West Brom (h) post-match thread

Kippax77 said:
Bollocks. We purposely try being famous by not breaking our record transfer fee of 65 million, regardless of Covid. We dream of players like Haaland etc but we will bauk at the price, for what?
If we don't want to spend cash then we need to show faith in our youth policy, but we have a manager that doesn't seem to even have faith in his bench.
Sterling Rodri etc starting every game for him even though its clear they are the cause of our dismise
And dont even dare say there's no dismise cos this team is going fucking backwards.
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Given the times that are in it at present we spent a considerable amount in the window just past we also seemed prepared to shell out a substantial amount to acquire the services of a certain Argentinian. Money likewise will be put aside to replace the legend known as Kun Aquero.
The failure of the manager to utilise talent coming through the academy is a separate issue and one which no doubt will continue to divide opinion.
Team selection and the recent poor performances of late is something I am very concerned about and express this concern regularly on the forum.
I can't and won't disagree with your view that the team is going backwards but I do contend that the point I made in the post above is valid and cannot be dismissed as "bollocks".
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
Who is playing the ball through their lines, our two CDMs?

Do opponents get pulled out of position by static attackers?

I don't disagree with what you're saying, but we aren't playing the game you describe. It might be what we're trying to do but we aren't actually doing it. It's not more effective than not -- it's more ineffective, which is why we have more combined draws and losses than wins in the Prem.
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I don't disagree either. Very frustrating season so far, but....

what I meant was that our style of play used to be "more effective than not".
We've regularly faced parked bus teams for many a season and if you look of our past records and achievements, I'd say that it illustrates that our tactics have been "more effective than not".

The reasons (or my opinions of the reasons) why it's not working NOW are what I was trying to outline in my original post. Last night we faced a bank of 6 across their backline (who didn't really break formation for the full 90 minutes) with a deep line of 4 in front of it. An entire team hell bent on defending. And we see this sort of thing with depressing regularity these days. More organised and less ambitious defences (due to my original reasoning) result in less dangerous spaces for our attackers to run into. They may appear to be static (they're not) but that's because there's no space to run into. Total gridlock!

The attacking qualities of our team are being blunted and it's very, very frustrating to watch as there doesn't appear to be an easy solution. Pace and urgency might work but fatigue is a major player this season so we can't use that tactic every week and unfortunately we face packed, organised defences every week so it's not really a feasible option.
 
I'm Blue said:
I’m still in a really really bad mood.
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I am too and normally when we put in a crap performance I moan, and get over it, and then I start looking forward to the next match, usually with either optimism or dread. But this time it's just resigned acceptance that against Soton we're going to see exactly the same set up, and play exactly the same way. And it's boring. And it's not getting results.
 
Craig said:
They had 8/9 back then but look how much quicker we moved the ball and the width we had. Look at the left side we had Sane hugging the left touch line, Delph who obviously no superstar but someone who could play one and 2 touch to Silva or Sane. Half the time it takes Mendy 3 touches to get it out of his feet. Teams parked the bus just as much but we played much quicker, had better players and weren't scared to take chances. Scouse win tonight and we're 8 behind. Good luck closing that gap again given how we have been playing for 18 months now.
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You're spot on about Delph compared to Mendy. I recall the match away at Chelsea in Peps second season a 1-0 win with De Bruyne scoring a screamer. It was good as anything seen in the prem. Conti and Chelsea were run ragged. And Delph was key because of his quick passing, one or two touches, pass and move. Too many players cant do that quick enough now.
 
Tommy_Catons_Perm said:
You're spot on about Delph compared to Mendy. I recall the match away at Chelsea in Peps second season a 1-0 win with De Bruyne scoring a screamer. It was good as anything seen in the prem. Conti and Chelsea were run ragged. And Delph was key because of his quick passing, one or two touches, pass and move. Too many players cant do that quick enough now.
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Well we have the best training facilities in world football, maybe we should use it.
 
Every time Mendy plays its like playing with 10 men, the same with Mahrez. I don't understand Pep with these two.
The first half was dreadful, I thought he would change it at half time by taking Mendy off, and putting another striker/winger on, as West Brom were not going to catch us on the break, they were no threat. When no change was made, I thought Pep would change on 60 minutes, but still no change, when the change came it was too late. The only positive I got from the game was that we hammered them for the final 15 minutes, we could and should have scored, but there was not enough time, but that final effort was good, everyone on the pitch put a lot of effort into that final period, and looked a lot more like we should be. Pep at fault, he also needs to take a good look at those two.
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
I am too and normally when we put in a crap performance I moan, and get over it, and then I start looking forward to the next match, usually with either optimism or dread. But this time it's just resigned acceptance that against Soton we're going to see exactly the same set up, and play exactly the same way. And it's boring. And it's not getting results.
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Would you still be in such a mood if the Gundogan or the Jesus headers had gone in?
 
What you mean if city played didnt hit them with pin point accuracy directly at the goallies feet for an easy save? Thats interesting .....PEP!
 
GoatersLeftShin said:
Tonight was absolutely indefensible, a truly awful performance and one which has summed up every single problem we have as a club.

Points dropped to another 1-shot-1-goal team. Suckerpunched for probably the 15th time now in the last couple of years.

It was obvious what WBA were going to do - sit back in numbers and defend. If we'd have got an early goal it would've been a different story but we just start - and finish - so slowly it rarely happens now. In fact, t's hard to tell what minute we're in watching the game as from minute 1 to 90 it's slow, predictable and dull.

It was clear the game was drifting from the 30th minute and I didn't know what Walker or Aguero - both 30+ year olds - were supposed to do in the last 15 minutes against a tightly packed defence that the others couldn't do. Bizarre.

We made them look like 10 Kompany's at the back. I cannot understand why we needed to play Rodri and Gundogan, Dias and Ake against them. It's just not needed and I've said it before but against the bus-parkers, we should tempt them out - take Rodri out (or Gundogan or Ake) and put Bernardo on and see if the extra space tempts them out. I've said a million times that playing more than one of Rodri, Gundogan and Fern is criminal as they kill our game. The number of backward and crab passes tonight would have made Ray Wilkins proud.

Cancelo doesn't fit into our system and needs to be moved on. He's not a patch on Walker and every time he plays, he proves this. He's not good enough for us. Mendy is useless and I don't see any point in playing him - if he's better than our under-21 left backs, fuck them off as well as they aren't good enough.

Pumping crosses in against their big lads was as pointless as trying to thread balls between their back 7 - impossible. I don't rate the lad but if Mahrez is going to play then he should be able to cause WBA problems simply because he game is about close control and dribbling. If he's not going to get a game against WBA there's no fuckin point playing him against the rest of the league.

I find it very, very hard to defend Pep tonight. I'm a massive fan of his but he's not learning anything from these games. This has been going on for too long now. He has sorted the defence out but he has one month - January - to get this side sorted. I've a horrific feeling the club is waiting for Messi to join. That's why the contract extension has been signed as he needs Messi to win the CL.

I'll say this again to finish, but we've got to look at some of our players who are either not good enough (Mendy, Mahrez, Cancelo, Zinchenko), not performing (Bernardo), ageing (Walker) or saleable (KdB, Sterling, Stones this week) and think about selling some to bring in big money to totally revamp this side. Honestly, for me there's no player who's unavailable - we need a war chest to bring in top, top players.
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Everyone saying start Foden. He starts Foden who had a poor game. Everyone saying play Sterling on the right. He plays Sterling on the right - assist for the goal but nowhere near the level required. Play Gundogan - he does and yes he was the best of a bad bunch but he also missed a sitter near the end which we needed to go in. Pep carries the can and no one played last night. He needs to get them fired up and playing with speed and intensity again. Shooting from distance is clearly not a strength of Rodri's so tell him to cut it out. Embarrassing for a professional footballer to be so poor at shooting xx
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
No. Would you be as happy if Gundogan had blazed over the bar instead of scoring? Stupid post.
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It isn't a stupid post at all,it perfectly illustrates the fine margins and in some cases the overreaction.

Of course there is much work to do,but,amongst the frustration,there was some good football played last night and i'm pointing out that with a tad more luck we would have won by several goals.
 
stan bowles said:
Everyone saying start Foden. He starts Foden who had a poor game. Everyone saying play Sterling on the right. He plays Sterling on the right - assist for the goal but nowhere near the level required. Play Gundogan - he does and yes he was the best of a bad bunch but he also missed a sitter near the end which we needed to go in. Pep carries the can and no one played last night. He needs to get them fired up and playing with speed and intensity again. Shooting from distance is clearly not a strength of Rodri's so tell him to cut it out. Embarrassing for a professional footballer to be so poor at shooting xx
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totally agree about Rodri row Z everytime absolute rubbish.
 
Tommy_Catons_Perm said:
You're spot on about Delph compared to Mendy. I recall the match away at Chelsea in Peps second season a 1-0 win with De Bruyne scoring a screamer. It was good as anything seen in the prem. Conti and Chelsea were run ragged. And Delph was key because of his quick passing, one or two touches, pass and move. Too many players cant do that quick enough now.
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Where have you been ? I've stood up for Delphinio playing out of position and I get support 3 years to late ;-)
 
I think most of our attacking problems would be solved if we get a decent striker such as Haaland
Regardless of the number of chances, we need to be effective in the box and that is not going to happen with the current squad..
 
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