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Was Alex Neil even interested in that today??

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did he really try everything he possibly could have from the bench in that second half?

he used ONE substitute???.

surely there were other things he could have done or tried to try and make something different happen.

.

Bring Dorrans on (who would surely have been up for this game?) on for Howson (who appears increasingly like he has written into his contract that he MUST play 90 mins of every game)....to try a different midfielder with different ideas.

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bring Olsson on and push Brady forward when it was apparant that Jarvis was waning.

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I can understand dropping Whittaker for Martin after last week, but today when we were chasing the game, why not bring Whittaker on for Martin who is blatantly better going forward now than Martin is, and would have at least tried to get to the byline on the overlap. (Martin was awful in the 2nd half....centre back or not at all)

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even in the last 5 mins chuck Grabban on for a defender ,just to add an extra body in the box.........West Ham did that to us when they were losing in the last few mins., why would we not even do this when you have subs available????

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to not try any of these when we still had 2 substitutions left is quite bizarre?.

The biggest crime however was to not put an extra striker up front with MBokani for a full HALF AN HOUR after WBA scored......what did Alex Neil think either WBA or us were going to do any differently in that half hour???.......30 mins ,completely pi$$ed up the wall today.

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not an Alex Neil "out" thread by any means......just concerned that he almost seemed frightened to try anything after last week backfired...... worrying signs.

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His initial line up on paper was very attacking; Jarvis, Redmond, Hoolahan, Howson, Brady but that left us with precious little on the bench to change things tactically. Agreed he was well late in sticking 2 up front, and then Mkobani and Jerome are far too similar. It was not a great day for manager or players and both let each other down.

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We scraped out of the play-offs by the skin of our teeth - and failed to add to the squad in the way that those teams that finished above us did in the Summer because we arrogantly believed that somehow the duffers that got us relegated 2 years ago had somehow become good avoid to finish mid table this time around. Laughable, I''m afraid

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A strange question.

I would imagine the outcome against Newcastle made him far more cautious with his substitutions than he has shown up to now.

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He sounded a bit as though his tank was empty in the Snorfolk interview.

A sad day, hung out to dry by our poor performance in the window.

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To suggest our manager "wasn''t interested" is a whole new level of sloblock.
As has been noted, an attacking line-up with decent first half possession and creativity.  The two clear chances created weren''t taken, and we failed to recover from a soft goal early 2nd half.
There was little on the bench to change things up given we''d shown our cards pretty early - taking off a DM was an option but after last week, I kind of get why things played out as they did.

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There were options on the bench. Taking off Howson was an obvious thing to do. Three successive poor games and too vital a position for a player to go missing like he did today.

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What todays selections told me was that we were set up to nick a goal and keep what we have got, unfortunately we failed to score in the first 20-25 minutes where we completely dominated. For me there was no different option on the bench, just like for like replacements.

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[quote user="Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB"]What todays selections told me was that we were set up to nick a goal and keep what we have got, unfortunately we failed to score in the first 20-25 minutes where we completely dominated. For me there was no different option on the bench, just like for like replacements.[/quote]

like for like replacements would have been better than what was done i.e nothing.....those players had ran out of ideas and energy.

as i said in the OP ,even if he did nothing else......why wouldnt he even have just thrown Grabban on for the last 4 or 5 mins??

doing nothing wasn''t an option

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Disappointing but not the end of the world

WBA - have an experienced manager and experienced team, who specialise in defending a one goal lead

Whoever scored first - had this game

Over all, we were probably the better team today but WBA taught us a lesson - albeit a lesson in boring

1- 0 tactics

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[quote user="Bor Loves You"]To suggest our manager "wasn''t interested" is a whole new level of sloblock.
As has been noted, an attacking line-up with decent first half possession and creativity.  The two clear chances created weren''t taken, and we failed to recover from a soft goal early 2nd half.
There was little on the bench to change things up given we''d shown our cards pretty early - taking off a DM was an option but after last week, I kind of get why things played out as they did.
[/quote]

"little on the bench to change things" ??

I''ve suggested that he could have brought Whittaker on for Martin in the second half as he would have provided us with a better attacking threat down the right..........which YOU yourself suggested on another thread we should have started with anyway??

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[quote user="Thetford Yellow"]We scraped out of the play-offs by the skin of our teeth - and failed to add to the squad in the way that those teams that finished above us did in the Summer because we arrogantly believed that somehow the duffers that got us relegated 2 years ago had somehow become good avoid to finish mid table this time around. Laughable, I''m afraid[/quote]

This is spot on. Exactly the problem and the message board should just post this and then close. This is the problem with NCFC. We never back the manager. This goes back to the Chase era when we couldn''t cough up 1 million for Dean Windass so O''neill walked. Similar with Lambert and now we didn''t back a manager that saved our championship season and reward him with the same sh!t that got us relegated last time. Embarrassing. Little old Norwich to the very end.

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I don''t think there was a lack of interest on Alex Neil ''s part yesterday.

One of the problems he had was that by selecting Brady and Jarvis together down the left, you are effectively playing most of your attacking cards straight away and there isn''t much else to bring on offensively from the bench later on, if things aren''t going well. That''s a reflection of where the squad is at this moment in time.

Jerome was about the only sub he really could have made that would have tactically made much of a difference, and he made it, albeit possibly about 15 minutes too late.

There''s an argument we could have thrown a 3rd striker on in Grabban but the problem with doing that would have been providing the 3 forwards with any decent service. We were already struggling massively in midfield before a taking an extra man from that department. So its unlikely those 3 would have seen much of the ball.

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i wouldnt have suggested bringing on Grabban for a midfielder........with WBA playing the 2nd half with one player in our half, we could have taken off a defender. The way Martin was playing in the second half we could have sacrificed him and gone three at the back.

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.....thats my concern, and why i think he was afraid to attempt anything.

taking off a defender with 5 mins to go and throwing on another striker when you''re 1-0 is a logical thing to do but I think Neil''s judgement in that situation (which isn''t the same as the situation we were in when he made that sub at Newcastle) was clouded.

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