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sgncfc

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Everything posted by sgncfc

  1. I don't see anyone coming up with a bid big enough to tempt us at the moment - whilst he is important to us, the 20 or so magic minutes we get out of him in every other game isn't anywhere near enough for him to make the step up to the EPL at the moment, and certainly not enough for a £15m plus bid. However, if it were to come in at £15m plus, we should absolutely snap their hands off. As someone else has said on here, if we could get Szmodics and Chair in for that I'd be very happy.
  2. Signed a new long term deal in July so he's hardly surprised by Wagner's coaching and tactics. "He needs to get away for his own sake" is a bit of a stretch 6 months into a 5 year deal.
  3. I raced against John Barnes in the fathers race at our kids nursery. I lost. Bryan Gunn asked me the time at a hotel in Watford, and I sat opposite Chris Martin at a table by the burger restaurant at Winter Wonderland a few years back. Think he was playing at Fulham at the time. He was with his girlfriend/wife(?) and a child who he spent a while shouting at as he chugged two or three pints. Elite athletes eh? I also shared lunch with Gary Lineker at a golf day and played with Peter Shilton. I lost (there's a theme here....) Sat next to Alan Ball at a sports dinner when he was Portsmouth manager. Great bloke, very friendly. Saw Alan Hansen, Kenny Dalglish and Gary McAllister at the Ryder Cup at the Belfry. We won.
  4. The ref was actually very good. Got pretty much everything right - Dimi was a flailing arm not an elbow, so a yellow; the divers were warned first then booked. Hull had a lot of pressure but not many chances - we had more, better ones and apart from the two or three pretty regulation Gunn saves and one super one they didn't do much for the home team with 65% possession. Actually, Hull reminded me of us a bit.....would be happy to get them in the playoffs.
  5. Delap was comfortably the best player on the pitch when we played them at home and Carvalho plays in a different position so all is not lost and hopefully they'll spend at least the first game trying to get used to a new system.
  6. This is the crux of it for me. We don't actually know how good most of our players are because they are either not playing in their best position or are being asked to play differently in their favourite position.
  7. Yes you have missed something. He's scored 15, including 10 for Fulham in the Championship 2 years ago.
  8. 3-1 defeat. Huge respect to everyone going to the game.
  9. I don't see any way we make the playoffs whatever we do in this window, short of changing half the first choice team which we can't do. To be honest, even then Wagner would probably mess it up. Anyway the last thing we need is promotion with the state the club is in. We just need to get to 50 points, then play the youngsters, get rid of Wagner and his band of incompetents and plan for next year with, hopefully, someone who knows what they're doing.
  10. Not disappointed to see Hwang go - his goal at Watford was good and the finish against QPR was good but his general play was pretty forgettable. I see the comments on Idah. For the last 5 or 6 years we've all known he has the talent to be a player, but his lack of progress has been a huge disappointment. As his game is currently, he doesn't start in a Championship team as a striker. Given that very simple fact, getting him out on loan at League One level would make perfect sense if only to see if development is possible. If we need a squad striker, promote one from the U21s to sit on the bench and get 15 minutes off it instead of him - we all know Barnes and Sargent are going to start. Kamara has clearly progressed at Portsmouth, as Mumba did at Plymouth. It would be interesting to see what Idah could do at that level.
  11. Absolutely. I can see why people prefer Dimi, but for me McCallum is the player who is more exciting and has more room to improve. He was (apparently) better against Southampton and is maybe benefitting from being more involved. It wasn't a game I saw, thankfully. I would also just caveat everything with the phrase - "it's hard to tell who is and who isn't a good player under this coach because they're mostly being asked to do things they aren't comfortable with". I think that covers just about every position apart from one centre back and the goalkeeper.
  12. Giannoullis is a poor defender, frequently out of position. His only saving grace is his change of pace when going forward, but that's not why he's a left back. Lightweight in the tackle if he makes one, which is infrequent, and rolls around like he's been shot far too often. I'd play MaCallum every time in preference. Idah should be a good player. The goal against Bristol City showed, for the first time at 22 years old, what he could be doing regularly. His other 5 were, I think, all tap ins from mistakes - decent reactions, but that's not enough for 5 year contracts and regular starts. As a striker he hasn't a clue what positions to take up or how to link play, other than occasionally from wide and we already have enough others who can do that better. He is seldom in the right position in the box, rarely finds space or a spare yard and I can't remember the last time he took an instinctive shot from more than 5 yards which was on target. He seems to have learned nothing from being in the same squad as Pukki. He is the Johan Elmander of the current team.
  13. Personally I'd try to copy Brighton's system. They have made Dunk an England CB by playing (largely) a 5-2-2-1 but they interchange so much it moves into 3-5-2 or 4-3-3 when needed. But you have to have a player or two can track and tackle - I don't know if that is a CDM, but it's a role for a player we don't have. Gibbs is probably the closest but Wagner thinks he's a striker. Mclean is the next best but without him at CB we lack any kind of ability to move the ball. We have to find a way to get our best players in the team - that doesn't include Hernandez, Fassnacht, Gibson, Giannoulis or Idah in my opinion. They may have great stats, but their contributions in reality are simply woeful.
  14. Our next manager should be someone most of us have ever heard of - a young coach from somewhere in Europe or South America with a record of playing good football; someone we can get behind because he's trying to do the right things the right way, using players who can improve.
  15. Everyone is a tactical genius when they look on from outside a club. Man Utd are a basket case from top to bottom with a supporter base which hasn't been onside since the takeover. They pay stupid, stupid money for bang average players and expect to win every week under a coach who isn't supported, whoever it is. A new coach will not make a difference to them in their current state. Putting a CDM in front of two carthorses doesn't turn them into thoroughbreds. Both Villa and Forest are solid clubs with fanatical support and everyone pulling in the same direction. You would have to hope that Forest have some good players amongst the 65 or so in their "first team" squad. By contrast, Villa buy very well - they pay fair prices for talented players who can improve. A bit like Brighton (which is where Rowe should go, if he does leave us). The lesson is that unless the club, it's supporters and it's policy is all onside with an agreed way of playing it doesn't really matter who the coach is. There are many similarities between United in their league and us in ours, though we have got there by self-inflicting wounds and a bored and bitter former Sporting Director rather than a change of ownership and being bled dry - we don't know what Attanasio's intentions are yet though so he could still be a nightmare rather than a dream. Sacking Wagner achieves nothing unless we address that bigger issue - that is Knapper's job, and it won't be sorted in a few weeks, but he can start in January by getting rid of some of our own carthorses and buying some promise.
  16. It's surely way too early to judge Knapper. He is a month into a huge job. Those of us who have seen Wagner's teams for 12 months are in no doubt that he and his coaches are now completely clueless. I can't recall such a tactically inept and mentally weak team since Bryan Gunn was in charge. The set up is always useless unless we score first, and even then we have no ability to close a game down. We're constantly relying on bits of magic to get points rather than any kind of plan, and against good teams those bits of magic are much harder to pull off. I genuinely don't blame the players; I think they are busting their guts trying to play a system which leaves them questioning where they should be. Our full backs in particular are completely confused about what they should be doing and where they should be. We don't tackle; we don't close down space; we don't stop crosses and we are always outnumbered in midfield. These are very basic tactical issues which are ingrained in footballers from the age of 6. But we don't do them. So we are trying to re-educate players who are not particularly good, on the job. We have a coach who drops Rowe (a weapon) in favour of freshening up the wide area with Fassnacht (clearly not a weapon) and plays Gibson (who can't pass) at CB instead of the rejuvenated Mclean (who can) so weakening both the CB pairing and the midfield at the same time. We should not and will not make the playoffs whatever Knapper does now. The issue is how quickly we can get to 50 points and not get relegated. Then hopefully Knapper will make the change and begin the planning for next year under a young, ambitious coach using some of what we have plus some young, ambitious players. I'd like to think we will get rid of Barnes, Baath, Duffy, Giannoulis, Fassnacht, Long, Gibson, Hernandez etc. There must a few million in wages saved amongst that lot.
  17. There's a lot of talk about "breaking through the lines". We don't even have any lines for our opponents to break through. Ipswich just strolled through our midfield most of the match, then came up against a resolute back 5. They wouldn't have equalised at all if Barnes hadn't tried to help out. At the start of the season, we defended from the front (Sargent and Barnes being crucial to that) - Idah and Hwang are much less effective at that - but even then once past our forwards our midfield "line" was non-existent. That's what I find so frustrating - our issues seem to be so patently obvious, yet our coaches continue to not address them.
  18. Stoke are perhaps the ultimate example of a megarich owner making absolutely no difference whatsoever. And I suspect Schumacher will also make no difference whatsoever. Like many others, they need to re-invent their recruitment policy.
  19. Any forum will eventually attract a few posters who don't play by the rules. The mods job is to kick them off, as quickly as possible. If you don't have mods then sometimes it degenerates, as it has on here on occasion. But surely, you can also moderate your own experience. I just don't look at those threads which fall into arguments. I have also blocked some posters who gave me what I considered to be unreasonable abuse for holding a different view ( this includes some supposedly "respected" regular posters) because I have no interest in their opinions any longer, and I have no respect for them. Unlike LDC, I have had no mental health issues but I can understand why you would because some people have no concept of the impact of what they are saying. Personally my rule has always been - would I say this to the person's face in the pub? I think I agree with most posters on here much of the time, but not always; just like that chat over a pint. Some people don't rate Kenny Maclean as a footballer - I think they're wrong. I have the same arguments every week! That's the way of the world; people see different things and when you introduce passion and commitment they say things they shouldn't when they are protected by distance on a keyboard. A first step to a fairer, friendlier forum would be to ban "in match" threads - some of the comments then are just outrageous.
  20. I've never understood the Steve Cooper love in. Never thought his teams were particularly good to watch or effective. Not sure how much impact he had on recruitment but a lot of rubbish has arrived at Forest for a lot of money. They still don't have the players they need to be able to keep clean sheets in the EPL and I suspect they'll be spending heavily again in January. Lots of players there we could look at though.
  21. I don't think we need much at all to make our plan A team quite good. Assuming Sargent and Hwang recover well, we're well covered up front. The Kenny at CB experiment appears to have legs (so credit to Wagner for that) and alongside Duffy (who was excellent on Saturday) or Hanley that weakness should be fixed. Wide areas are sorted - I don't like Fassnacht or Hernandez as back ups but they're here and they're not going anywhere. Fullbacks are a problem for me - I'd like to see a loan in both positions as none of our current options are good enough. I'd let Giannoulis and MaCullum go as neither can defend or have good enough engines to be wingbacks. We have the creativity in midfield in Nunez and Sara. We have to get them further forward. Whether that means a CDM or a more defensively minded CM is debatable. But we need someone - Gibbs may be the future here, but he's not there yet. I liked the Barnes signing at the time and I still think he can bring something we don't have.
  22. There seem to be two issues on this thread - is our squad good enough to make the playoffs and if they do what is the point of winning them? To be fair, these were discussion points before the season even started. What is the point of competing to win a league when being promoted is completely pointless? The only way it isn't pointless is if Mr A chooses to finance a splurge in the transfer market - always possible I guess, but why would he? So yes, being promoted is pointless. On that basis, our best season is to lose in the PO final, but we wouldn't want to lose having got there would we? So should we lose in the SF's? Maybe, unless we're playing Ipswich. But if we do get up to 6th we're not going to want to lose are we? So maybe 7th is the best option. But then we lose half our income next season whereas if we do get promoted we can reset again and maybe keep Rowe, Sara, Gunn, Gibbs, Nunez and Sargent as the basis of a half decent team. Even when we come straight back we get two more years of parachute money and it's two years of developing Kamara, Tomkinson, Hills, Ryes, Aboh and Fisher etc. That's where we are. That's our position in the football pyramid. So is our squad good enough to get us to 6th. Yes, it is. On song, with confidence and belief we could make 5th or 6th. A lot depends on these "exciting" January plans. A couple of decent Arsenal loanees (Smith Rowe? You're having a laugh!) would help. What I'd really love is for us to win the PO's and then just announce that we're not going to try and compete because it's pointless; because the football model is broken so that we force the powers that be to at least recognise the problem. But they won't of course - they'll just let Talksport badmouth us again. Maybe I'd really rather finish 7th and have a happy year watching 1p5wich get stuffed week after week instead of us.
  23. I just can't see Wagner and his "coaching" staff coping with McKenna's. A sound defeat I think, hopefully no more than 3-0. Wagner will then say we played well and that Fassnacht in particular had a good game, despite him ball-watching for the last two goals and that Hernandez was always a threat. He will go on to say that Gibbs is the best striker on the books and Maclean was again outstanding at centreback. And they still won't sack him.
  24. It's their turn. It's just the way football goes. Ours will come again.
  25. The number of players we have moved on for decent money over the years who have failed to progress is really quite amazing. As for Godfrey, I suspect this is just Dyche playing the market again to generate some offers in January for a player he doesn't rate. He knows CB's - he was one, plus he sussed Gibson out in a couple of games. I wouldn't have Godfey back if they paid us to take him. Getting £20m plus for him was genius PR at work. Like Omo, he isn't actually a very good defender.
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