The Doctor

because it very much is the latter. Age verification tests are not particularly reliable. there's a ongoing issue where African players en masse keep failing them, there were plans under the Tory government to use them on refugee children due to the fearmongering which was vocally rejected by the RCPCH because the x-ray age verification tests look at skeletal development and cannot properly account for people being late/early developers, let alone the impact of things like ethnicity, socioeconomic status (and the knock on effects of that such as nutrition).

why is it, when Tielemans started to slow having played ~460 senior games by 26, no one started to make claims of him actually being significantly older, but when wilf is starting to slow having played ~420 senior games by 27, everyone pretends he's in his 40s?

id point out that's when everton weren't shit as well, our opening 3 in 14/15 were against 5th, 3rd and 4th the season before

state of this. Kristensen, Ayew and Skipp pretty much entirely on top of each other in average position, Ndidi playing right alongside Fatawu, just zero structure in that.

thats what the plan was, it's tactically inept and simplistic "more forwards = more shots" thinking without consideration of how to get the shooting opportunities in the first place

this might be a bit of a false memory but I could swear JJ has had a similar number of setbacks since he also did his ACL?

expecting the same lineup as v Villa, hoping for a reversion to our style from last season. Keep Kristensen back, he's worse with a cross than Dracula, Ricardo inverts alongside Winks, just can't have Eze up against Justin with the form JJ is in. I'd like to see BEK and Buoannotte together going forward, but one + skipp to start would be acceptable, and get Fatawu and Mavididi running at their fullbacks.

Vardy is not in possession at that point is the key difference

100% this. we need impact subs at the moment because we're setting up far too negative and trying to defend games. we've had a total of one shot in the first halves of our two home games so far, but there's very few teams that we can just invite that sort of pressure from, so we fall behind and need an impact to change that. any talk of who will be an impact sub is an admission that the initial setup isn't right

there's no hard and fast rule like that, it's whether it's a careless or reckless challenge, which is the referees interpretation, and I don't think you can definitively say that Skipps tackle wasn't careless (when a player shows a lack of attention or consideration when making a challenge or acts without precaution.). booking is perhaps harsh but the free kick isn't obviously wrong, it's a reasonable decision

technically true, the laws of the game are as below, but tackling from behind will pretty much always be interpreted as careless or reckless.

You can't tackle from behind, it was a free kick. The major decisions he got right and bitching about "oh he got in the way", "oh he didn't address the tactical fouls and time wasting every team does" is desperate clutching at straws.

from behind, it'll always be a foul.

So, having seen the highlights, are people willing to admit that the decisions weren't wrong?

its a fair question, however I'd dispute the idea that any opposition legs are tired, to tire them out we'd need to not just be hanging on for the first 2/3rds of the game, either making them have to focus hard on positioning or running at them at lot, forcing them to turn. The lack of productivity in the early game is because Coopers set up is far too negative. He's starting with 8 defensive minded players and unsurprisingly Fatawu and Vardy are then easily dealt with by the opposition.

impossible to tell as there's no meaningful stats in there. this is fun, let's look at some actual stats from that game: Looks like Russell Martin just isn't a particularly good manager, who have a lot of the ball among their cbs (hence the 14.57 passes in the Southampton half before a defensive action from Brentford) but can't create shit with it. I would like us to be good, and I've given credit where it's due with the late rallys however not starting to attack until we're well beaten isn't particularly good.

my expectations are starting some attacking players trying to create a chance before the hour mark at home and generally having a plan for how we're going to approach games. if that's unrealistic then why are we even bothering to play this season?

creating nothing isn't an exaggeration either, the timing charts are absolutely hideous for this season Spurs - absolutely nothing before the Vardy goal, decent late rally with another big vardy chance but at home opening day and we created no chances before 55 minutes Fulham, second best all day, wouts goal the only chance of note and then we didn't manage so much as another shot for half an hour. Villa, honestly completely grim, 1 shot in the first half, absolutely nothing of not beyond speculative 1 in 100 efforts until the 70th minute. this is a team with no attacking intent until it's far far too late

come off it, in 2015/16 we were perfectly good with the ball and had a clear tactical plan based around a catenaccio style, first half yesterday there was no tactical plan, it wasnt playing quickly through the lines, it was just giving up possession and chances at will, and Mads kept the score line respectable. Anyone who watched the first 60 minutes of us hanging on, creating nothing beyond a 30yd pea roller from Skipp and thought "that was great to watch" is off their rocker.

he struggled but let's be honest, that's on the set up. with 3 CDMs, he was our only outlet and so was very easy to just mark out of the game knowing that no one else was on the pitch to punish them for it

in what way was yesterday more entertaining than anything we served up last season? the first 60 minutes were absolutely dire, we handled the ball with less care than a professional dominatrix. the only way you could enjoy that more than playing technically impressive football is if what you enjoy is big tackles and last ditch defending, in which case, Sunday league games are generally free to watch.

like if you picked up a Luis Enrique from Etsy perhaps

this is what makes it worse. this isn't as bad a squad as it's made out, it needs letting off the leash and encouraging to get on the ball and make things happen. We however didn't, rather than starting attackers and trying to stretch the play, looking to win, we set up to not lose. thing is, if you set up to not lose you'll invite too much pressure and eventually be made to pay, and it gives the morale a massive beating (the message is you're not good enough to win these games). and worst of all, we know this is what Cooper does from his time at forest, today's lineup will be repeated, or even worse, repeated with BDCR in for Fatawu

this or a variation on it (I'd consider Okoli over Faes) is obviously our best team but more chance of seeing Soumare win the ballon D'or than that with Cooper in charge.

I mean I agree and acknowledged as much, his positioning was woeful. he also didn't have much control over the game with the time wasting, injury faking and tactical fouls. he just didn't make any major errors that changed the game and blaming him for today's result is grasping at straws