Lost again. Who’d have thought we’d be in a relegation battle?? To me it was obvious this would happen. I can’t understand why no one else could see it.
Another pitiful Benny Hill style defeat but I’d rather keep losing and even go down than sack the coach. Orns.
Putting everyone wanting us to stick with a manager aside, at what point do we need to do it to avoid relegation?
Unlucky that. Fair play to them. They showed again the effectiveness of taking set pieces quickly and long. Excellent support from their crowd. Their players battled with all they had. A draw would have been fair.
Another relatively limp, lacklustre defeat. Bravo. We look absolutely clueless as an operation, in terms of providing the impetus required to force a change and turn anything around. There's nothing remotely enjoyable about watching us, and there hasn't been for quite some time. We've never played good football objectively, but I can't even remember the last time it was exciting to tune in at this point. Again, this becomes more and more a replaying of last season as each week goes by. Once again, we reach the point in our Sisyphean nightmare of being forced to start raking over and arguing about which of the incompetent/rotten/failing elements of the club are most responsible for the situation, and what course of action it justifies. All, of course, coming down in the end to the one ******** who won't be in any danger of being found taking any accountability whatsoever. Huzzah.
How grim will it be next season without a teenager to occasionally get us some points with the odd goal from outside the box.
We started the game abysmally yet again and basically gifted them a goal with a catalogue of errors. We're starting every game a goal down at this point pretty much - conceded first in 15 of the last 16 games is it? It keeps giving us a hill to climb and increasingly we don't have the capacity to do it. First we had Kayembe and Livermore giving away two stupid set-pieces around the box which played into Millwall's hands. Then at the free-kick for the goal the wall wasn't set up right, then it split, then Asprilla turned his back on the ball as it bounced off him. Even after that Hamer should surely save the shot. Today was the first game this season really when Hamer was shaky. After that it was basically game over. Neither side created anything or had any quality. We didn't help ourselves though with still giving away lots of stupid free-kicks, Dennis was especially guilty of this. Kayembe and Sema weren't as atrocious as against Huddersfield but still don't seem 100%. Kone did nothing when he came on. Martins looked as if he'd eaten all the leftover minced pies in the last couple of weeks. Lewis took no responsibility and again kept turning down good crossing opportunities when we had men forward. Sierralta was one of the very few who didn't do too badly out there. We're out of legs, ideas, luck, goals. We're now in desperate need of a win from one of our next two games.
I'm almost at the point that I'd rather see the players dragged down to League One for their woeful performances than the manager having to carry the can yet again. Not that I think we will be relegated, but frankly they look like they deserve it.
So fed up, it is hard to convey. This is a culmination of so many bad decisions over the last four years. We are resigned to hoping we can survive in the championship. That’s where we are at. Players going through the motions, wondering who will be coaching them next week and what car to test drive next. No fight, no belief, no drive, no courage, no ambition, no guile, no passion. On a small but important note, Asprilla turning his back on the free kick cost us the match. A basic rule in a wall, is to try and make it difficult for the free taker, not accommodate them. Millwall very limited, but very up for it today.
That was poor Milwall are a poor side and didn’t even really have the physical edge, got a lucky goal at the start of the game and struggled to keep the ball for most of the match. We are just way to crap to create anything a we slow everything down even against a sh*t team like Millwall. How many losses now starting to look ridiculous.
We're still not in that battle. But agree we will be in a month if this carries on. Not the sort of abject tripe from last week in fairness, but far too often we take a touch and amble back to the default "reset" position instead of forcing the game. Of the players capable of forcing anything against a resilient Millwall defence, Dennis is isolated. Asprilla wants an extra 3 touches and Martins had 3 minutes. There's no quick interchanges or overlaps as they all play so far away from each other, so we rely on the 50 yard Hoedt diagonal to get us anywhere. No high press to force errors either which is all you need to do against us by the way. And often a decent tactic in this league.
We were the better team but lacked any cutting edge, quality or inciveness to make the possession count for anything. Compared to last week it was an improvement and it didn't seem the players weren't trying which is a positive at least given the games to come.
I certainly think that the argument some have been continuing to put forward of Ismael doing about par with the squad we have is starting to be lost. We shouldn't be playing as badly as we have done the last couple of games.
Decent result away from home. For much of the game we kept them out. Just unlucky that they nicked one just in the very last 87 minutes.
Well that was better than last week effort wise but not exactly a high bar to clear. A lot of sides around us got wins today which has cut our safety rope to 6 points. It will make reading the table very interesting on Wednesday if we lose at home to Swansea and the same set of sides win again. I have never thought we were 100% safe, because no side is safe until it's mathematically impossible. There really isn't much to say about how we played today. Same turgid stuff with zero end product. We came "close" on a few occasions and Bayo had an okay game by his standards. Lewis was beyond abysmal and their goal was avoidable if Asprilla had been more switched on in the wall for the free kick. I don't know how much of a shield the contract extension is surrounding VI right now, but it must be getting tempting to just say feck it, ditch him and bring an intern in for the remainder to try and pick up two or three more wins. I cannot see us scoring a goal today, against what was a pretty weak Millwall performance. They didn't have to work for it because we did nothing to scare them. Dennis was poor overall and Hamer had a few very dodgy moments. Livermore and Sema both below the quality we know they can be. Another pitiful performance where possession means nothing if you cannot score. Raj coming on was a total waste of time and Val changed things very late with the game done. Players will pick up their wages of course, as we continue to slide closer to the trap door however unlikely that still seems with nine sides between us and the relegation zone. VI has clearly lost the players faith and the early season spark has long since died out. Time for a change I think. But looking at our finances we can barely afford to keep the lights on if our Windows are anything to go by. Tame effort. Well done Millwall, Harris has got them playing again.
Manager is gone after this - come hell of high water !! Not that I totally an agree with it, but we’ve had a good run of fixtures and are going backwards very quickly. Any chance of a playoff push is well and truly gone and the positivity from the middle part of the season is well and truly lost. We look incapable in the final 3rd ( don’t rate either of our strikers tbf ) but we can’t create anything regardless.
Agreed. We dominated in all areas except the opposition penalty area. It’ll do wonders for the confidence. Anyone who can’t see this needs to give there’head a wobble.
I thought we actually matched their physicality and defended reasonably well for the vast majority of the game. We were able to play through midfield but then looked so clueless up top, we have no idea what to do in the final third. The most frustrating thing about today is we have lost to a side that we are clearly better than because of such a **** goal.
It was only a handful of weeks ago that one of the most prolific posters on the forum, and self proclaimed Nostradamus, was lauding VI for getting the team to perform way above its abilities.
Not all players were strolling, but Ngakia, Lewis, Sema, Hamer, Kayembe and Dennis were not sharp and focussed.
What is your yardstick for better? Any team can keep the ball more than the other team if that’s your sole objective, but as you said we did absolutely nothing with it, so how on earth is that ‘better’?
Our possession and that we were trying to make something happen and had the initiative for much of the game. Millwall were passive and reactive to us for much of the game. I don't think we were considerably better and clearly we lacked in the final third. Clearly it wasnt a good 0erformance from us but we certainly weren't any worse than them imo. Ultimately it's a depressing result and performance but im trying to find a positive in that I saw a team with energy that was at least trying. Do you think Millwall were better than us?
Of course they were better than us, they scored a goal very early and then successfully stopped us doing the same. That is literally the aim of the game.
