Tiotes Witch Doctor

Losing 6 games in half a season in the championship isn't particularly impressive and there's some definite concerns about the mentality of the team, the second we went 1-0 down yesterday it was obvious to everyone we weren't going to come back, players are declining and the general play is poor to watch even when we win. Even the best managers have to tweak things and make changes, he has made errors in judgement in my opinion and he should be looking at rectifying them. Its alright saying "in Rafa we trust" and "Do you think you know better than Rafa?" But at the end of the day things do need to pick up a bit, luckily hes such a good manager that I have faith he will get it sorted.

Hayden seems to have no inbetween though, hes either class and running the game or completely shit. Would ideally like someone better to partner Shelvey for the rest of the season, we were absolutely rank in midfield tonight, but mind you I thought it looked like both Hayden and Colback were told to sit deep, which is utterly ridiculous as Hayden has looked effective when getting forward, we're in the championship, we don't need two sitting CM's unless one of them has a ridiculous passing range (Shelvey) We need improvements in Jan, we shouldn't, but we do. It's alright saying we're top and Rafa is world class, but we're slipping, and 6 points isn't a huge margin.

We had no answer today, just as we had no answer against Blackburn and with a very different tactical approach from both teams, it seems we are easily outfoxed tactically and I'm quite surprised at that, Rafa's general in game management has left me puzzled at times, we approached the game no differently at any point in the game to try and get something from it. It's confusing and a bit worrying.

It's been the same tactics all season. Can't say it's good tactics when we win and bad tactics when we lose.. Even when we've won a large percentage of the time our general play has been poor, everyone is afraid to say it after a win though because its classed as negativity and you get pelters.

But what if the balanced view was that he was poor as he misplaced an incredible amount of passes and lost out in a lot of tackles? Which he did.

Waster.

Atsu should be starting ahead of Ritchie on the right, isn't even that great all round but offers much more.

Abymsal as ever, but Hayden was no better, sadly, it seems they were both instructed to stay deep, which contributed hugely to us losing the game IMO.

Excellent post

Average at best.

We've played just as bad with Shelvey though on various occasions, tactics were poor. Simple as that for me.

Lets move Diame into a position he would probably struggle in when hes only just started hitting form in the position he was supposed to. Plan.

Happy xmas to all. Fuck the villa.

Mag.

That overhead kick, though. the enforrccccerrrr

He wasn't good vs Hull mind, misplaced an incredible amount of passes Hopefully will be a good signing though.

Sunderlands next manager.

I do think with Rafa in charge we would stay up comfortably even with the current squad, probably not top 10 or anything but comfortably above the bottom 3. However there's not many spots in the team that we don't need to strengthen if we want to try and kick on and have a solid PL team. In all honesty I would keep a fair amount of the current squad, but would hope for about 5-6 quality signings if and when we do go up. Would probably offload, Krul, Sels, Hanley, Tiote, Gouffran, Murphy, Perez, Colback, De Jong. Timmy because I think he would bring in a decent fee in an area we are well stocked, and the rest because they are shite or I'm not convinced they could do a PL job (or haven't done a PL job in the past) Would also not mind losing Mbemba, Dummett, Diame, possibly Clark if higher quality signings were made in those areas, Clark being the tough one because hes been our best central defender by far this season, and think he may improve further and have a good PL season with Rafa, others are basically solid players too but as I say, we could and probably will make improvements. I'm actually genuinely excited to see if we can attract some biggish names next season.

Its an 8 for me without Shelvey.

He will get banned, be a nice early xmas present if he doesn't though.

Personally think Arsenal should move on from Wenger, its all relative at the end of the day, the talent in their squad and seemingly millions tucked away that Wenger refuses to spend, give the job to someone with similar stature with fresh ideas bring in the forward, battling DM and top class CB they've needed for years and they will probably win the league in the next few years at least.

I feel we've had a lot of fortune this season in these situations, we defend well last gasp, but theres been a lot of close chances and posts and bars etc..

I know you get slated if you question anything but surely we should be doing better than this?

Fucking hell man, is that gonna be it?