ayew up front and we will be right in the shit.

All this stat talk is somewhat missing the point - whether they are fully accurate or not, they are only a part of a bigger picture that says we are being outplayed for large portions of matches. You don't need a comprehensive stat analysis to tell you that we offered nothing in attack in the Spurs 1st half, the Fulham 2nd Half, the Villa 1st half, the Everton 1st half, the Arsenal 1st half, most of the Walsall game and the Bournemouth 2nd half. The stats are just another way of illustrating this - we give up a boat load of chances, and create very little. Cooper's tactics offer barely any margin for error, and where we are now in the table shouldn't be taken for granted or used as a whitewash to claim everything is fine. After the Arsenal game, a heroic performance from Hermansen to preserve our goal difference was the only thing separating us from the bottom 3, and likewise, on Saturday, it was our post and bar in the second half which prevented us from being down there still. That's how thin the margins are when you set up like this, because the "pragmatic" bit of camping in your own half only invites trouble as the opposition can commit every one forward to liberally pepper our goal at will. We actually look a lot better and defensively sound, and concede less goals when we are playing in "handbrake off" mode.

If I remember correctly - didn't Top sack Puel? I have a distinct memory that Puel was the manager at the time of the tragic accident

Yeah, it is quite galling that they didn't want leaflets handed out mentioning gambling addiction support websites, but are perfectly happy to cover the ground in endless betting commercials.

They did have some stuff about World Mental Health Day on the big screens - a logo through most of the match, and a video (mostly about avoiding burnout in the workplace) at half time.

The reason people are still banging the Cooper Out drum isn't because we want to be right - it's because all the problems that have been there since day 1 are still there, and were definitely present today as well. We are not some limited team of clogger Championship players getting results due to being in a well drilled system that gets the most of our players (for example - Chris Wilder's freshly promoted Sheff United team that finished well). This is a team with some really quite good premier league players in it, being hamstrung by tactics, formation and substitution decisions that make us look a worse team than we were last season. We still have issues with key players from last season being given the cold shoulder to disrupt the squad (add Winks to the list now, to go with all the others - Vestergaard, Ricardo, Mavididi, Fatawu). In game substitutions are still baffling. We still look statistically poorer than every opponent we've faced, and this win is built off the back of one great bit of skill by Buonanotte, coupled with some poor finishing by Bournemouth and some last ditch heroics at the back. The only credit I see Cooper really deserving today was the decision to not put Ayew on the wing, and deploy him centrally instead. Other than that, very, very little has changed, and the very obvious flaws which have persisted throughtout his entire reign here and the last 2 seasons at Forest remain glaringly obvious with no signs of learning or improvement.

Good to get a shithouse win, those 3 pts were desperately needed. This inverted Cooperball tactic of scoring first then being ultra conservative is a lot more sensible than regular flavour Cooperball where we start ultra conservative for 60-70 minutes, concede then have to desperately chase an equaliser or consolation goal at the end. Having Ayew centrally meant the team was a lot more balanced than normal, and although he didn't do anything offensively, he did bizarrely end up doing quite a lot of important defending at times. Both centre backs had great games, and Buonanotte was an absolute star, great goal, some superb covering of Justin at the back in the second half too, just all around great. Some of those subs were absolutely baffling though, all the booked players were left on (until Ayew came off eventually, then Soumare came on and immediately got booked ), no idea what the point of BdCR is when McAteer could be offering more. Maybe one glorious day we may see Stephy at LW, Buonanotte at 10 and Abdul at RW all at the same time. We all have to have dreams to keep us going.

What a dumb move by Bournemouth to win the toss and make us attack the kop first half instead of second. Confused our lads into thinking they are allowed to attack and score a goal.

Definitely agreed - the combination of Hermansen and Vardy's finishing vs Spurs and Palace, plus one snatched half chance by Stephy vs Everton (after Cooper decided early doors that he didn't even rate him and shouldn't start) are the only thing that got us the points we have. We could very easily be sat on 0 points now.

Because our DoF's idea of utilising his footballing contacts in a exhaustive search for the right candidate involves phoning the one agent he knows, getting turned down for Graham Potter again, then panicing and giving it the guy who lives round the corner from Seagrave - because he's been standing outside his office window with a sign saying "gis a job" and has agreed to go top of the training ground burglar alarm out of hours callout list and saved Jon a 30 minute drive at night sometimes if a Pigeon gets in the roof of the indoor training hall.

Even if they are concerned about Sustainability (which we all doubt given the clappers), they could have at least offered an alternative - like putting some of the details on the scoreboards at half time, or some announcements on the PA or something. Just making excuses because they don't want to say they don't care or can't be bothered.

Hmmm - seeing where we are in 4 games + a guarantee we would have been thrashed playing last seasons style. Next 4 games has Bournemouth and Southampton. Last season we beat Bournemouth in the cup with a largely reserve team playing, and thrashed Southampton twice. Lets see how this seasons "Style" of play (that gets outclassed by league 2 Walsall and has to hang on desperately for a 0-0) gets on in the equivalent fixtures. My prediction - badly.

Sounds about right, Cooper only allows us in the opposition final third once 60 minutes have gone and we are 1 or 2 goals down, so we only get near their goalline about a third of the time other teams get

That explains why Cooper didn't want him. Saw him miss one shot in training, then turned to his assistant and said "Did you see that? He just wasted almost 4 games worth of XG there!"

Training the match day teams of the future. Work experience kids on the cameras, 4ft 8, 12 year old lad in a sheepskin motty coat doing commentary.