funkyrobot

Tbf you’ve just described his form as hideous so if he reads that it’s not going to help his state of mind! The fact is he needs a rest from the 1st team. His mistakes have been critical and have undoubtedly cost us points. Hamza playing out of position is not going to be any worse than Justin playing in his natural position whilst he is in this ‘hideous’ form. Keeping him in the first team when he’s in this cycle of form is not helping him. RVN giving him a rest (and he CAN swap with Hamza) will help him far more than people not posting criticism on this or any other forum for fear of JJ doom scrolling through here. It’s up to RVN and his coaching staff to do the right thing - they’ve done it with Ward, they HAVE to do it with JJ if we are to have any chance of survival. It’s as critical as that.

Personally I don’t think it’s Mavididi that’s particularly the problem. He’s getting assists, creating opportunities that should’ve been assists (e.g Daka v Liverpool and Vardy v Man City.) He’s scoring goals too. The issue is that there’s not an alternative option. Most teams above us and around us have multiple options on both wings, they can rotate in and out of selection and bring alternatives off the bench. We have 1 specialist left winger in our whole squad. With Fatawu injured and concerns over McAteer’s fitness and ability he’s really our only real specialist wing option either side. A winger (preferably one who can do a job either side) is a must, just to take the burden off Mavididi a bit.

My frustration with RVN is his reluctance to use Hamza over Justin and his preference for Ayew over Buonanotte. Sticking with JJ is remarkable considering his key role in goals against us in all of the last 4 games - never mind the whole season. The guy is being targeted because he is clearly one of our weakest links. I know Ayew created the goal but his press and back tracking starts off only ok and quickly drops off to the point that he pretty much stops doing it. He was as culpable for the goal as JJ and ultimately Buonanotte is a better all round footballer. Ayew is a great sub and his ability to win free kicks is fine when we are trying to shut down a game but winning freekicks in our own half and in the middle of the pitch, that invariably end up with putting the ball back towards our goal (as the players pretty much always do) isn’t helping us one bit. Unfortunately RVN has got it in his head that he can only play ElK or Buonanotte whereas they are intelligent enough to play together. ElK suffered today because he didn’t have Buonanotte to work with. Play them both Ruud ffs.

It’ll be the 10th Jan but the new signing won’t be able to play until after our home games against Palace on the 15th and Fulham on the 18th due to carrying a ‘slight’ injury. Their first game for us will eventually be 1st Feb away at Everton as the injury has taken longer than expected to recover from. The player will then get an early straight red card and 3 match ban for reacting to shithousery from Tarkowski and/or Ashley Young.

And spent very well 👀

I just watched the 2nd half of the Ipswich match and all the best chances in that second half went to Ipswich. Chelsea had all the posssesion but did nothing, their shots were blocked at source. Enzo put out a weaker team and it backfired. They could’ve played for another hour and wouldn’t’ve scored. Ipswich also shithoused and bullied and Chelsea fell for it. Horrible team to watch win but they showed fight that until Man City we’ve not seen an abundance of.

Winks was better than a 6.

Yeh I think it’s the genuine attempt part that means GK’s will usually get away with a yellow when it comes to DOGSO.

No. If it’s DOGSO in the area then it’s a yellow card

I agree I thought he was a solid 7/10 today.

Keeper only gets a yellow in situations like that now.

Having other ball playing midfielders around him like Winks, ElK, and Buonanotte really helps him and the midfield as a unit. 4 really good footballlers. Ndidi is surely first cover now due to his deficiencies with the ball. Skipp remains way off it IMO.

I think he was sat with the other non playing squad players in the row just behind where the subs sit

I thought Mavididi played well today

We look a much better team when Buonanotte plays on the right. He’s got a great connection with El Khanouss. Far more positive and dangerous with the ball than Ayew. Ayew is fine as an impact sub but m his main skill is winning freekicks and that kills the momentum for us as well as our opponents as we don’t tend to do anything with them unless they are close to the 18 yard box.

I was wondering how the tv would see it. Sounds like as expected, there was more emphasis on Man City. At the game our midfield outplayed Man City. Soumare, Winks and especially El Khanouss played brave, technical football and dominated this part of the pitch. Same could be said of our wingers compared to Foden and Savinho. Sky match review gave Savinho 9/10 despite the fact that other than a tap in from a keeper mistake he was utterly anonymous.

In the second half Coady on the ball gets held by Haaland as he’s trying to move, ball ends up going out of play and despite being in front of the linesman, neither he nor the ref gave us a freekick. That combined with the booking of Soumare and especially of El Khanouss compared to the non booking of KDB and McAtee show a classic case of the unconscious bias trap that most refs fall for.

Not quite sure of the relevance of Hamza off the pitch is. It’s genuinely frightening that people can’t see that Justin is currently a massive problem for us. He’s not confident to attack or defend and he treats the ball like a hot potato. However painful it is for people to accept, Hamza played well today and is currently a better option than JJ with Ricardo injured. I personally hope that Hamza starts at RB against Villa.

Outstanding technical performance from Bilal. Miles better than any Man City midfielder. As complete a performance as we’ve seen from a LCFC player in a long time.

You going Gazza? You can lead some chants👍🏻

The difference is Brentford are 10th in the overall stats for shots on target with 86 compared to us in 18th with 57. Overall we’ve had the fewest combined on and off target shots at goal in the whole league by a considerable margin. We are 20th with 159 shots followed by Southampton in 19th on 172! We concede lots of chances and create very few of our own.

Yeh I get your point and they battered us even more in the 2nd half but they still utterly dominated the first half too when we hadn’t scored. They were 2-0 up whilst had an XG of 0.07 with 1 shot off target.

If Ward hadn’t played in goal for us and we’d kept Schmeichel or played Iversen for the full season, we wouldn’t’ve been relegated, simple as that. We were relegated by 3 points, Ward personally cost us way more than that. The goalkeeper is arguably the key position on the pitch, if they can’t do their job as the last line of defence (ie. make saves) then there’s a problem.

You threw stats at me so I just gave you the stats back and they paint a rightly bleak picture of our performance there. We were very lucky to only lose by two injury time goals. Ipswich weren’t battered tonight and they set up just as we did yesterday against Liverpool, the difference was they looked in the game and didn’t accept defeat like we did in the 2nd half yesterday and like we did in the 2nd half against Wolves BTW, I’m no fan of Ipswich, I don’t like Ed Sheeran to put it mildly. I was happily chanting Jordan Ayew Ole Ole at Portman Road and as we left their stadium after the last minute equaliser. But if we are all being honest here, not a happy clapper or the opposite constantly negative fan - just a LCFC fan with some realism about where we are at - until Phillips was sent off they were the better team.

We only had two more shots than Ipswich against Arsenal but we conceded 35 chances, 16 of those were on target. That’s a battering. Ipswich gave them 13 chances, only 5 of those were on target. We faced 17 corners, Ipswich faced 5. Against Arsenal we had an XG of 0.32 and Arsenal’s XG was a massive 4.6. Against Ipswich their XG was 1.94.