Ha! The worst of the lot. What exactly is the point of you? A clever guy with an acerbic way with words who seemingly loves to put the club he purports to support down at every opportunity. It's a strange motivation that I don't pretend to understand other that you would appear to get some sort of gratification out of it as an anonymous, online ononist. Thankfully, Pearson is not of the same persuasion and I'm with him. As all of us should be if we want to get out of the sh.t.
If, after four whole seasons in the Premier League, we are still relying on an ageing Deeney as our main attacking threat, we deserve to go down. His movement is crap and limits the way we play football. Sarr has put in several good early balls into the box over the last few games but where is our main man? He's either miles behind the play or he's peeled off to the back post with at least a couple of defenders in between him and the ball. It kills any attack out wide stone dead. Deeney never gambles at the front post and isn't quick enough to get free at the far post for a tap in. It hinders us as an attacking force and makes us so easy to play against. It's really quite boring watching Deeney now. No threat in behind, can't dribble past someone, loses most headers, never has a header on target from a cross or corner, doesn't even challenge for the ball most of the time, doesn't make any runs. But every now and again, he'll sprint around a bit trying to close people down, he always claps the fans and he can take a penalty. He's been underperforming for years but he's too big in the club for anyone to do anything about it.
Club are deluded if (as per Leventhal propaganda) they don’t think we need a striker in Jan We may be overstocked in that position currently but it means nothing when they’re all Championship standard
I like the comments coming from the opposition managers. Before the match they were being a little patronising but confident they'd beat us, then after it, the excuses were "we were not quite at it today". Teams rarely play well when faced with a determined and highly motivated opponent. Attitude is king. They look at it from a perspective that they failed somehow, but do not recognise they are playing a side that finished mid-table last season and are now playing to a level of endeavour which has only been present for the last 4 matches. You can see they've gone into the match thinking "they're sh1t, we'll beat them easily" and can't quite work out how they didn't. For it to make sense it has to be that they played badly, and no other reason.
Fair. But Giraldi's not going in January is he? So let's just hope he can pull a rabbit out of a hat eh?
Your post “Pozzo won’t make same mistakes again” My post “If he refuses to remove Giraldi then he will” What does that have to do with January? Who knows what Giraldi will do. Holebas and Mariappa will probably get offered extensions and we’ll sell Doucoure and bring in a random Belgian full back and a youth prospect. Maybe one genuine top quality loan. Fingers crossed but don’t expect the usual mistakes not to be made (hence my original post).
“Sheff United are a great team.” I’m just going to read that again. “Sheff United are a great team.” No they’re not. They’re really not. They’ve been doing well and getting good results so far, but if you’ve watched football for any length of time you couldn’t possibly describe them as a “great team”.
Of course they know they have a problem with scoring goals, and although it's very frustrating to all of us, there is probably not a lot we can do about it. We have our hands tied. There is no chance we'll be able to sign a striker better than what we already have on a permanent deal. Absolutely no chance. If there's a deal we can make with a high calibre striker it will be on loan, but even then I suspect that will be a long shot. There is reason for hope though. Of course we cannot rely on Deeney, Gray and Success. They will not provide enough goals. But the hope comes in players like Pedro, Welbeck, Sarr and Deulofeu. These four should give us a quality look up front. I'm confident if we can have those players on the pitch for a significant portion of the second of the season, we'll score goals. We're much better at the back already, now it's a question of getting it right up front. If we do, we should soar up the league by hoovering up a lot of points. When we're good we're much better than a large part of the dross in the Premier League. We're certainly not significantly worse than anyone in the league. We've now turned the corner, I firmly believe that.
Yes the cross Sarr put in first half low and level with the Six yard line was asking to be tapped in. Deeney was no where near it. We are definitely going down unless we can find a decent striker from somewhere
Absolutely. We have next to no chance of scoring enough goals to stay up unless we get a loan striker who is far superior to our misfits or Pedro or Welbeck get fit and find form quickly.
I said it in an earlier post, I’d be willing to bet money that Troy doesn’t score from open play this season, he’s that bad. What he can actually do, should be a basic prerequisite for any striker, they just normally provide you with the added bonus of goals as well. 10 goals for a season would be a pretty modest return for a striker, Troy will only get as many goals as we get penalties while he’s on the pitch. This isn’t the NFL, is it’s not acceptable for that to be our strikers only possible means of scoring. There is only one striker that I can think of that was tolerated for his lack of goal scoring and that was Emilie Heskey. For any other striker goals are considered to be mandatory requirement.
I don’t know how enough about him to know how well him not scoring is tolerated by Palace fans. A quick google and he’s made 5 starts and 11 appearances as sub, so he’s definitely not their first choice, a bit like Andre Grey perhaps.
Benteke's decline has been quite surprising. He looked excellent when he first arrived in the Premier League. Must have been on the same magic beans Ighalo was using.
They've been getting results for four years across three divisions. They are a good team. Innovative tactics and a great manager.
OK, let's do some detailed context. Of that five we have played the teams that were currently occupying 1st, 2nd and 5th spots away. At home we have played middling Palarse (who we might have expected to beat) and the Manure, apparently the 'biggest football club in the world'. So, I'd suggest that 1,2,2 isn't too bad in that context for our 'small town football club'. Five points from five matches coming from a position of eight points from the 14 previous matches. Maybe, from your elevated tower of self-entitlement, you may wish to articulate a different context?
The latest widespread excuse for Deeney is seemingly that he "just isn't match fit". It couldn't possibly just be that he is an overweight, bang average striker who is way, way past his prime and has been for some time. I mean, imagine actually accepting that reality and taking the rose tinted glasses off? We can't be having that.
We worked hard and pressed well, However both teams were not good enough in possession which led to a fairly dull game. I felt we missed Doucoure"s athleticism today and he is good at setting us off on counter attacks, atleast he has had a rest for the Aston Villa game. We struggled going forward when Sarr had to come off, Deeney offered us nothing today, didn't really win anything, didn't hold anything up, wasn't fast enough, movement was poor Overall not a bad point away to a team who started the day 5th even if they won't be staying there.
Didn't see the game so can't comment too much on it but Chris Wilder thought the result was fair and they they couldn't get the end product which sounds like the defence played well. Mariappa coming in for some stick. Not his fault but just not even close to being good enough at this level and has never been a right back. Would be nice to have Janmaat back and keep Femenia on the left as he's improved immeasurably over the last few games. Up front is a big problem. Deeney is match fit and isn't overweight, he's just not at the required standard consistently now. He was very good against United but yesterday he apparently wasn't and that's the issue I look at yesterday as very much a point gained. No matter what you think of how Sheff Utd play, they have been hugely successful this season and are not in the top 6 by pure luck alone. They are very good at what they do. Villa game is huge, win and we're not far away from the pack, lose and I feel it's curtains
No worse than us spending most of the second half aimlessly hoofing to Deeney. Our problems have been plain to see for 3 years and it's beyond a joke they have not been addressed. The idea we are going to pick up the points we need to stay up when our choices at #9 is a striker who doesn't have any pace or movement; and a striker who can't control, kick, pass, shoot or head a football, is laughable. This could have been fixed properly with half the money we've frittered away on pointless purchases. We're going down and we deserve it.
We lost pretty much all attacking threat once Sarr went off. He was outlet to relieve pressure and build attacks. Extremely frustrating to see him put in a couple of really good balls and see Deeney nowhere near either. I watched back a few times, and his movement was so poor, making no real attempt to get into a goal scoring position. We need somebody with a bit of instinct in the box, who’s also capable of contributing in our build up play as well. Waiting until we’re this deep in trouble makes it hard to sign the instant goal scorer we need, but we have to try. Solid enough performance, but without any pace on the pitch following Sarr going off, we really didn’t have any real hope of scoring. Special mention to Kabasele, who was crap on the ball at times, but defended really well. Kiko deserves credit too, playing out of position and actually looking like a confident footballer again. Must-win game up next, and if Sarr isn’t fit, I’ll be massively concerned. Once he’s off the pitch, we surely have the slowest, most pedestrian attack in the league.
Whichever 'context' I pick, the outcome is, yet another game where we haven't won and we are still firmly rooted into the relegation zone. The games available for us to pick up the points for survival are slowly, but surely being used up. Meanwhile the Doe eyed happy clappers continue to look to some ever shifting horizon as though we will some day cross it and enter a new phase of milk and honey. I was on board for Man Utd. I was on board afterward. I'll be on board for Villa, where a win will still give us a slim hope. But this was a step backwards in performance and result.
Yes this sums up my thoughts. Beat Villa and this performance will be forgotten and the away point between 2 wins will look good. Fail to beat Villa and we really will need miracles. We need upper-mid table form for the reast of the season to stand a chance and I'm struggling to see 3 teams worse than us. Even Narrrch are playing some decent football now after their blip against us. Soton have really kicked on since beating us with those 2 late goals.
Yeah but we don’t get to choose the fixtures moog. We wasted many winnable games earlier in the season but that doesn’t mean we should lose perspective. A point at Bramall Lane is a good return for all but the title chasers this season. I’d actually say yesterday was one of our hardest remaining fixtures. A technically average opponent for sure but one in 5th, high on confidence, playing at home, well-drilled and resilient. Plus highly unlikely to underestimate us. Very frustrating we gave away the lead having done the hard work to get it definitely. But I don’t think 3pts or 1pt changes the equation that much - we always had to beat Villa. No debate.
Interesting to note at the same game week 19 last season, Burney were in the relegation zone on 12 points to our 13, so it is still in the realms of possibility. 18th) Burnley 19 3 3 13 17 41 -24 12 From here we will probably need 3 or 4 wins against the big teams to have any chance of surviving. Vardy has scored 17 goals already this season, in contrast as an entire team we have scored 12. Club need to address this issue as a priority in Jan, if they don't it will be the biggest indication they would have accepted relegation.
It was this coming weekend last season Burnley started to turn it around. They won 3 on the bounce and went on an 8 game unbeaten run which took them from 18th to 13th.
