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6 minutes ago, Dr Venkman said:

 

We played that way as a very specific response to the way Spurs play, it worked. It’s not Bruce or Pardew, that’s an extremely narrow-minded view devoid of context. Some people seem incapable of watching us play without the ball (intentionally) and appreciating the plan. Football isn’t solely about having the most possession, I would have thought that was obvious to anyone who’s watched a bit.

I’m taking this for a lacklustre performance and 3 points. We’ll aim to play better with Schar back and some time on the training pitch.  
 

We sat in against them last season. But we also pressed them really aggressively in deeper areas.  Won our duels.  Incisive on the ball.  Today we defended bravely in our box.  But we lost a lot of duels in midfield. Sloppy on the ball. Plenty of individual mistakes. Taking too many touches. 
 

In short we weren’t at it today.  We were the last time. Too many individual mistakes. Not cohesive as a team. But we hung on in there. Determined.  Thought Spurs were bad in the final third. Too many touches. Not making the right runs. 
 

We were like this against Bournemouth and Forest too. We look at our best with all our ballers on and aggressive. 

 

 

Edited by The College Dropout

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1 minute ago, The College Dropout said:

I’m taking this for a lacklustre performance and 3 points. We’ll aim to play better with Schar back and some time on the training pitch.  
 

We sat in against them last season. But we also pressed them really aggressively in deeper areas.  Won our duels.  Incisive on the ball.  Today we defended bravely in our box.  But we lost a lot of duels in midfield. Sloppy on the ball. Plenty of individual mistakes. Taking too many touches. 


So now you’re listing loads of things that are down to individual errors/players and expecting us to forget you just tried to draw a Bruce/Pardew game plan comparison? 
 

We won the game today, you know that don’t you?

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9 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

For a Bournemouth player aye. A Bournemouth CB. 

 

We have Trippier, Schar, Botman, Hall at his best. He’s nowhere near. 

I didnt say he was elite. All im saying is he should have little problem in possession. The guys on the podcast even called him rolls royce, so hes not bad on the ball.

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12 minutes ago, Dr Venkman said:

 

We played that way as a very specific response to the way Spurs play, it worked. It’s not Bruce or Pardew, that’s an extremely narrow-minded view devoid of context. Some people seem incapable of watching us play without the ball (intentionally) and appreciating the plan. Football isn’t solely about having the most possession, I would have thought that was obvious to anyone who’s watched a bit.

 

Agreed, did exactly the same last season too.

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2 minutes ago, Dr Venkman said:


So now you’re listing loads of things that are down to individual errors/players and expecting us to forget you just tried to draw a Bruce/Pardew game plan comparison? 
 

We won the game today, you know that don’t you?

I’m happy we won. That doesn’t make it a good performance. 
 

someone said they think our game plan this season is to nick a goal in the first half and defend deep and bravely in the second half. That is a Brucey game plan. I don’t for a second think that’s Howe’s plan for the season. that’s what we ended up doing against Bournemouth, against Forest and today. But I don’t think that’s the plan. 
 

When we get Schar back, Tonali playing, I expect us to go back to aggressive pressing. 

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8 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

Complexity and breadth of the sport has grown. Howe shouldn’t be  managing our FFP situation.  

 

I wondered, though, whether he could be trusted to be the person to do that as well, with the right support and advice. If you have to think outside the box, then perhaps he is the maverick to do it.

 

Somebody needs to be able to make the tough decisions, and he's probably the one who understands this team the best.

 

You don't get to be the best with decisions by committee all pulling in different directions.

 

Pep, I think, just to add to the other examples, is probably in complete control of who they buy and sell, whilst delegating the admin. Apologies if that sounds like word salad - I just don't know who else has the vision now. 

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22 minutes ago, Dr Venkman said:


We won the game tactically today. It’s just difficult to watch because we didn’t have much of the ball. The team was setup intentionally to do what it did. We got three points, tactically.


I don’t think being under that much pressure that you have to park the bus was a tactic that we went in to the game with, it is the default position for a club that is being outplayed and under a massive amount of pressure.

 

I genuinely do not know what our tactics are when we have the ball, which is a difficult watch compared to how we played 18 months ago. I say that as I am presuming our tactics isn’t to give up possession as soon as we gain it to invite wave after wave of attack.

 

I have tried to find the FourFourTwo video where it went through our tactics and why we were so good, but that type of football has gone out of the window completely.

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7 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

I’m happy we won. That doesn’t make it a good performance. 
 

someone said they think our game plan this season is to nick a goal in the first half and defend deep and bravely in the second half. That is a Brucey game plan. I don’t for a second think that’s Howe’s plan for the season.


Whether or not you’re happy about the result has nothing to do with the quality of the performance. 
 

Today’s game plan was clear and obvious to anyone watching, and it worked. It was very intentional on the part of the head coach and the team carried it out, and won, I’d call that a good performance.

 

Bruce played the same in every game. Anyone suggesting Howe has done that in the past or is likely to do so based on one game (in which we achieved our objective) is just saying stuff for the sake of it or being disingenuous. 

 

 

Edited by Dr Venkman

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8 minutes ago, nufc123 said:

I didnt say he was elite. All im saying is he should have little problem in possession. The guys on the podcast even called him rolls royce, so hes not bad on the ball.

If you look at his passing statistics for a CB or as a FB. It’s very average. He’s not a particularly accurate passer. Not a progressive passer. Not tremendous at carrying it. Eye test. He looks ok on the ball. 

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2 minutes ago, Matt1892 said:


I don’t think being under that much pressure that you have to park the bus was a tactic that we went in to the game with, it is the default position for a club that is being outplayed and under a massive amount of pressure.


Jerry Seinfeld Reaction GIF

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Personally think it's entirely plausible that we haven't found our groove by virtue of not being at our best physical levels (choose your reason), missing Schär and the negative noise around the team. We've also been playing competent teams, in a couple of cases away from home.

 

Will repeat it cos I don't think there's any harm in repeating the positives from what could be an absolutely massive win: we've given ourselves a brilliant foundation to iron out our issues and have a good first half of the season, in a very turbulent context. 

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3 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

If you look at his passing statistics for a CB or as a FB. It’s very average. He’s not a particularly accurate passer. Not a progressive passer. Not tremendous at carrying it. Eye test. He looks ok on the ball. 

Agree hes not spectacular or anything, but hes not bad.

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5 minutes ago, Abacus said:

 

I wondered, though, whether he could be trusted to be the person to do that as well, with the right support and advice. If you have to think outside the box, then perhaps he is the maverick to do it.

 

Somebody needs to be able to make the tough decisions, and he's probably the one who understands this team the best.

 

You don't get to be the best with decisions by committee all pulling in different directions.

 

Pep, I think, just to add to the other examples, is probably in complete control of who they buy and sell, whilst delegating the admin. Apologies if that sounds like word salad - I just don't know who else has the vision now. 

Manchester City have owners that most likely broke financial doping rules.
They have  multi club model with the aim of subverting FFP.

They have the best academy in the country and they sell academy players for millions every season.  

Man City hired all the Barca football people to run the Man City footballing operations. 
 


They do all of that so Pep Guardiola doesn’t have to worry about FFP or anything.  The football people bring him players and he can have pretty much whoever they decide to want. 

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Just now, Yorkie said:

Personally think it's entirely plausible that we haven't found our groove by virtue of not being at our best physical levels (choose your reason), missing Schär and the negative noise around the team. We've also been playing competent teams, in a couple of cases away from home.

 

Will repeat it cos I don't think there's any harm in repeating the positives from what could be an absolutely massive win: we've given ourselves a brilliant foundation to iron out our issues and have a good first half of the season, in a very turbulent context. 

I've been talking to other fans after the game and it's ridiculous how negatively some people are seeing our start to the season.

 

We're not firing on all cylinders yet, of course, but we've beaten Spurs with the only two bits of genuine quality in the game, and conceded one goal today by a mistake from our back up CB. Held our nerves in the penalties in the League Cup too.

 

We're going to channel that and steamroller some teams now.

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7 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

Personally think it's entirely plausible that we haven't found our groove by virtue of not being at our best physical levels (choose your reason), missing Schär and the negative noise around the team. We've also been playing competent teams, in a couple of cases away from home.

 

Will repeat it cos I don't think there's any harm in repeating the positives from what could be an absolutely massive win: we've given ourselves a brilliant foundation to iron out our issues and have a good first half of the season, in a very turbulent context. 

Agreed.  Fantastic results to the start the season. Performances have not been there but I trust that they will come. 
 

HTL.  

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The performance wasn’t anything like the Spurs game last season, where we let them have a high level of possession but it was mainly passing it around without being a threat.

 

Today we were up against it for large parts, where we rode our luck and relied on their poor finishing for us to remain in the game.

 

The way we played today was no different from the other games this season, we seem to have lost all ability in retaining possession and the press has gone out of the window.

 

We can’t rely on poor finishing from the opposition forever.

 

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4 minutes ago, Matt1892 said:

The performance wasn’t anything like the Spurs game last season, where we let them have a high level of possession but it was mainly passing it around without being a threat.

 

Today we were up against it for large parts, where we rode our luck and relied on their poor finishing for us to remain in the game.

 

The way we played today was no different from the other games this season, we seem to have lost all ability in retaining possession and the press has gone out of the window.

 

We can’t rely on poor finishing from the opposition forever.

 

 

3 games. It's been 3 games.

 

Timely reminder that there were people bitching and moaning two seasons ago when we finished 4th.... right up until the point we actually finished 4th.

 

"We can't do it." "We won't do it." "These players are shite." And on and on.

 

We played well and won loads last season. We will again this season.

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6 minutes ago, Matt1892 said:

The performance wasn’t anything like the Spurs game last season, where we let them have a high level of possession but it was mainly passing it around without being a threat.

 

Today we were up against it for large parts, where we rode our luck and relied on their poor finishing for us to remain in the game.

 

The way we played today was no different from the other games this season, we seem to have lost all ability in retaining possession and the press has gone out of the window.

 

We can’t rely on poor finishing from the opposition forever.

 

I agree with everything except I don’t think it’s poor finishing from the opposition.  In the box we defend well last ditch and have one of the best shot stoppers in the league. We get our blocks in and make the final ball difficult.   We make it hard for teams to finish us off like we did in the 4th season. 
 

 

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1 minute ago, STM said:

 

3 games. It's been 3 games.

 

Timely reminder that there were people bitching and moaning two seasons ago when we finished 4th.... right up until the point we actually finished 4th.

 

"We can't do it." "We won't do it." "These players are shite." And on and on.

 

We played well and won loads last season. We will again this season.


Yes. We are reviewing our performances after 3 games. That’s how it works.

 

If it improves then credit will be given for those performances and improvements.

 

No need to piss your pants about it.

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We definitely need to work on performances over the international break. The first 20 minutes of the game today was the NUFC of 2 seasons ago, but the stoppage for the linesman seemed to completely derail us.

 

I think it's a combination of certain platers not really having a full pre season, some players just generally not playing well (yet) and I've said this a few times, the fact we have Burn and Krafth playing centre half. The pair of them can't play out from the back and add to that Pope is shite at kicking. As soon as any of those 3 pick it up, teams press knowing fine well we're probably going to panic and go long or down the wing and 9 times out of 10 we lose the ball and are under pressure again. Which is why we always seem to be sitting back and defending.

 

That last point is the main 1 for me. Can't wait to see Schar back against Wolves.

 

 

Edited by Scoot

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5 minutes ago, STM said:

 

3 games. It's been 3 games.

 

Timely reminder that there were people bitching and moaning two seasons ago when we finished 4th.... right up until the point we actually finished 4th.

 

"We can't do it." "We won't do it." "These players are shite." And on and on.

 

We played well and won loads last season. We will again this season.

the first ten games of that season was an epic bitch fest. Howe has been found out and all. 

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