smudgerfox

Schmit praised KDH apparently

If he has he’s only learned it recently because he’d never heard of the competition when we “qualified” for it. Now the local media are talking about reaching the final and winning it as though we are a team of world beaters against a bunch of no hopers. How we are favourites is a complete mystery … We’ve turned a corner - pardon the pun. Our defence is performing better as a unit and the whole team is contributing to us being harder to score against. Set pieces are improving at both ends, injured players are returning and the squad has a more solid feel to it. We’ve strung a few wins together. Whatever the reason, the team feels more motivated and the squad more united. They seem a bit more streetwise in seeing out a game. These are all positives. But let’s not get carried away. We’ve beaten three relegation candidates- two of them at home - narrowly. Opponents are still winning the first header from set pieces. We are still conceding plenty of scoring chances and relying on the brilliance of Kasper’s shot-stopping to keep opponents out. We still frequently play in patches - conceding momentum and allowing opponents to dictate.

Weak tackle for the second but not sure why Lookman arrived on the scene and then did nothing…I

Thought Ihenacho proved his worth …beautiful run and pass to Barnes which should have been 1-1 in first half - he’s always involved in key moments it’s a simple and stark fact ignored by people who over study stats and constantly look for failings …

I think it impossible to predict where we’ll finish - 7th if we perform strongly but could be as low as 14th if we don’t. My point is that getting the squad - and I mean the squad not just the 14-15 players BR seems to rate and play regularly - used to winning games in the EPL might be more useful long term than getting to the semi final of the Conference League and losing on penalties. The point about the Conference is that only winning it will do …even reaching the Final and losing would feel like a failure .,, As I say I believe we could win it - but as with all cup competitions there’s an element of chance about the outcome …

It’s a huge gamble to write off the league in favour of a knock out competition in which we need to still get past Rennes - that won’t be a walk in the park if we concede in the first 20 - and then win three more games, two of them over two legs, against surprisingly strong ( surprising to me anyway) opposition. I’m not saying we couldn’t do it but I’d rate it as unlikely given our all-season inconsistency. The one advantage I foresee is that if we don’t do it by winning a trophy we might be best to have some weekdays off by ducking out of Europe altogether just this once. It seems to have done Arsenal some good and if we’re refreshing the squad in the summer it might be an advantage not to be travelling to the cold far flung reaches of UEFA s Empire on a Thursday night.

Worth reminding ourselves before we get too indignant that our hallowed manager admitted on the night we “qualified” for this prestigious trophy, to knowing absolutely nothing about it!

So why not play Choudhury? Perez? Why not leave Mendy on and give NDidi the afternoon off? Or play Brunt? Why play Albrighton? If the aim was to rest key players why not do it properly?

Sorry to disappoint you but I think there’s a whole lot more to it than that. Ihenacho’s goal and assist ratio to game time are world class. Despite the wide range of shortcomings and inadequacies regularly identified by his critics, he routinely scores important goals in big games. He scores plenty, he assists plenty. There is no FA Cup win without his goals. This stuff about him not playing up top on his own is just a tactical failure to adapt to the characteristics of the players available. So what he comes short to receive the ball instead of playing on the shoulder of the last defender? You have runners who receive from him and carry the ball past him and he arrives slightly later in the box - probably near the penalty spot where he scored from last night. If there’s no one further forward the wide runners don’t play the ball across the 6 yard box as they would for Vardy, they pull it back to the advancing Kelechi. 4-2-3-1 is perfect for this with three men in behind the main striker. How the clubs top scorer of one season can get so little game time the next , will forever be one of the puzzles of Brendan’s time in charge.

Right in front of me today v Leeds - ball comes to him right by the touch line - two men are on him and a third is blocking the run down the line two yards away. One of the two is fouling him - barging him and not allowing him to turn. The second is trying to chop the ball out of his feet. You think, at best we get a foul or a throw in but essentially he’ s trapped. Not a bit of it! somehow he manages to wriggle round the right way, keep the ball and force his way clear of all three and put Barnes in. It probably won’t get shown again but it was KDH summed up in one relatively unimportant incident - skilful, brave, intelligent, tough and determined.

This is another price of our inability to defend set pieces.I’m pretty sure the last time Mendy had a run in the team, the set piece issue came up and BR decided we didn’t have enough “physicality” in the team. NDidi does win a fair share of defending set piece headers and it would be physically impossible for Mendy to replicate that. He’s not been seen since. I like him and he could be a useful player if we could solve the defensive issues in other ways…we ought to be able to -not every PL team is full of 6’ 3” giants..he could get another chance if Hamza becomes more of a spare utility defender than a midfielder…

Nacho would be a starter at the vast majority of PL clubs. Not top six maybe …but he would transform the potential of say a Brighton or a Southampton…you can criticise all those frustrating moments where he miscontrols or gets flagged for offside but his goal involvement stats must be off the scale. Perfect instinctive assist v Leeds - it’s the difference between winning and drawing and he only played 30 mins. There’s no FA Cup without Nacho..the guy is criminally underrated

I think Amartey is a valuable squad player who would be very difficult to replace - with more game time at CB he has improved a lot. When he first came into the team he couldn’t have expected to have been leading a back four as he is being asked to do. It seemed that his only position was on the right in a three or an on field tactical switch as fill in right back. He has never given less than his all and his inexperience has been exposed by the complete meltdown suffered by Soyuncu , the uselessness of Vestergaard, the lack of consistency at full back/wing back, the ineffectiveness of the defensive midfielders in front of him, the set piece frailty of our keeper and the generally poor defensive coaching.. As other posters have said - to bring in a squad player who is as willing, uncomplaining, as versatile and as effective would be difficult bordering on impossible.

“You don’t put someone in for one game and then see them out for another five." Sean Dyche to which I would say that If you do you can always call it bad luck

In what universe does getting thumped 4-1 in a local derby FA cup tie, as the holders, playing Championship opposition, the result determined at half time, NOT lead to the abilities of the manager being called into question? Or being 4-0 down after 25 minutes to Manchester City? Or conceding 2 goals a game at least - as a matter of habit? Do you guys portraying us BR critics as ungrateful idiots with no sense of history, think that any of the above bodes well for the future?

The tie was done and therefore a chance to practice calm, disciplined tight defending in a competitive match situation. Closing a game out without conceding lots of chances by keeping the opposition - however poor - at arms length, keeping the play away from our area. I’d have settled for that but it isn’t what we got. Alternatively a chance to give some squad players a chance to shine;Hamza; Perez;Ward. We didn’t do that either. What we did was go practically full strength and demonstrate to the footballing world why we are currently a laughing stock. And let me tell you, no-one but no-one will be laughing more than Sean Dyche.

That is true …but not really the point. The fact remains we could have lost a 4-1 lead last night and had we done so, or come close to doing so, would have been catastrophic. If Randers had scored first and early I suspect wed have been in full scale panic mode even at 4-2. I really want to believe that to win this tie so convincingly - at least on paper - will do us some good but for me the same failings that have been there all season were there last night, they just weren’t ‘exploited by a fairly poor opposition frontline. I cannot understand why BR and Toure et al can’t come up with a system that makes us hard or for now just harder to score against.

I think that’s because had Randers had a clinical finisher up front they actually COULD have overturned the first leg deficit…there’s nothing very reassuring about that plus we fielded a full strength side - so yet another opportunity to blood some squad players and get them pushing for a start - Hamza in the NDidi role for instance - hasn’t been taken. The same small group of players is asked to do the donkey work even when we have a 4-1 lead…

Two things 1 momentum - we have none. We will become a major story - the team that finished fifth twice in a row which will turn our every game to high profile 2 when the chips are down BR teams wilt

Superb post

I don’t believe that’s the reason. The reason I think he overplays players is because he has in his mind , one ideal starting line-up playing one system and he hates to diverge from that. So he turns his nose up at Ihenacho because he isn’t Vardy. He turns his nose up at Hamza because he can’t do everything Ndidi does. Perez is unplayable now after being undroppable for a long time. Mendy isn’t even in the squad. If we weren’t in an emergency Amartey wouldn’t get a kick. And of course there’s Praet. Vestergaard is heading the,same way as was Bertrand before his surgery, So the “real” squad is even smaller than it looks on paper. That is the players who BR is happy to play at any one time, is a small group of 16-17. Which means they’re playing most of the time and that’s how they pick up injuries. He just hasn’t developed a squad of 25 players who can interchange with minimal reduction in quality. I say again Wolves didn’t need to field Bolly at the weekend, West Ham had Diop to replace Zouma, we simply do not have defenders of that standard waiting in the wings if Evans and Forfana are injured. That’s because he’s given far too little attention to the centre back role which is so crucial to the success or otherwise, of any side.

Apologies all the same - i was thinking it was the wolves game i dont know why

Can you then explain to me then why Jamea Maddison was brought on as a sub in 73 mins and failed to make it to the end of the game because he was “ill” ? Are you telling me that a fit and healthy young athlete contracted a disease in 15 minutes which deteriorated so rapidly he couldn’t make it to 95 mins? Im sorry but he must have been Ill when he came on and if he was so ill he couldn’t play for 20 mins he shouldn’t have been on the bench let alone expected to play. Whether it’s BR directly, the medical staff or the player who’s getting it wrong - it’s the manager is responsible for getting such things right.

I don’t think you can entirely divorce injuries from a more general mismanagement. Of course Forfana’s injury was completely unexpected, at the worst possible time and a major obstacle to playing BR’s preferred style. Let’s all agree on that. Evans is I think 34 and starting to pick up injuries when playing three times a week. That was apparent last season. I don’t doubt his presence is a big miss but to think he might get through 50 plus games , even in a good season, is I think way over optimistic. He was also pulled before the start of last season’s Newcastle match to apparently disastrous effect. He didn’t get through the Cup Final. We needed his long term replacement at the club at the start of this season, even before Forfana was crocked. This was particularly urgent in view of Soyuncu’s apparent decline - which got worse over the summer but had started at the end of last season. Justin’s injury was handled very well until he was asked to play three games in a week. Ricardo was also rushed back too soon and is only now playing like a player who is injury free. Castange looks like it was one of those things. Thomas has been overplayed because of Bertrand’s poor performances and now injury. If Bertrand was playing while inured I wouldn’t be surprised, if not then his lack of pace and recovery made him a most unsuitable signing in the first place. Even with this injury list - Benkovic apparently had no prospect of ever being asked to turn out but was still given a place in the Premier squad - at the expense of Mendy - whose inclusion might have made Hamza a more permanent option in central defence. I would add that it would have been known at the start of the season that no adequate defensive option, particularly at centre back, existed in the u-23 set up. Oh and let’s not forget that BR apparently prefers to work with a small squad. So yes, if has been unlucky to have so many injuries amongst our defenders. It’s true that most teams would have suffered a drop in performance after such a calamitous few months. But it is also true that some of the injuries have been self-inflicted by a kind of snowball effect - a lack of high quality cover generally has meant that the uninjured players have been overplayed and picked up their own injuries. In BR’s time there have been quite a few instances of injured players having to be pulled pre match or subbed shortly into it. Ricardo had two botched comebacks. And what about Maddison on Sunday? How can you not detect a player is ill and unfit to play until he’s been on the pitch for 15 minutes? This is Sunday League sports science. Look at Wolves on Sunday. Any of their three central defenders would walk into our team right now and they didn’t need to deploy Bolly who would as well. The week before West Ham lost Zouma and we’re able to field Diop. We are criminally lacking central defensive cover and have paid a heavy price for that.