Dear Mr Erickson

[Babylon]

I agree! But who is the little kiss for Babs?

Pearson?

I appreciated the simple things today, forget the win. There was so much we seemed to miss looking at previous games compared to today. I'll have this "boring" football any day.

[flowwolf]

I appreciated the simple things today, forget the win. There was so much we seemed to miss looking at previous games compared to today. I'll have this "boring" football any day.

Absolutely :appl: :appl:

[cc_star]

This.

Great goals but what wing play did he actually do? I think his best position is either just behind the strikers, or on the left hand side of a front 3 (like last season).

The only winger we have is Dyer. We still need one in January.

I would say though that Gally showed why he is a useful player, nobody else in the team even dares to shoot most of the time.

Yeah, he's a left sided forward, but because of his creativity & an eye for a good ball he could play behind the front two - feeding them, although could easily be bullied off the ball if playing more central.

I'd be surprised if we didn't sign a couple of wide specialists in Jan

[Thracian]

Gallys goals today were truly sensational...

The second one was one of the most clean strikes of a ball I think I've ever seen.

The problem with Gally for me is this..

Do you play him because he is capable of stuff like that and accept that he can't beat a full back and is weak in the tackle?

Until his goals today I thought he was his usual very average self.

It's a bit of a quandary for me... Gally can produce fantastic play for ten minutes and then be crappy for 80

I think Pearson likes him, as did Sven (so don't understand the OP in this thread)... But I find him a very frustrating player

There's not many perfect footballers but what a manager can look for to offer the promise of success is effect. A striker who nets 20 goals a season has effect whatever else he does. Get two such strikers and you're nearly halfway to the total the team needs to have a realistic chance of promotion.

So where do the rest come from? Well, if you play too many players like Abe or Fernandes and they don't. Cue someone llike Gallagher who's perhaps good for 10 goals a season plus a few assists and you have to weigh it up against other midfielders who might not score more than once or twice but might defend better.

It's all about balance but, without close to 80 goals a season you can more or less forget automatic promotion.

Pearson's underperformed in the past because he's not got enough goals as a manager.

Today he boosted our goals potential and was rewarded with three points, improvement to our goals difference and a place within striking distance of the play-offs. Surely the effect he was looking for.

Of course Gallagher can be replaced. And anyone else. But if we replace anyone the effect must improve either through more goals scored, fewer goals conceded or more assists.

Too often we've bought players who might tackle better than Gallagher, might run faster than King and might be better workhorses than Beckford.

But they don't have the same effect. Alan Hinton couldn't beat people for pace but helped Forest win two league titles with his goals and assists. Beckham was another wide player who didn't really beat people but had great effect.

Today, Gallagher scored two sensational goals and had arguably more effect than anyone else. Konchesky with his assists from full-back - and his hand in a clean sheet - had considerable effect too. And that's what Pearson needs in the team every week, home and away, from as many players as possible.

[Thracian]

I appreciated the simple things today, forget the win. There was so much we seemed to miss looking at previous games compared to today. I'll have this "boring" football any day.

This wasn't Pearson's "boring" football at all.

First of all by his own admission last week, Pearson acknowedged that we might need a more expansive game with more width than he or we'd played with in the past and that's what we had today - or at least the best he could do in the circumstances.

In fact I think he did more than his best because he compensated for Gallagher's limitations and Dyer's lack of match fitness by urging the full-backs to drive forward and offer real support in attack from wide positions.

Hence instead of days when we had hardly a shot at all we created a regular flow of chances. That wasn't the Pearson of the past any more than our not closing up shop after the first goal as was so often the case previously.

Second, I thought you'd wanted to keep Sven on for a bit longer!