I'm one of those that tend to be critical. I'm 72, retired, and I think of SUFC all day. I am totally invested in my team and my club.
I get that some of us are deemed to 'whingers' but we all need to take a dose of reality. I want my team to win every game, win every title, win every cup, etc
I also have the right to criticize playing style. Our style and technical game plan is based on ball possession. That's fine but, as we all know, ball possession needs to be turned into creativity and penetration.
For us, that barely happens and tonight it caught up with us. The number of times we played ball possession across our defensive line and then back to Cooper was ridiculous and stopped our forward play. We signed a CF, decided to play him, and then never got the ball to him because we were incapable of doing that.
Why did we start Cannon when our tactic was ball possession. I simply don't get it.
That's the complaint from us complainers. Its been like this all season and we got away with it but today we were out-coached, out-thought, and all Hull had to do was to put 11 players behind the ball and protect their goal.
If we continue to play this way, we will never get BBD or Cannon on the ball so why buy them? Shouldn't we change the tactics to accommodate these players? Today we did not. That's why I am frustrated.
I think I need a break from this!
toledo
I completely get where you’re coming from BUT you need to put it in context.
Start of the season after the PL horror show, we had to tighten up defensively. Despite huge constraints in the summer window, Wilder brought in Cooper, Burrows and Souttar, tweaked the formation and solved the problem. We were water-tight and could win games through the individual brilliance of players like Hamer, Rak-Sakyi and Campbell.
Fluency and clinical attacking could come later … Arblaster and Souza gave us a perfect central combination to build around. We lacked attacking depth but again we knew that would come.
Campbell coming into the team stepped us up a gear and going into the derby game we were looking well set and ready to kick on despite us all knowing that the squad was thin. Luckily Wilder was getting a great tune out of youngsters like Seriki, Peck and Brooks where needed.
Suddenly within the space of 2 or 3 weeks, we lose Arblaster, Souza, Campbell, Rak-Sakyi, Moore, Seriki. The squad is so thin we have to play half-fit players and others out of position. This huge challenge hits us right before the toughest fixtures of the season.
So you’re right that we’ve not looked fluent or fully in our stride yet … but somehow against the odds we’re in the top two. Players are slowly returning from injury and we’re finally backing the manager with money for new signings.
Tonight’s performance was awful but there are huge mitigating factors and we’re brilliantly placed to kick on when more players recover fully and new ones settle in.
We do now have the attacking talent to start playing with more threat… but it may take a few more weeks to get them all working together.
Keep the faith- it sounds like you’ve earned the right to moan as a 72 year Blade … but I’m sure you can also appreciate what a gem of a manager we have and what he can still achieve for us now that he may be backed by decent owners for once in our history.
COYRAWW
second wasn’t much better.
