Brentford (H) | Post-Match Thread

[ONTHERUNWITHTHAKSIN]

Rubbish

 

[WesthoughtonJohn]

Every brilliant team have off days.
Every excellent manager makes errors of judgement.
Collectively rubbish. Only players scoring above a 5, for me, Ederson and Stones - I'm saying that based on the ability of the players out there
Pep - sorry you get a 3 (at most). You must have been able to see changes were required earlier, it just wasn't working/happening and needed something fresh.
(Special mention, for the second home PL game, to the officials. Truly awful, but not an excuse)

 

[cookster]

No. A team with shithouse tactics won. Aided by the ref and a couple of our players having a shocker - Cancelo, Akanji in particular - and Gundo looking knackered.

Deluded, better team won by employing tactics that suited a 100m squad against 1Bn squad.

 

[Fordyboy46]

To be fair I don't think we could have had any complaints if they'd won 3 or 4 one

 

[blue whippet]

Sure everything that could be said will have already been said about that shit show, but the one overriding issue that drives me and my lad to distraction is the lack of pace in our side, it’s quite shocking how slow so many of our players are.

That said, in a world cup year where so many players are preoccupied, then 32 points from first 14 games is just about acceptable.

Pep needs to give his head a wobble about making subs, no excuse again for that today.

Agree with both those points. Towards the end of the game, think it was still 1-1, Rodri had a chance to break but jogged up to the centre circle with the ball at a pace I could have kept up with. Sometimes, quite often today, we had players just stood with the ball. That and Pep's use of subs are immensely frustrating.

 

[Brewster's millions]

Gundog was watching Toney move past him on the last goal and claiming for offside when the cross that came in was from the guy 10 yards in front of them.

Worst performance I have seen for a very long time.

All on Pep. What the fuck was he watching.

Akanji was comical, beaten to every header and positionally all over the shop. Soft as shit.

Phil was crap again wide left, goal notwithstanding.

As for putting him at left-back with Bernie for the set-pieces in the dying minutes, the writing was on the wall.

Gundo should have been hooked in the first half, him and Rodri rarely work against teams who chase down.

The smart move seemed to be Grealish on, Phil to the right, Bernie inside.

Special mention for Cancelo, who spent the entire afternoon being an absolute shithouse and feigning injury. As for his penalty dive, why? The guy would have a clear shot across goal on his left foot.

Kudos to Eddie, Laporte, Bernie and Stones. They played for the team, the rest played within themselves or for themselves.

What a shit result.

The performance today was so poor that the lack of subs can’t realistically be attributed to poor judgement on Guardiola’s behalf, as a fucking blind man could see that so many players were miles off it.

Can only assume he was making a point about something, as if ever there was a case for making all five subs, today was the day.

We’ve been poor for weeks now and Guardiola isn’t getting the best out of the team. Personally I think that we’ve gone backwards this season which is quite a feat after adding Haaland to the team. Lillo leaving could be a bigger loss than was appreciated at the time - defensively we’ve looked miles worse since his departure - and we may need a stronger assistant manager to curb Guardiola’s stubbornness.

 

[I'm Blue]

So you think this is NOT obviously inside the box? I cannot see how anyone could imagine at least SOME of the ball is over the line here.

They had this view in stockley park and just cheated IMO.


View attachment 60795

I don’t think that’s inside but it looks bang on the line.
Now correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t on the line class as a penalty?

 

[Fordyboy46]

No. A team with shithouse tactics won. Aided by the ref and a couple of our players having a shocker - Cancelo, Akanji in particular - and Gundo looking knackered.

The better team won comfortably

 

[Eric Hitchmough]

Absolutely.

Let’s have a bit more detail then other than “all on Pep” that.

Fair request. I’ll start with “why no subs until the dying minutes?”

 

[Shaffer92]

This could have been any game from 16/17 season, Pep struggled with his set up from the very start and he did nothing to change it. Long and high balls were killing us, we just don't have control we used to have and we are just allowing too many shots and chances each game. Every time camera was on Pep he was doing his usual 'play wide, stretch the pitch', but there was no overlapping, no overloading, nothing at all. Haaaland when getting chances is lethal, but when squeezed like today and with barely any movement, makes us playing with a player down. We barely press, we are not even close being efficient closing passing lines and MF positioning looks fucked up. Is it caused by Haaland being up front instead of Jesus and Sterling when in defending phase, Lillo leaving, I have no clue? But Pep has some times to think about it and good luck trying to get it through to the players desiccated after the WC. Really poor attitude and this tactical approach finally caught with us, just another of too many games when we tried to play only one half or coming from behind . The scary thing is that apart from Liverpool, we didn't play any really strong team and it is going to be fun watching us in 2023.

I think it is down to Haaland being upfront vs Jesus. Jesus was basically another midfielder for us as he dropped so deep and pressed so hard. We have less control now as you said thus exposing our real lack of pace in the midfield.