Eddie Howe

[Shearergol]

2 minutes ago, Keegans Export said:

 

That midfield three still includes Bruno & Longstaff, who played a key part last season. Now Willock is on the way back, Anderson too. Plus Miley. As I say above, yes the injuries have been a massive issue but if that situation continues to improve with a decent set of fixtures coming up it's not unreasonable to expect a noticeable uptick in performances?

 

If performances don't improve once people are back an fit, then yeah. But that hasn't happened yet. Were you expecting all our problems to be solved simply because Willock was back after months of not playing?

[The College Dropout]

4 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

 

Just popped in and it seems to be Kaka arguing with TCD, is that right? I mean... .

Nope. Me and Kaka weren't talking about the same things and we reached a mutual understanding.

[KaKa]

5 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

 

Just popped in and it seems to be Kaka arguing with TCD, is that right? I mean... .

 

No, you are completely wrong.

[leffe186]

Just now, The College Dropout said:

Nope. Me and Kaka weren't talking about the same things and we reached a mutual understanding.

 

Gave you a thumbs-up without thinking what it might mean to reach a mutual understanding with Kaka

[KaKa]

1 minute ago, leffe186 said:

 

Gave you a thumbs-up without thinking what it might mean to reach a mutual understanding with Kaka

 

Hey, how about you see yourself out of here immediately.

[Holmesy]

2 hours ago, KaKa said:

 

Ultimately, for Ferguson to achieve what he did at Man Utd, a level of patience was needed as even back then he was lucky to survive despite his achievements at Aberdeen. Three seasons in the bottom half of the league out of his first six at Man Utd, even back then was a lot to overlook. Kudos to them.

 

Eddie Howe's work here has been exemplary so far, and three or so poor months and enough is enough for some folks. That is an incredible level of impatience and short sightedness. I just don't get it.

I think there are very few who are saying enough is enough. There are always a few bedwetters on bad match days but in general the discussion around Eddie's strengths and weaknesses are pretty balanced and reasonable.

The injuries and fixture congestion have to be taken into account, without question. However, what they have revealed, in Eddie's handling of them, are some clear things that need to be worked on if he wants to be considered in that elite bracket and probably if he wants to be our manager for the long term, specifically more ruthlessness towards dropping poor performing players and more flexibility around systems and tactics - a setup to help us see out games when we're in the lead, a system that still allows us to grind out results when we're not at full strength, an alternative way to approach games against superior or tricky opposition.  If he continues with his 'one setting fits all approach' he only has himself to blame if at all falls apart again.

 

We've got to remember, this is Eddie's first season in the Champions League and first season balancing 4 competitions. He's had every bit of bad luck you can imagine, but he's also made some clear errors along the way. Hopefully he can learn from them and kick on, and the owners give him the time to do that. 

 

 

Edited February 29 by Holmesy

[timeEd32]

7 minutes ago, Keegans Export said:

 

That midfield three still includes Bruno & Longstaff, who played a key part last season. Now Willock is on the way back, Anderson too. Plus Miley. As I say above, yes the injuries have been a massive issue but if that situation continues to improve with a decent set of fixtures coming up it's not unreasonable to expect a noticeable uptick in performances?

If we get Pope back for the final 8 or so games and the squad we have today is still intact then I’d be concerned if there wasn’t a noticeable improvement in the run-in.

 

Generally I think some are expecting too much, too soon in terms of some returning players providing a quick fix.

[Kid Icarus]

I think I've realised what this whole ignoring injuries to the point of gaslighting and instead talking about the minutae of everything else to within an inch of its life is really about. The people doing it just want something to talk about. 

 

 

Edited February 29 by Kid Icarus

[Matt1892]

1 hour ago, Keegans Export said:

That's fair enough. I think we have a very favourable run of games coming up and sooner or later "Injuries" is going to start to wear a bit thin.

 

edit - and on the GK issue, yes he's been a miss but we have been wide open through the midfield for a number of weeks now and that isn't all on Dubravka/Karius. Something is amiss and it's (ultimately) the responsibility of the manager to identify the issue and attempt to resolve it.

 

 

 

We do have a good run in and hopefully we can build some momentum, starting against Wolves.

 

The worry is not that we stutter along until the end of the season, which would be painful enough, but that we go in to free fall and start dropping points on a regular basis.

 

I was critical of the club last summer for not buying for the positions where we lacked quality to take us to the next level, the injuries this season have highlighted much worse like having a back up keeper completely unsuited to our tactics. How this wasn’t picked up in training I don’t know.

 

We are 2 or 3 players from having a top quality team, we just need to play like we believe we are.

[pubteam]

1 hour ago, Dr Venkman said:

I also think Pope has been our biggest miss.

Completely agree, dubs has played well but he's rooted to his box, I think this is where so much of the space has come from. 

[Keegans Export]

1 hour ago, Shearergol said:

 

If performances don't improve once people are back an fit, then yeah. But that hasn't happened yet. Were you expecting all our problems to be solved simply because Willock was back after months of not playing?

 

No, I think there's a middle ground before "all our problems" being solved where we see a gradual improvement in performances as players start to return. We're in a better position squad-wise than we were in December for example, with less fixtures to contend with but we've only played well in maybe one or two games since then. We were very poor on Tuesday with only a handful of players missing, which is by no means a situation exclusive to us.

 

As I keep saying, there is plenty of time to change the narrative. Wolves, West Ham, Everton, Fulham in the next five games coming up - improved performances, a few wins and then we can look back on a poor run of form and say "Yeah those injuries fucked us" but if we start seeing those players return and we still don't improve then it starts to look more like an excuse or papering over the cracks.

[Orphanage]

1 hour ago, Hanshithispantz said:

Our form has dramatically improved since our fixture list lightened.

 

We're still nowhere near where we need to be, but we're clearly not a free hit like we were a couple of months ago.

Really ?

[Hanshithispantz]

12 minutes ago, Orphanage said:

Really ?

Objectively so, aye.

[Hanshithispantz]

Before the 2 week break - congested fixture list (before and during this period):

 

 

After the 2 week break - less congested fixture list (on the back of a break):

 

I don't think it's a massive conspiracy to suggest our horrific form around Christmas and the New Year was down to fatigue, and that our increased form after a 2 week break (playing around 2 games less a month) is due to us regaining some energy.

 

We're still not great, but we are atleast competitive for a full 90 minutes now.

 

 

Edited February 29 by Hanshithispantz

[Orphanage]

37 minutes ago, Hanshithispantz said:

Before the 2 week break - congested fixture list (before and during this period):

 

 

After the 2 week break - less congested fixture list (on the back of a break):

 

I don't think it's a massive conspiracy to suggest our horrific form around Christmas and the New Year was down to fatigue, and that our increased form after a 2 week break (playing around 2 games less a month) is due to us regaining some energy.

 

We're still not great, but we are atleast competitive for a full 90 minutes now.

 

 

 

We were playing better when were busier ( results apart - take into consideration who we were playing ) schedules lightened and although as you point out results have gotten a bit better we are playing shite and against worse opposition 

[The Prophet]

10 minutes ago, Orphanage said:

We were playing better when were busier ( results apart - take into consideration who we were playing ) schedules lightened and although as you point out results have gotten a bit better we are playing shite and against worse opposition 

 

We've recently played three of the top five.

[Displayname]

Results are better, but the only game with a good performance was Villa. And maybe Sunderland, though they just bended over really.

 

[Jagten]

1 hour ago, Hanshithispantz said:

Before the 2 week break - congested fixture list (before and during this period):

 

 

After the 2 week break - less congested fixture list (on the back of a break):

 

I don't think it's a massive conspiracy to suggest our horrific form around Christmas and the New Year was down to fatigue, and that our increased form after a 2 week break (playing around 2 games less a month) is due to us regaining some energy.

 

We're still not great, but we are atleast competitive for a full 90 minutes now.

This is just high-variance outcomes from high-volume chances, both for and against. The underlying trend has not improved. (Villa was good though.)

[Hanshithispantz]

Why would I give more weight to a rolling xG average graph over the actual results and performances? 

 

I'm not arguing that we are playing well, but we've been able to put a run of results together in games we've been competitive in for the full 90. And this was without a number 9 in a couple of them.

 

You'd be lucky to pick 2 consecutive games in the Christmas period where were legitimately competitive throughout.

 

 

Edited February 29 by Hanshithispantz

[Bellis80]

Because every club in the league uses xg to assess performance rather than results.

[Hanshithispantz]

 fuck it, this is just getting stupid

[80]

18 minutes ago, Hanshithispantz said:

Why would I give more weight to a rolling xG average graph over the actual results and performances? 

 

I'm not arguing that we are playing well, but we've been able to put a run of results together in games we've been competitive in for the full 90. And this was without a number 9 in a couple of them.

 

You'd be lucky to pick 2 consecutive games in the Christmas period where were legitimately competitive.

 

 

 

From memory, I'd actually argue our displays in the first 45 minutes of matches in December were better in many ways than they have been in the last few weeks. The killer then was that we would essentially evaporate in the second half, whereas, as you say, we're more competitive through the 90 minutes now.

[ikri]

4 hours ago, Shearergol said:

think everyone’s in agreement that the two main issues are the midfield 3, and Pope missing. That hasn’t changed.

 

even with players coming back, our “best” players just as Bruno, Gordon and Isak are visibly knackered. The fact that Willock and Barnes are coming back in will start to help, but we’re weeks away from it.

 

We fundamentally changed the way we play this season too in order to accommodate Gordon and Barnes as wide forwards.  Last season, most of the time we had Joelinton and Willock either on the left of the midfield three or in the wide left forward position.  They would swap around during the game as well which made it a nightmare to defend against them and the wide forward was able to drop back into the midfield easily giving us more bodies when required.  With Miggy's constant running we were able to switch between a 4-3-3 and a 4-5-1 with ease and then as soon as we were in the position to go on the attack, those wide midfield players were suddenly forwards again.  It was all very dynamic and very successful.

This season, with Gordon playing up there instead, he hasn't been able to fill the same role as an ad-hoc midfielder, instead he's been an ad-hoc centre forward.  Barnes is the same, he's a forward rather than a midfielder.  If we'd had Bruno, Tonali, Willock and Joelinton all available this season we might have found some sort of balance but with the injuries on top of the change in style everything has gone a bit tits up.

[Jagten]

31 minutes ago, Hanshithispantz said:

Why would I give more weight to a rolling xG average graph over the actual results and performances? 

 

I'm not arguing that we are playing well, but we've been able to put a run of results together in games we've been competitive in for the full 90. And this was without a number 9 in a couple of them.

 

You'd be lucky to pick 2 consecutive games in the Christmas period where were legitimately competitive throughout.

Depends how much you care about estimating latent quantities from noisy data (results), especially with a small sample size. I don't visually think performances have improved either. 

[Solitude20]

22 minutes ago, Hanshithispantz said:

Why would I give more weight to a rolling xG average graph over the actual results and performances? 

 

I'm not arguing that we are playing well, but we've been able to put a run of results together in games we've been competitive in for the full 90. And this was without a number 9 in a couple of them.

 

You'd be lucky to pick 2 consecutive games in the Christmas period where were legitimately competitive throughout.

 

 

 

Because xG is a very important performance indicator. It is a metric of the quality of chances created by a team, which sometimes tells a different story than the final score. The Liverpool match is a great example of why xG has become an important metric in assessing performance in recent years.