Feyenoord (H) | CL | Post Match Thread

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

He lost that fight too:)

He was three points ahead and then came three sucker punches that did for him.

 

[bert38]

Brighton game, good 1st half and more of the same for the 2nd half please, same with Sporting- went to pot. Spurs match, started well - turned to total shit at the back again. Last night looked a bit more of the City we know, then the clown show took over on 75 mins. These collapses are so uncharacteristic from this squad. Wouldn't put my house on it but hope they're over now or it's going to be painful viewing the coming months.

Its simply lack of fitness-people quick to jump on Akanji, but he's clearly not fit-after 70 mins or so he can barely muster a jog, same as Ake...and they're the fittest centre halves.

 

[Tugay One Cup]

Just minimal things pissing me off throughout our games at the moment.

Last night they stole about twenty five yards on a throw in to get in a dangerous position and not a single one of our defenders complained.

They also had someone stood five yards away from Gvardiol when he was going to take a free kick and instead of making a point of it to the officials we just delayed and tried to pass it around him.

It's all about small margins and although there were far more glaring errors yesterday (like the complete and utter lack of desire to suffocate a losing team) the fact that the team isn't willing to be petty and dirty and do everything it takes to see games out is really pissing me off.

Not to go all Delph but it's the fucking basics.

 

[Roachy]

Its simply lack of fitness-people quick to jump on Akanji, but he's clearly not fit-after 70 mins or so he can barely muster a jog, same as Ake...and they're the fittest centre halves.

Fwiw I think they're good very good defenders and will look a lot better once fit.

 

[bert38]

Fwiw I think they're good very good defenders and will look a lot better once fit.

of course-top class, all of them-but they can't get fit, and there's little time for them to do so.

 

[Kippax Street 1880]

Yeah, this is why I'm not hitting the panic button. We're always a bit this way around November in almost every season, the injury situation is just so, so much worse and it's exacerbating all the little problems Pep would usually solve. If we weren't creating chances/goals at all then I'd be more concerned, but quite often it's been the case recently where we're having loads of the ball and good chances, the ball's just not ending up in the net. The defence is fragile and fatigued for obvious reasons (we had two bloody kids in defence at the end last night) but Dias coming back will sort a lot of those problems out. A proper DM comes in at some point in January and we'll be reet.

I also think at the moment we're just getting really unlucky. We dominated the second half at Spurs in the cup and had at least two chances cleared off the line. We were unlucky not to nick a point at Bournemouth. We should have been out of sight against Brighton. We should have been ahead against Spurs by the time they scored to make it 1-0 and then just when we needed a bit of luck to start a comeback Haaland hit the bar. Last night against Feyenoord doesn't happen if Dias and Walker are on the pitch but they're currently coming back from injury and we're having to manage their fitness by persisting with a lad who's just turned 20 and needs a break (Lewis) and a bag of nerves who ordinarily we still wouldn't have heard of (Pusey).

Roll on January.

Good post. Everything is going against us at the moment and it won't last. We've come to the end of a cycle with this bunch of players. It happens. We might not win anything this season. But we have fucking shit loads of money, the best manager of all time a core of great young players like Oscar, Phil, Rico, Savinho and Josko.

A spine of Ederson, Dias, Rodri and Haaland is still in their prime. Now is not the time to turn on the lads and Pep. I can slate the last few transfer windows to high heaven. I have a poor opinion of Txiki and am glad he's retiring but what the team really needs is our support through this tough patch so we can get to January and strengthen. Calling everyone shit and wanting Pep sacked like some people in this thread is ridiculous.

 

[BlueMonkey79]

Yep I feel exactly the same - I wish we would stop the "What an amazing 8 years we've had and the players deserve to be given an easier ride" theme. Pep's strength has always been you don't run or work, you don't play but one thing Ive seen in this run is players jogging back after making a mistake - not ideal, he needs to get tough again and maybe he is behind doors and some have not responded.

Sport is forever moving and you only need to look at what happened to other teams that dominated for a while and then sat back and looked to the past. I don't expect us to win all the time but you have to evolve - we did it when David, Vinny, Yaya and Ferna came to the end but suddenly we seem to have taken an eye off the future a bit especially with recruitment.

Totally agree.

We should look back at our past fondly but not keep referring to it and living in it.

That's why we are in the mess we are in!!

The recruitment team has not looked forward one bit. They have been stealing a wage, living on the past performances of the likes of Walker, Gundo, KDB, Bernie etc...

Everyone could see that the decline was gonna come at some point with this squad. They've done very little to address that!

Liverpool did it with the likes of Gerrard and Henderson. They now look like they have planned for the future by buying smart over the last few transfers windows.

January will be too late for our season unfortunately.

The only positive to take from this season is hopefully it's a huge wake up call to the money men and the transfer team to never allow this to happen again.

The net spend trophy they are obsessed with has probably cost us a few more important ones!!!

 

[Eaststander1]

As a team we are shattered. Both mentally and physically.

We have lost the fear factor. And we are in unchartered territory.

We have no leaders on the pitch anymore.

It looks to me that the players have no fight in them when things go ugly. Nobody is willing to put their foot in!!

A huge drop off in quality all over the pitch, kamikaze defending, poor game management and injuries all contributing to where we are at.

And it's not going to fix itself overnight.

This isn't an overeaction, but with the games coming up we could easily be going in to the derby with 10 games without a win!!!

Liverpool (A)
Forest (H)
Palace (A)
Juve (A)

Wheels have definitely come off.

We have lost our winning mentality, and have now replaced it with a losing mentality,

 

[Gorton_Tubster]

Yeah, this is why I'm not hitting the panic button. We're always a bit this way around November in almost every season, the injury situation is just so, so much worse and it's exacerbating all the little problems Pep would usually solve. If we weren't creating chances/goals at all then I'd be more concerned, but quite often it's been the case recently where we're having loads of the ball and good chances, the ball's just not ending up in the net. The defence is fragile and fatigued for obvious reasons (we had two bloody kids in defence at the end last night) but Dias coming back will sort a lot of those problems out. A proper DM comes in at some point in January and we'll be reet.

I also think at the moment we're just getting really unlucky. We dominated the second half at Spurs in the cup and had at least two chances cleared off the line. We were unlucky not to nick a point at Bournemouth. We should have been out of sight against Brighton. We should have been ahead against Spurs by the time they scored to make it 1-0 and then just when we needed a bit of luck to start a comeback Haaland hit the bar. Last night against Feyenoord doesn't happen if Dias and Walker are on the pitch but they're currently coming back from injury and we're having to manage their fitness by persisting with a lad who's just turned 20 and needs a break (Lewis) and a bag of nerves who ordinarily we still wouldn't have heard of (Pusey).

Roll on January.

Yeah I have noticed our luck not being good but you make your own luck with good play and we are not playing good. But those little things... Hitting the posts and crossbars, shots being somehow blocked, they all contribute to the confidence, or lack of.

With a bit more luck we might have turned things round quicker, but the bottom line is how low on self belief we are, and therefore how well we play. The bad luck just contributes.

 

[Tricky_Trev]

That's all we facking need another 2 games in a play off,no chance of top 8.

That’s if we get top 24! We’ll be around 18th or 19th after tonight, with Juventus and PSG to come.