Lenny

Every decision a manager makes carries a risk and potential reward. He brought his defensive substitute on to perform a defensive task. Unfortunately the player didn't do the job well enough. Unfortunately we don't have any quality options so the risk is heightened, but given how gassed the players were we needed to bring on a defensive player.

The players were absolutely fucked by 70 minutes. It would have been madness to not bring on legs (Almiron) and defensive attributes (Hayden).

Strange, I thought all of the subs seemed the smart, logical decisions.

Minimal consideration of context seems to have gone into this post.

What a beast he was today. Superb.

Personally I think he's a good footballer and a poor athlete, with a bad attitude to boot. As much as I dislike him, IMO to say he can only ping a ball is a bit of a disservice to him. He's pretty good at most of the technical elements of the game; his close control under pressure is pretty decent and is often able to manoeuvre himself well enough to retain the ball. He can certainly see a pass under pressure and make it, be it short or long - which is more of a skill IMO than just being able to "ping it".

He's got one of the worst mentalities I can recall seeing in a professional footballer. He has a proper defeatist attitude (see his comments within days of the takeover happening "well I guess I won't be here" or something to that effect), cannot take any criticism and cannot maintain his temper when he's singled out, be it by fans, opposition players or in fact anyone. You could see him mouthing back to a fan (or possibly some staff on the sidelines) even in our last game and I'm sure at one point he snapped towards one of our players (possibly ASM). He's absolutely not the kind of personality you want in a squad. We do, unfortunately, need him now though.

Who would have thought that playing 3 defensive clogger centre backs and two deep lying midfielders would result in a thoroughly unambitious performance. Pathetic as usual - Howe has some job to do.

Would have taken him from the start, and happy to get behind him now. He may unfortunately need more time than he has to wake the players from the slumber Bruce has put them in but we shall see. There's certainly more to work with from them than what's being shown. First target is obviously to just at least be within a few points of safety by the time we can spend some money.

What I will say, as shit as that was it's nice to feel the wont to constructively talk about it rather than just erase it from my mind.

Not sure I'm denying anything to be honest, but your opinion is as valid as mine

I'm not going to get into overly praising anything about that performance but I like to think I can be balanced in my view of particular events, even if the end result is piss poor. Until the first goal we had been relatively organised and were frustrating them into taking long shots. Don't interpret that as me being happy in anyway however and as I said though that was totally at the expense of attacking intent, and their manager reacted tactically and found us out.

For what it's worth, we were resolute-ish until the first goal, but it was entirely at the expense of any attacking intent and there was absolutely no response plan for when we inevitably go behind. Their manager found a solution by overloading the fullbacks, and our manager had no answer which was reflected in the utter mess of a performance from that point on. The players overall are not up to standard but there's far more to be had from them.

There is very little to suggest there's any good coaching going on with these players. What constitutes good coaching because today's response to going a goal down has no positive reflection on our coaching. The players either went a goal down and didn't execute a response plan that was asked of them, or the players did exactly what was asked of them. Either of those don't suggest good coaching.

I'm actually shocked at what appears your constant shock to people's comments. You seem to be responding like there's a night and day difference between how Bruce had us playing and how Jones has us playing, when IMO clearly there isn't. Be interested to hear your thoughts on how you think we're doing rather than just your surprise at others.

Surely you can look at more than just the results to see why people feel this way. His team selection last week was questionable however even giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming fitness was a factor, his selection today was cowardly by keeping it the same. We got a result last week but there were poor performances and they should have been addressed in today's lineup, especially with Willock and Almiron a week fitter. Those same poor performances were replicated today by the same players. Our initial gameplan to park the bus worked only so well and he inspired absolutely nothing from the players when we went a goal behind. People are rightfully frustrated and concerned that he may have more games in charge, IMO.

I didn't expect us to win, but our performance after going a goal behind was a disgrace.

Look where James is parked, man, it's pathetic

Chelsea have a manager that identified we were parking the bus and over committed their full backs as a counter, and found us out.

Our reaction to going a goal behind was equal measures pathetic and infuriating. Absolutely unacceptable.

I just had a look at each of their goals and assists records for Arsenal (as that's 99% the basis of my opinion), and surprised to find that their goal return was similar with both around 1 in 4. Overmars the more productive with assists (1 in 5) vs Ljungberg's 1 in 8. I expected to find a better return from Overmars TBF. Also surprised to find that Ljungberg played more than double the games for Arsenal that Overmars did.

Bit late to the party but I thought Overmars was a fair bit better than Ljungberg (who was also decent).

His goal record for Bournemouth was around one in three, over a significant number of games. I'd say that's pretty indicative of a reliable goal scorer, and a very solid return for an average to poor premier league team and with a season that included a relegation.

Would it not be fairer if keepers were given a foot (or whatever is deemed a fair distance) from the goal line with which they can move within? Surely the odds are stacked massively against them as it is that a minor movement off the line shouldn't be punished as it currently is?!

Probably one for realistic transfer targets, but would be nice if we finally reunited Miggy with Josef Martinez.