Two things went wrong tonight. The first is the everpresent ***** defence that Gino has gifted us, as well as the injury hit midfield. Not much Ranieri can really do about that (though an 80% fit Kabasele is better than WTE, incredibly enough). The second is the slightly bizarre line-up and subs. King on the left all night? No Louza for a dreadful Kucka, but an off the pace Sema was fine? This was so winnable tonight and was so important. We have played so much better recently. Ranieri is somewhat to blame tonight I'm afraid - but he is also not a miracle worker and he has an incredibly turd squad to wrangle. No easy answers until the transfer window. If Gino doesn't get some decent defenders then, though, there are truly no excuses left. Current defensive options are pathetic. Even if he does pull it of the bag we still have an uphill struggle ahead.
What was nice was that the Brentford forward had all day to have a look at William's lunging leg and then make sure he fell over it. He really laid it on a plate for them. What an imbecilic challenge.
I know we all think we know better but surely Ranieri could see that 442 wasn't working after about five minutes of moving to it? Kucka had an absolute disaster class, the worse midfield performance I've seen since Bakayoko in the 4-1 against Chelsea. Has to be the end for WTE, a half fit Kabasele makes half the mistakes he does.
The whole season has been up and down. It’s clearly disappointing but we’ve won games we didn’t expect to. Some posters claimed that we had the worst PL squad ever. It all turns on some decent signings in January, IMO. What concerns me tonight is not so much the result, but that CR70 ****ed it up.
No, it was a dive right enough. He saw William had mistimed a crazy leg extended lunge that was nowhere near the ball, so just ran into it and fell over. Contact, so a pen. I presume VAR looked at it, but it was never going to get overturned.
Well, you know I don't mean that, esp if you read my previous post. I meant exactly what I wrote: Brentford were a lot better than us in midfield.
Made the most of it in the reaction, but WTE certainly caught him . . It was just so obvious what WTE was going to do
Michael Oliver gives last minute penalty as always......ha ha. We are sh1t though. We got what we deserved against a weakened Brentford side. No complaints. In terms of belief, I think tonight would have all but killed us. Very bad day at the office. Even Ranieri has to be questioned. His substitutions hurt us. No clean sheets all season. I really can't make a case of staying up. 11 defeats in 16 games tells you all you need to know. We're just not good enough.
I kind of get what Ranieri was trying to do bringing Pedro on because in fairness there were a few people saying he should’ve started in the first place, because he’d hold it up more and be a bit creative. The problem was they were pretty compact and didn’t give us much time on the ball, despite his efforts to make us a bit more offensive, being ahead and then taking a DM off meant the players just completely gave up control of midfield and it backfired massively. The players are still partially to blame because they basically gave the midfield up entirely because we had the lead.
Well, the good news I suppose is that we're somehow in a half-decent position even though we have an absolutely abysmal defence, imagine if we had even a slightly below average defence!
I’m still scratching my head. King - very good number 9 playing well and scoring goals. Dennis on fire in the wider role. Switch them over. Why?
Claudio says it’s unbelievable we didn’t get a point. We made 3 mistakes for the penalty. Brentford deserved to win. Says we were too scared. There was space but we didn’t do anything with it. Even then we should have drawn. He wants points. Cleverley was subbed because he was knackered. Pedro was ‘not so good’ when he came on. We played much better against big teams but today we were a little nervous, made so many mistakes, we passed badly sometimes and he doesn’t understand why. Meanwhile Sky points out our 58% pass completion rate tonight is the worst in the PL this season.
The frustrating thing is that our attacking options really are a decent mid-table prem standard, even with Sarr out. Why have the Pozzos always been so good at picking up cheap attacking talent and so, so bad at the defence? We've seen this over many seasons now.
He chose to go down rather than being taken out by a challenge. When a defender slides in nowhere near the ball giving you an invitation to trip over their leg, anyone would take it. Terrible play from WTE.
I think too much is put on the defence for that defeat: The midfield played a big part in losing that game.
Why do it? Any forward in football,not just the PL would have fallen over that leg with "please fall over me" attached to it. I need to be up to be on court at 8am tomorrow in freezing temperatures and I know I won't sleep as I'm so wound up about that utter **** up from all of them. Lamentably bad.
We repeatedly keep throwing away points against s*** teams. We often follow up a 1 or 2 good performances with woeful ones against the turgid teams like Brentford and Southampton. If the Pozzo's try and fix this in January with even more free agents and 15 year old Costa Rican teenagers then they need to go. They have clearly taken us as far as they can, it's just not working anymore and they are too stubborn to admit that. There is no manager in the world that could make a tune out of our defence but you bet the manager will be the one who the axe falls onto.
This sums up our lack of quality on the ball https://mobile.twitter.com/WD18Fans/status/1469435949901824005
I can tell him why. Players out of position. Dropping one of our best recent performers, expecting OAP’s to play 90 minutes when they’re shot. Hasbeens and never will be’s in vitally important positions. Thinking that JP is a central midfielder. The entire recruitment policy and youth policy of the club. I can go on Claudio, I can go on.
Because they don't GIVE A **** about the team. They care about owning the registration of players who are gonna make profits for their trading network.
Of course, but whichever way you slice it we at least get a point if it wasn’t for one of our defenders, the same defender who does the same thing every single game.
It seems the players are better at performing when nothing is actually expected of them, oh well we lost to city, never mind. but put them in a game when they need to perform and all of a sudden it’s far too hard.
For once the statistics and I agree: Our passing was abysmal - wrong choices, poor execution, again and again.
It was also a defendable 1st goal. A competent 15th place prem defence doesn't let that in. Brentford huffed and puffed but offered little quality, but we always will self destruct if you have possession in our final 3rd.
You’re all failing to see the silver lining here. Could CR70, in all conscience, select WTE again after that pen?
