Holmesy

When will fatigue cease to be a reasonable reason/excuse for poor performances in your eyes? (and other people’s eyes as well). Our next few games are nicely spaced out, so next few weeks, until the injury crisis completely clears up, end of the season? For the record, I’m not being antagonistic. I’m genuinely curious.

Rot is a very strong word and I don’t think it’s correct at all. I’ve been critical of EH’s lack of tactical flexibility and inability to make impactful in-game changes, and they are justified criticisms, but he’s the kind of man and manger who is unlikely to let it happen two seasons in a row. If he does, the criticism will grow and he’ll likely be on his way, but he’s got a lot of credit left in the bank before anyone should start questioning his position here.

He could maybe lie down in front of them to cover more surface area

They were talking about him on the radio the other day - apparently he leads all the presses at Chelsea and consistently tops the stats for miles covered, players closed down etc. So in that respect, he's right up Eddie's street. I don't really see what he offers that we don't already have though. We arguably need a proper #10 and/or a proper DM and Gallagher is neither of those

Knock what off?! ?

Only if we're not given permission to do it. You'd think a player would be willing to give consent for personal information to be used if he wants a transfer to go through. If he doesn't consent, alarms bells should ring.

Jackson for Chelsea is terrible. They definitely haven’t signed him for his intelligence and decision making. He’s like current-form Miggy but even shitter

I really haven’t mate. Not once. Some people have offered different opinions but that’s not the same thing.

I would try and find a way to deliver the best results I could with the team members I had available. Sit with them, discuss impactful strategies we could deliver with reduced numbers. In other words, create a plan B. Rather than make excuses - they tend to fall on deaf ears

I do. It has been an amazing ride and as always, you have to take the rough with the smooth - just look at Man City recently. But I’m not the kind of person to just blindly celebrate someone as an infallible messiah. I believe EH’s limitations are costing us results and I think it’s something we should discuss. As always I’m happy to be corrected

That’s why he gets paid millions of pounds, to be better than a one trick pony.

I’m not a football manager mate. What a ridiculous thing to say. I am held accountable for the team members I lead in my line of work, and if I go into a board meeting and say campaign A didn’t work because the team isn’t equipped, so we’re going to carry on running campaign A with the same team but expect different results, I would be fired.

I don’t know, but it isn’t my job. EH is being paid £millions to manage a very ambitious, well run PL team.

Maybe bring Hall on to deal with Elanga’s pace, go 5 at the back and give ourselves greater numbers to mitigate the counter attack. There are loads of tactical tweaks that could’ve been made, but we just let them run right through us time after time, pushing EVERYONE forward and leaving ourselves vulnerable to the counter. It isn’t a groundbreaking suggestion to say the manager should make in game changes in reaction to what we’re all seeing.

Seriously, you don’t think it’s a manager’s job to manage the energy levels of his squad? If they’re knackered, do something different. If you can’t do something different, you’re not a very good manager. Are the players fatigued? Yes. Should we just accept that we’re going to lose every game until they get some energy back? Fuck no. Fucking manage it! It’s not an unreasonable thing to suggest a manager should have more than one trick in his playbook.

Again, I pin that on the manager. This season has highlighted a glaring glitch in EH’s matrix. If he can’t execute plan A, there’s nothing. Yes, he’s been unlucky with injuries, really unlucky but I’d expect a top class manager to be able to chess game his way out of it, to a degree. Have we all just got to accept that because players are tired and we have an injury list, we aren’t winning games?

I’m afraid it’s shit one-trick-pony management in that case. We can’t be at full tilt all the time and what we’ve seen is that when we’re not, we’re shit and we get beaten….badly. Zero ability to adapt. Plan B is something that has been mentioned time and time again, but even tweaks to plan A would be something.

This fatigue excuse needs to stop now. Players are bound to be tired but it’s up to the manager to ‘manage’ what energy they do have. He isn’t and deserves to be called out for it. Simply saying we’re tired after getting bummed by Forest at home is letting people off the hook who should be doing a better job. They tore through us at will and we had the chance to react and make ourselves harder to play through, but didn’t. Fatigue wore thin a long time ago.

I don’t think anyone expects us to be Man City, but we don’t expect to get shat on by Forest at home and comfortably outplayed by Luton. The manager is rightly being criticised for certain things that are within his control

I agree to an extent. He’s definitely improved individual players through coaching, but for me Rafa is the master at making a team better than the sum of its parts. Rafa never had the likes of Botman, Pope, Trippier, Bruno, Isak, Gordon, Wilson? Joelinton etc. They are a world apart from what Rafa was working with. Anyway, moot point and totally off track

As has been touched on plenty of times, he had the players to rotate fullbacks and rest the likes of Trippier, but chose not to. Trippier then went on to make a series of costly errors and everyone cried ‘fateeeg’. I say poor squad management. We’ve been wide open in midfield for weeks. It doesn’t take a lot to tell Longstaff to hang on the halfway line when we go forward or at set pieces. It also doesn’t take much to know that Forest are full of pace and would try and hit us on the counter. Once you see it a couple of times, fucking react and stop it happening again. It’s basic stuff that isn’t happening. How many times do we have to get hit on the counter this season for Eddie to do something about it?!

The grinding out result is the key. If he can add that to his toolkit I think he’ll belong at the very top table. From what he’s saying though, I don’t think he wants to - front foot all the time regardless of the circumstances

The football was crap, but he was managing a championship squad in the PL. Look at the team he won the Champions League with as well though, not exactly stellar. My point is his squad management was superior, his tactical flexibility was superior, his ability to change games was superior. When we’re in full flow under Eddie we’re a joy to watch. But if we’re not at 100%, we’re not just below par, we’re fucking terrible!

Constructive!

Would you have confidence in Rafa to get results even with a tired, depleted squad? I 100% would. He is probably the reason why the shit we’re serving up right now frustrates me as much as it does. Any supposed top class manager should be able to find a way to get results even if conditions are far from optimal. So far Eddie has got great results when everything was in his favour but his tactical weaknesses have been fully exposed when we have injuries and the players are tired (which they were always going to be this season). Chuck the team out, try to execute our high intensity plan a, and when it doesn’t work, do more of plan a. For me, the tactical nativity and limitation is a serious worry and has eroded a lot of my confidence in him. Even when we get players back and results start to improve, I doubt I’ll ever think of him as a top manager again. I hope he makes me eat my words though.