Petriix

Our system is working fine. We should be 3 or 4 goals to the good. The problem is the lack of quality in the final third. The recruitment is what's letting us down.

If only he'd been playing for the last few months.

I was right behind that free kick. Absolute beauty. We've missed Vrancic since he went; none of the other number 10 types have ever quite had his class. He almost single handedly sealed that title with goals against Shef Wed, Blackburn and Villa IIRC.

I can't be the only one who thinks our midfield is way better with Kenny at centre back, can I? As for Onel, he's proven to be far below the level required. He shouldn't be anywhere near the squad.

There's actually another one who worked at Roys in Bowthorpe. We should get him in.

No mention of our defending then? We have clearly decided to (correctly) focus on having a coherent underlying defensive structure when out of possession. The brainless pressing has been binned with our wide players in particular starting far deeper. We were happy to allow Preston the ball in their half and were far more compact than usual. It worked. Mostly. We only had one moment that I recall where we were left exposed on our right with both winger and fullback ahead of the ball. Otherwise Preston had one decent chance from a free kick and hit the bar following Gun's error. Ok, we failed to score, but we had a number of good chances and really should have taken one of them. Aside from having recruited so badly that we're relying on Hernandez and Gibbs to take those chances when it's pretty apparent that they simply aren't good enough for this level, we did a decent enough job yesterday. Things on the pitch are far better than they were six weeks ago. People need to appreciate the improvement rather then getting hung up on the result. Stopping the rot was the all-important first step.

Well I thought he was excellent at center back today, aside from one mental run where he ended up by the left corner flag at the wrong end of the pitch. And our midfield was far more coherent too. Nunez did really well in the deep lying playmaker role; it's a shame the movement in front of him was so poor. With a little bit more quality than Hernandez and Gibbs I'm sure we'd be winning games like that in style. Let's see what January brings.

A pretty fair reflection of the game: a lack of quality in the final third but an otherwise pretty dominant performance. The main thing is that we suddenly don't have any massive holes in our midfield; far more positives than negatives. A clean sheet!

The thing that I think you actually missed was the wonder of Kenny McLean as a central defender. It gives us a competent ball carrier who can (sometimes) pick a decent pass. Crucially it gives him the clear message that he should be fulfilling his defensive duties primarily and only marauding forwards with discretion. I think people forget just how many of those lovely goals that Pukki and Buendia finished off stemmed from a well hit pass from the back. Kenny gives us something we've been missing from the defensive line. The biggest bonus is that it means we don't have those positional errors in the midfield area. Will Wagner stick with this winning move?

This is flawed logic amongst a few 'experts' (apparently including Wagner). If you play midfielders who don't have the right defensive instincts and positional awareness then they will be prone to leaving gaping holes for the opposition to exploit. Our 'tactical issues' ultimately amount to players not recognising and reacting to the danger. While some of the more simplistic arguments simply call for 'a CDM', what people like me are asking for is someone to play the exact role that McLean has been playing but with better defensive skills. Then Kenny can play the role Sara has been doing and Sara can play at 10, thus utilising their natural instincts rather than continuing the 'square pegs in round holes' that most of us can see.

Imagine if simply swapping Gibson and McLean solved our midfield problems...

That's about the best I could come up with. I'd be tempted to put Rowe up front and Fassnacht on the right but Wagner's not ever going to do that (nor is Sara playing at 10, even though it seems like an obvious thing to try). What I found though was we don't have a decent defensive midfielder in the squad. I want to keep McLean at centre back and pair Nunez with an enforcer type in the middle, but that's not possible.

Exactly. We all witnessed Farke trying to get a song out of that choir, growing increasingly desperate before ultimately reverting to the closest he could achieve to the previous season's first choice team. It wasn't possible and he was doomed to fail. I'm not sure I totally agree with the 'opportunity missed' idea. I regard the two promotions under Farke as a huge success in terms of style and enjoyment; an opportunity taken as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure Premier League survival was actually within our grasp at either attempt. In hindsight, I'd prefer to have not bothered spending any money at all, or just signed some promising youngsters and tried to continue the yo-yo for as long as possible. The disappointment for me comes from letting the positives we did have slip away while chasing something that might not have existed. On the other hand I don't think we're a million miles away from turning things around again. McLean the centre back excites me.

The trouble is that the failure stems from the summer before Farke was sacked, hence the inability of either manage since to turn it around. Keeping Farke wouldn't necessarily have been a great deal better given how the squad was mismanaged. Farke needed better, more technical players than he was given; more Vrancic than Hernandez. With that squad I'm not sure it was really possible to go back. The bridges were already burned.

But I'm fairly certain that Webber and his disciples within the club genuinely believed that the players and manager were good enough to bounce back straight away. They still seem to think it was just bad luck with injuries etc that have put us in this artificially low position. While there's such a disparity between the reality we can see on the pitch and the rhetoric coming from the club, that can only lead to resentment and a sense of 'disconnect'. The noises from Attanasio and Knapper are far more realistic and therefore easier to connect with. The weird regard for Webber and the failure to acknowledge his failures of the last three years is the biggest issue for me. It's hard to move on while people are still singing his praises.

I think there's plenty to digest in terms of the lineup, tactics, substitutions and overall performance. For a start, I think McLean and Sara both played better defensively with clear roles. In a weird way I think Kenny is a better central defender than he is a defensive midfielder; he understands that he's not supposed to be marauding forward and tends to be more disciplined. Sara was also far more restrained than usual and it helped us to be a little tighter at the back. Onel did nothing to further his case today. Still no end product (the woodwork is off-target). The wide midfield positions are still tactically problematic. Rowe still gets run into the ground then substituted. At this point it's it's all pretty fascinating, especially against the backdrop of the AGM.

Hi Mrs Idah!

The 20% see a shambolic starting 11, bizarre substitutions and a very lucky win against the run of play having barely been in the game. Delia and the 80% see a brilliant away performance with a threadbare squad, keeping it tight and hitting them on the break for the win. 3 wins from 4 is a decent return to form after the awful run beforehand. If you were asking for Wagner to turn it around, surely this is what you wanted? Personally I'm a bit confused. I was already drafting a post about our inability to hurt teams on the brake. I've been a vociferous critic of McLean and Idah yet here we have them combining to create the winner; quite brilliant from Idah to use his physical strength to get to the ball without fouling his man then a composed finish. Football eh?

Either I'm totally stupid and don't understand the game, or Wagner's changes are pretty much the opposite of what we actually need to do. I look at the Watford game and think: Onel is the weak link Sara and McLean need to be higher up the pitch We need better cover in central midfield. Wagner decides to: Play Hernandez and drop Fassnacht Put McLean in defence and play Sara at 6 Play Gibbs as a striker!? With a few tweaks, this could actually be an ok team, but these tactics are mental.

It's exactly the same today. Decent positions are not being turned into chances. Simply retaining the ball and probing for openings is beyond this group because they can't string the passes together. Movement is poor, touches are bad and it's clear confidence is low. Something really has to change.

I've seen enough glimpses of his system clicking to believe that, with the right tweaks, it could work. Tweaks to both the squad and tactics. Surely Knapper will be instigating some changes which we will need to allow time to unfold before we can judge. I really don't think there's much to be gained by acting now over waiting until Christmas. This season is a write off whatever happens.

It's very much a 'young person' idea that it's easy to immediately fix everything that's wrong by making the necessary changes. As we get older we tend to understand (believe) that things are more complicated and want to retain more continuity. Of course either extreme would be wrong but, often, it's only with hindsight that we can tell. Webber brought radical change. It took time to work and required a period of continuity even when it wasn't bringing results. But then he brought more change which broke everything good he had done (on the playing side at least). It's easy to see how Delia is convinced that we're currently in exactly the same position we were in Farke's first season. We have a similar seeming squad of randoms and rejects and are taking the time required to build an identity. It's crazy to say it but she could actually be right; imagine if Wagner tweaks his midfield system and plugs the holes so we stop conceding, we're scoring goals so we might start winning regularly... But there's, ultimately, a lack of acknowledgement of just how much of a mess Webber's last two and a half years have been. The complication is that, despite the recent past, there's no objective solution to our current plight. Sacking Wagner doesn't undo the last five transfer windows and his replacement might be worse not better.

I'm sure we'll all be happy to move on just as soon as we're in as good a position as we were when he was sacked. Until then we can rightly point to the massive error of judgement that was sacking him.

Absolutely this. I'm finding it unfathomable that they're holding on to the hope that Wagner will come good in the end when they so quickly turned on Farke just weeks after giving him that 4 year contract. There's an incredible disparity between what we can see from outside and the beliefs held within the club. They see it as bad luck, an unforeseeable injury crisis and individual player errors. We see awful recruitment, flawed tactics and lack of oversight. It's hard to imagine how these things can realign without a seismic shift at the club. The word 'delusional' is maybe too strong but it's bordering on that level of wishful thinking. The positives are clear: Knapper and Attanasio are making far more reasonable noises and the money side of things might not be as bad as it appears. We just need to remain patient and allow things to unfold. Unfortunately we are unlikely to see the sudden paradigm shift that many of us were hoping for.

Hopefully not too long until: “I’m sorry, Dave, but in accordance with sub-routine C1 532/4, quote, ‘When the crew are dead or incapacitated, the computer must assume control,’ unquote. I must, therefore, override your authority now since you are not in any condition to intelligently exercise it.”