Please Read

[Ric Flair]

This is my first post and the reason for this is because i'm seething after the performance we put in on saturday. I have read everyone's views on the pitiful display on saturday and I was eager to give you my opinion.

Basically we were ****in awful, we have been all season really. Fair enough we had 3 or 4 easy chances to win the game, but overall we didn't deserve to win a game of football playing like that. I have read posts about how crap we are in the centre of midfield, but I feel extremely sorry for Williams, Nalis and Gudjonsson. All we ever do is hoof the ball, completely bypassing the midfield and all they can do is try and live off scraps from balls coming back at us. It's not the way to play football, if hoofing it was a successful way of playing football every team would be doing it. We are either naive or just unbelievably thick and crap to keep doing it. Nikos Dabizas is the biggest criminal, he had a shocking game on saturday and he isn't a born leader either. He does the basic things ok, like getting the ball clear but defenders in this day an age should be able to play the ball out of defence and get an attack going. A sweet hack up pitch is simply a suicidal way of letting the opposition off the hook, a hoof gives the opposition a 50/50 chance of winning the ball straight back. Gareth Williams and Joey Gudjonnson cannot be blamed for the lacklustre display, it is simply impossible for a midfield to find any rythm playing like we do. Williams showed glimpses of talent in the West Ham game and I am not going to get on his back when the majority of the team are equally as ineffective as he is in the way we play. We have no width in the team, but this is mainly down to the hoof charisma we install, but even if we chose not to hoof and looked for some action down the wing, we'd be hard pushed with Wilcox and Scowcroft.

We have the players to play wingbacks, but the reason Adams doesn't play this is because it would put even more pressure on himself to drop Scowcroft as even Adams couldn't talk his way out of playing Scowcroft at wingback. Danny Tiatto was our best player on saturday, he didn't always hack it up pitch unless forced to. Now this isn't a coincidence that he was our best player, the other defenders could of put in a performance as good as Tiatto's if they had stayed composed and supplied balls to the midfield which they are paid to do. Peter Canero wasn't given the ball, but in a flowing team he would be ideal at right back. We have three good centre halfs and 3 talented central midfielders if we allow them to be given the ball. I feel embarrassed when I think of the football we are playing and the abysmal service we are giving to Connolly, who in my opinion is one of the best technical strikers out of the premiership. How can a striker with Connolly's attributes possibly excel when all he gets is bits and bobs up the business end of the pitch. Fair enough he's missed some sitters in a few games, but a footballer like Connolly is too good not be dictating a football match and the way we play we are not giving Connolly enough of the ball. Dublin will be effective with the hoof, but it's in the lap of the gods for every hoof to reach Dublin, for that to be then nodded on to Connolly for him to then put a shot in. Now passing the ball doesn't always end in success, but being creative and invetive and mixing it up does. I have never seen a game of football played as badly as we did on saturday, Watford are a shocking team and we made them look good. Without Dickov we are nothing with the style of play we play, he would always chase the hoofs and pressure the defenders in to making mistakes, but we don't have players like that anymore so why carry on doing it? Adams needs to get his finger out, either he is telling them to play like this or the players are not listening to him and disobeying him, either way Adams needs to get things sorted as the fans are on the verge of getting nasty.

No doubt we'll all be there next monday though, with the blind optimism that we are going to play well and everythings forgotten. I can only wish as these wankers at the club are ruining my weekends.

[Fox 4 Life]

Some good points there mate, i agree about adams blind faith towards scowy, we play best wih wingbacks and tiatto/canero at wingback would be quality allowing the ball to be put through the midfield rather than just hoofed up to the strikers, connolly is to little and is constatly out jumoed by defenders and you can see the frustration when he plays, we need dublin back to have the little and large combination that has always worked for us! Micky needs to get over scowy or play him in his proper position, it isnt good enough at the moment and he needs to sort it out before its too late.

[Cobbo]

we play best wih wingbacks

We do? How on Earth do you know this seeing as we've not played with them for about 3 years. Having said that, I would not mind us giving it a go as Canero and Tiatto would make two good wing backs.

Scowy is only a right midfielder when we don't have the ball and are defending, when we have it (especially on the left) he tucks inside to play as a third striker, something which has been very effective at this level.

I don't agree that all we do is hoof now. We've been trying to pass it about more, the problem being with that is that our players seem unable to pass to another Leicester player! Even if we did just hoof it on Saturday, Williams can still be criticised for not working in the middle of the park when we didn't have the ball. If you noticed, when Gemmill came on, he had the ball at his feet a number of times spraying passes around, how could he do this if we were hoofing? Why didn't Williams put his foot on the ball and spray good passes around, I thought it was what he's good at?

[Guest freund]

It's odd how Watford scored against us from a hoof that went over their defence and midfield

[Guest]

"Nikos Dabizas is the biggest criminal, he had a shocking game on saturday and he isn't a born leader either. He does the basic things ok, like getting the ball clear but defenders in this day an age should be able to play the ball out of defence and get an attack going. A sweet hack up pitch is simply a suicidal way of letting the opposition off the hook, a hoof gives the opposition a 50/50 chance of winning the ball straight back."

It's when Dabizas tries to play his way out of defence, we have trouble.

On almost every occasion he gets caught out!

[shelly]

He's seems ok when he has Keown beside him. But as soon as he went off he looked very shaky.

[bluefox]

"Nikos Dabizas is the biggest criminal, he had a shocking game on saturday and he isn't a born leader either. He does the basic things ok, like getting the ball clear but defenders in this day an age should be able to play the ball out of defence and get an attack going. A sweet hack up pitch is simply a suicidal way of letting the opposition off the hook, a hoof gives the opposition a 50/50 chance of winning the ball straight back."

It's when Dabizas tries to play his way out of defence, we have trouble.

On almost every occasion he gets caught out!

14353[/snapback]

There was a bloke who sat in front of me at Watford game who lived in Newcastle. He said that the toon got rid of Dabizas because amongst other reasons his distribution from the back was poor. On Saturday's performance he had a point.