Gallowgate Toon

I think the Bristol City bloke has pumped a fair bit in to the city's sporting activities, to be fair. He wants to create a multi-sport Madrid-style set up.

Him going sideways isn't always his fault, mind. He picked up the ball yesterday and had some space to run into, we only had Cabella and Cisse in their half, he started attacking and nobody offered him an option or tried to even make space for him. It ended up with him being surrounded by about 4 players, IIRC.

Apparently Cabella had 14 attempted passes in the final third and Sissoko 11, I can barely remember those two even getting a touch near their box

I'm gonna disagree with that. Cowardly sub obviously but Cabella had been hopeless all night and was fading. Cabella was awful. He wasn't alone in this, though, in fairness. That midfield 5 put in one of the worst collective performance I've seen for some time. They were either anonymous or absolutely fucking crap.

That was an utter abomination. Carver is even worse than clueless, he has no idea how to get us going in attack. Players massively isolated again and just no cohesion or pattern at all.

He's just inviting a shit load of pressure on to us The players look absolutely petrified, like. Totally fucked by their boss.

Honestly, what the fuck is this all about.

We look absolutely terrified to move forward. This really is just kick and hope.

Subbing Cisse, man. What a pleb.

Perez, Cabella and Gouffran just haven't been in it. Neither have Sissoko or Colback.

Williamson is a cunt.

It really is ridiculous that football clubs are just left in the hands of a single person, someone who could easily get bored and fuck off at any time. It's easy to harp on about Germany but their fan ownership majority ruling seems logical, on the surface.

Well, that was fucking dire, we look like we have no idea. Cisse, though, what a bloke.

Lush. Get him off.

Williamson can fucking die, like. Just boots it at any opportunity.

Have we had a foul yet?

Play 3 short passes and lump it up. Sweet.

Does Poyet do the manager's email thing that Bruce and MON used to do, hithere? Always thought that was weird.

Carver'll be fuming at the golf club bar when he sees this.

I stuck up for his fitness record before, because it was actually very good before last season, but he just siems doomed now.

Hang on, he had a collapsed lung last season, didn't he? Fucking hell.

Considering we made little effort to pass from the back, it's not a surprise he didn't touch the ball very much. It's not like he was playing as one of our B2Bs either, his position seemed far more rigid.

The amount of times he fucking lumps it to nowhere is infuriating. Not all his fault, yesterday, as Anita and Colback weren't always dropping deep enough for a short option (would be nice if we tried split CBs, once in a while), but still. Bar the odd run of form, he's shit. It's incredible that he's still here.

Said it in the match thread, but that Stoke possession stat was very misleading. Like you said, a lot of it was just passing it around not taking any risks whatsoever, and especially in the first half it felt like they took a minute or two for every f***ing throw in, which I assume counts as possession for them. It did annoy me that in the second half we didn't do more to break up their possession because I thought we looked like a threat when we had the ball, so bringing Abeid on to help control the midfield more would have been ideal. This was my biggest gripe. It was almost as if Carver decided he knew they wanted to keep possession (to kill the tempo) so he just let them have it until we got the opportunity for a break. No attempt to push them up a bit higher so we could get on the ball (and in potentially better areas) and control the pace of the game.

That second paragraph is just spot on. Our movement on the break is decent, but the majority of our players' instincts when we're trying to build moves is just terrible as too many just want the ball to feet. It gets worse when we get towards the box too, often slow to get there, no attempt to speed play up in key wide areas and a lack of bodies and movement when it comes to delivering. We spent large periods of yesterday going at Stoke with 2 or 3 players. Starting Cisse, especially at home, would really help matters. It'd give Ayoze some more room to both play in and attack off the ball, whether he starts at AM or on the left.