What’s our biggest issue (on field)

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What’s our biggest weakness?

  • Goalkeeper

    Votes: 3 1.1%

  • Defence

    Votes: 152 55.7%

  • Midfield

    Votes: 115 42.1%

  • Strikers

    Votes: 3 1.1%
  • Total voters
    273
Complete clueless lack of skill and effort in all departments. Pauper owner and inept recruitment team. Otherwise fair to middlelin.
 

varkanoid said:
Overall there is no fight anymore, no backs to the wall. No laying your body on the line. Plenty of times in the past we were 2-0 down ten minutes to go and we absolutely camped in their half and sometimes drew it back.

The only one who I would say does this to a degree this season is Robinson.

Most of the others just whimper away
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Robinson is a footballer shocking pal.
 
For me, it’s not necessarily the players or a specific area that’s the issue. It’s the shape of the side when out of possession that’s the primary problem. In the 2019 season, we limited sides to absolutely fuck all in terms of chances at our goal. The biggest reason for that was because we were resolute in the way we defended areas of the pitch where sides could hurt us. We just don’t do that any more.

We get pulled all over the place leaving glaring holes that can be exploited by good players. Unfortunately, the premier league is full of them, so we get exposed on a regular basis. It’s no coincidence that we concede lots of goals from very similar positions.

I’m not saying the personnel are definitely premier league quality, I’d argue we have players that are predominantly upper championship level (Macatee excluded), but we’re not set up in a way which gives us a chance at not conceding goals. With a squad of pretty average players, we’re setting ourselves up to fail.
 
Ross Barkley would have been the signing to keep us up, currently we have no player that gets us excited when in possession.
If only we were as ambitious as the mighty Luton...😄
 
We look like we have some kind of attacking threat now under Wilder. We're still shipping goals left and right. Anel's having a shocking season when I thought he'd be one of the ones to make the step up. Trusty might be a good prospect but relying on him at this level is asking far too much. Robinson has been better than I expected but he still has mistakes in him and his best still isn't enough at Premier League level and certainly not enough to carry the others. I'd have been looking to upgrade Egan but he'd be starting if wasn't injured and it's not a close call imo.

There's issues all over the pitch but the defence as a whole has been appalling.
 
varkanoid said:
Overall there is no fight anymore, no backs to the wall. No laying your body on the line. Plenty of times in the past we were 2-0 down ten minutes to go and we absolutely camped in their half and sometimes drew it back.

The only one who I would say does this to a degree this season is Robinson.

Most of the others just whimper away
Click to expand...
Of all the days we needed Robinson on the pitch, for ability and attitude.

Plus, I'm not suggested should be cloggers, but there was one yellow card that match. Doesn't demonstrate players sweating blood for us.
 
PokerBlade said:
There's issues all over the pitch but the defence as a whole has been appalling.
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its so topsy turvy we either have a poor defence and score goals or a great defence and cant score goals.
 
a quick glance at the goals against column answers the thread title
we dont just leak goals they flood in

why is Anel captain when he doesnt even warrant a place in the team on his performances this season
our back line v Villa adopted an old fashioned sixties W formation forward line, playing villa onside throughout
you could count the professional tackles on one finger first half
the ease Villa wandered at hiking pace through a non existant defence was agonising
and we got away 3 times with 3 suicidal back passes in the first half

a midfield and forward line is irrelevant when you ship a goal on average every 18 minutes

the players could spend 2 extra days training on just tackling every week until they realise we need to do that

when we beat villa 4-1 a few seasons back Grealish spent half his game in mid air after crunching tackles
why have we abandoned the basics
 
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FifeBlade said:
Ross Barkley would have been the signing to keep us up, currently we have no player that gets us excited when in possession.
If only we were as ambitious as the mighty Luton...😄
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90% of our fans didn’t want him though. Said he was another Ravel Morrison who had done nothing in his career. Not enough pashhunn, running or fight for us simple northern folk.

I think most would be happy if we could field 11 chris morgans.
 

I think this season has made our whole team look bad, even McAtee - one of the last season favourites - has been a shadow of a shadow of his previous season performance.. Changing manager didn't bring much glory in form of points/wins altho Wilder made changes in starting 11/team selection (which was actually needed to do imo)..

It looks like we are surviving instead of playing.. Even we start fresh and motivated we tend to concede and loose the momentum and then the whole game..

I really hope that we could turn things around as we have spirtit (or at least some of it) in the players..
 
It’s a bit of everything but I would add team selection and tactics.Also we need a captain that doesn’t sulk.
 
We need a spine of strong experienced leaders, we’re lacking al over the pitch
 
I’d say the biggest issue is the way we have recruited and how we have completely ignored the lessons of history.

When we went up under Wilder in the 18/19 season, we had Duffy as a 10 from
Midfield and McGoldrick as let’s say a bona fide 10. Then one striker.

Wilder and Duffy fell out, but acknowledging the rigour of the PL he kept McGoldrick as a 10 and brought in Lundstram to strengthen midfield.

This time around, we had Berge and McAtee as 8s but McAtee often venturing into 10 territory and Ndiaye as a McGoldrick type.

So we lost Ndiaye. The logical step would have been to have McAtee behind McBurnie and then reinforce the midfield. Instead, we went completely the other way and brought in Archer who is another 9. It’s completely knackered the balance of the team.

What it needed was a player who could come from deeper like Akpom or others of that ilk or to have Macca there and strengthen the midfield.

If we’d got someone like Sam Field or another defensive midfielder to play a more robust three then we might have been thumped less.

Now we are just a mess. We have Macca and Brereton-Diaz, McBurnie who they probably want as the focal point is never fit and we’re now playing 5 at the back again leaving us short in midfield where, if we are playing 3 forward, we need three midfielders in a 4-3-3, not two solitary ones.

Whichever way you look at it, we’re far too open.

I’d have been looking at this in August for the first game, given we’d just got promoted paying 5 at the back and were unlikely to change it:

Wes
Anel Egan Robinson
Baldock Hamer Souza New Mid Lowe
McAtee
McBurnie

Now we have what feels like a squad that is imbalanced. Brereton-Diaz has to play. So you end up playing him wide left or up front. Unless you play Archer you’re throwing away your marquee signing of the season and if you put in McAtee as well, I just don’t see how you accommodate so many attacking players without inviting pressure defensively.

To be frank it’s pretty poor we’ve ended up with so many square pegs and round holes where the only way to play them invites a basketball match where we’ll get pasted. Unless we go 4-3-3 and even then it renders the Holgate signing pretty pointless!
 
You can't play 3 at the back and then Souza at this level. The 3-5-2 with whatever midfield 3 we used to have used to be progressive, back in the day when Norwood used to ping diagonals. We don't play through the lines which is what Doyle brought to us so we could run the channels with Berge and Ndiye.

When we initially played 3-5-2 with the bombing Centre back Norwood would drop into the centreback spot to allow them to get forward.

Where as the 3-5-2 used to work, we are shoe horning players in and it's a fucking mess.
 
The results are kinda what I expected.

Everyone knows we leak goals but the midfield take a HUGE amount of the blame approx 40% of the blame according to everyone on here.
 
The defence, midfield and attack? It's all relative to the division we're in. My personal opinion is that all areas are good enough for championship football but none for the Premiership.
And there hangs the issue we can't afford Premiership football.
 
Interesting that when Wilder took over in L1,he made a point of noting a lot of his recruitment policy was about signing players who had been captains for their former teams,as though leadership was a big must for him,so why make Anel captain in the PL?
 
Can understand why anyone would vote defence, they're bad but for me it's exacerbated by the fact we just can't ever really keep the ball for a meaningful amount of time.

Time in possession must be one of the lowest in premier league history meaning we basically just play their attack vs our defence. And you'd need an elite level defence to be able to hold out premier league teams.

I do think if we had a midfield capable of retaining the ball for more than 8 seconds we'd see a huge improvement in the amount of goals conceded.
 
FinBlade said:
even McAtee - one of the last season favourites - has been a shadow of a shadow of his previous season performance.
Click to expand...

Though he looked abysmal in his first few Championship games, constantly bullied off the ball.

At times he looks similar in the PL, though through not being able to beat the better quality players.
 
I noticed last season that when teams really pressed us we lost all semblance of footballing ability, resorting to hoof.
Though as we were winning more often than not people were content.

This season opposing teams are much better at pressing us, hoof merely results in giving them the ball back.

Last season we were able to press for longer periods due to the lower quality of opposition.
 
Biggest issue is the netting in the goal they have had to be strengthened and it’s not known if they will survive the onslaught for the rest of the season 🙈
 

The defence is still the big issue and Wilder deciding we didn't need much of a midfield v Villa.

The man had too many Peroni's or Birra Moretti's Friday night to think that was the right line up.
 
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