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Kidderminster Exile

The Morning after

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As someone who has supported city fot 65 years I feel I should be thinking and saying keep the faith,, we will get the points for safety.However after my 4 hour journey home, other results and watching highlights on M O T D  and a night out followed by a nights sleep  I now feel nothing to give me much hope.Even the crowd was not up to the fight like the Newcastle game.I await someone convincing me I am wrong but see nothing to convince me our team is up to the fight.

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I have a feeling that the Klose injury had and will have a devastating blow to overall confidence. He had become the lynch pin of our survival hopes.

Throw in the obligatory penalty/game changing decision going against us and suddenly there was that feeling of deja vu.

Here we go again. Big occasion, big let-down.

I am not inclined to criticise either the manager or the players, although I would have liked Nathan Redmond in from the start and would have seen this as a show of more attacking intent for as far as threat on goal NR is streets ahead of Jarvis.

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I didn''t see any lack of fight or effort from our players. Sometimes things just go against you and you have to take it on the chin. If Big Sam had scripted the game it couldn''t have gone better for Sunderland. Defend in numbers, nick the first goal and then let them come at you and hit them on the break. When it works it makes a total mockery of possession, territory, corners, shots on goal etc etc.It may well have been a season defining game but failure to close out games we should have won is what is going to cost us.

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Have to agree with Ricardo, both West Ham games should have been victories but they say bad reffing evens out over a season well i`m sorry but that is utter crap it does not.

We sadly are going down and anyone who has followed us 40 years plus knows that familiar its us feeling all too well, but we must stick with Alex Neil, yes he has made a few errors but he is young and learning, Fergie took 4 years at United to settle so patience is required, calling for him to be sacked is madness just who do you think we will get who is so much better.

The premiership may be supposedly the place to be, but for me its all about money and i do believe its corrupt, that is all :(

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After attending the Swansea game I came out of the ground and began to mourn our relegation to the Championship. By the Man City game myself ( and I thought many others ) had accepted the inevitable. Then came the revival and my head is now wanting to think we can stay up but also trying to tell me that is it.

Should we go down I believe AN is the man to keep hold of the reins. He was here last year and knows what is needed in the Championship to get back out. His biggest problem was doing the near impossible and getting us promoted last year, I dont think even the board thought that possible.

I also the day after look at some of the opinions on here and say be careful what you wish for, Charlton, Fulham, Leeds and possibly Villa all immediately spring to mind.

For the record I now unfortunately think we will go down however I believe that the team that will go with us will be Sunderland and Newcastle will beat the drop. In the long run this may also be the best option for us if we go down.

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If we go down, I think we have nobody to blame but the board. If we had Klose in the summer, I honestly think we''d be mid table by now. I almost feel bad for the history books! How often has all 3 promoted clubs stayed up? Not often... But we''re going to blow that chance of all 3 staying up !

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The bottom line is that yesterday was a typically normal performance for us - the kind of performance that has got us into our current position.We have, on far too few occasions, played better and we have often played worse but overall yesterday was about par for course for us.We are short of a couple of decent players, not least a decent goalscorer, and consequently we are found wanting when one or two regular first eleven players are missing, either through injury or suspension.Overall our squad is weak and we have too many players who haven''t delivered on a consistent basis.

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Good point MP, I think about B''mouth and all their players (first team most of them) getting injured earlier this season. But they didn''t fall apart, they stuck to their principles and now they''re safely mid table.

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I honestly think that we are such a strange side, or maybe club - as it has been happening for years longer than this current lot - in that we can raise our game against the best in the league, but also seem able to lower it when playing the worst in the league.
Sometimes I''d rather we beat teams around us 1-0 and got humped 6-0 by the "big 4".

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What does vex me about yesterday is we played right into their hands. Allerdyce had pretty much said they were going to play on the counter and what did we do? Press high up the pitch. There had been warnings in the first half what they were trying for: Have Defoe linger at the front waiting for a ball. Without Klose in there we simply don''t switch from attack to defence well enough to try what we were trying yesterday.

Yesterday, wasn''t a must-win, it was a must-not-lose. Went about it completely the wrong way.

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[quote user="littleyellowbirdie"]What does vex me about yesterday is we played right into their hands. Allerdyce had pretty much said they were going to play on the counter and what did we do? Press high up the pitch. There had been warnings in the first half what they were trying for: Have Defoe linger at the front waiting for a ball. Without Klose in there we simply don''t switch from attack to defence well enough to try what we were trying yesterday.

Yesterday, wasn''t a must-win, it was a must-not-lose. Went about it completely the wrong way.[/quote]So, would you have been happier if we had sat back and let them come on to us? At home, in a must win game?We weren''t good enough, thats the long and skinny of it.Easy after the fact though, isn''t it?

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Bor

I honestly think that we are such a strange side, or maybe club - as it has been happening for years longer than this current lot - in that we can raise our game against the best in the league, but also seem able to lower it when playing the worst in the league.

Sometimes I''d rather we beat teams around us 1-0 and got humped 6-0 by the "big 4".

Exactly this

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We just don''t have the quality and depth of squad to compete for a whole season.

Our players lift their game for the big opponents and sometimes that pays off for us, but you can''t keep doing that for every game and it shows against the weaker teams when we are marginally less motivated.

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It wasn''t a must win game for us. It was for them.

Yet again we got our game plan wrong. We pushed up far too quickly by playing long ball rather than build up play through midfield. This played straight into their hands allowing them to break into the open spaces we left behind with Defoes pace. It happened more than once before the penalty. Their first goal was a breakaway from an our attack where Wisdom was in the opposition penalty area having an effort on goal. We lose the ball and end up going behind.

We all know it was a pressure game and it''s hard not to get carried away with wanting to score but this is what experience and professional sport is about. Managing the game plan. I''m afraid Allardyce got it spot on and we didn''t.

The thing is it''s not the first time either. We were two goals up against Liverpool and got caught on the break. That is frankly ridiculously naive in the extreme. The same happened when we had a two goal lead against West Ham. That''s twice! Now again we have got it wrong pressing far too high up the pitch against a team that we surely knew would be looking to play on the break.

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[quote user="Hairy Canary"]It wasn''t a must win game for us. It was for them.

Yet again we got our game plan wrong. We pushed up far too quickly by playing long ball rather than build up play through midfield. This played straight into their hands allowing them to break into the open spaces we left behind with Defoes pace. It happened more than once before the penalty. Their first goal was a breakaway from an our attack where Wisdom was in the opposition penalty area having an effort on goal. We lose the ball and end up going behind.

We all know it was a pressure game and it''s hard not to get carried away with wanting to score but this is what experience and professional sport is about. Managing the game plan. I''m afraid Allardyce got it spot on and we didn''t.

The thing is it''s not the first time either. We were two goals up against Liverpool and got caught on the break. That is frankly ridiculously naive in the extreme. The same happened when we had a two goal lead against West Ham. That''s twice! Now again we have got it wrong pressing far too high up the pitch against a team that we surely knew would be looking to play on the break.[/quote]Have you considered that, apart from a few players, we''re just not quite good enough?That maybe, as a promoted side, with the lowest budget in the division, we''re always going to struggle?Just a thought....

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Funnily enough yes I have considered that. I accept we had a very tough task in trying to stay in this division. That''s why our game management has to be spot on so that when we are in the winning positions I mentioned we have the best chance of picking up the points we deserved to win.

Getting into two goal leads against Liverpool and West Ham and achieving a 4 point lead over the relagation places was the hard part. Having the right game plan to not over commit when we are in those hard won positions is something we just haven''t been able to achieve. That is not down to the players not being good enough. It''s about setting up to make it as difficult as possible for the oposition to get back in the game. In the end we might not have been able to stop Liverpool, West Ham from clawing back those two goals but at least we would have made it harder for them than we did with our naive tactics.

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[quote user="Hairy Canary"]Funnily enough yes I have considered that. I accept we had a very tough task in trying to stay in this division. That''s why our game management has to be spot on so that when we are in the winning positions I mentioned we have the best chance of picking up the points we deserved to win.

Getting into two goal leads against Liverpool and West Ham and achieving a 4 point lead over the relagation places was the hard part. Having the right game plan to not over commit when we are in those hard won positions is something we just haven''t been able to achieve. That is not down to the players not being good enough. It''s about setting up to make it as difficult as possible for the oposition to get back in the game. In the end we might not have been able to stop Liverpool, West Ham from clawing back those two goals but at least we would have made it harder for them than we did with our naive tactics.[/quote]I think we''ll take some from column A, and some from column B.....But I think that having less quality on the pitch, than pretty much every Premiership side (apart from Villa) plays a very big part. We need every single player playing to the best of his capabilities, every single game. Theres very little margin for error with us, if more than or or two players have an average game, we''re stuffed.

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[quote user="Vanwink"]We just don''t have the quality and depth of squad to compete for a whole season.

Our players lift their game for the big opponents and sometimes that pays off for us, but you can''t keep doing that for every game and it shows against the weaker teams when we are marginally less motivated.[/quote]To be honest if any of our players were less motivated yesterday because we weren''t playing Barcelona then they shouldn''t be playing professional football at all.

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Yep agree with that. Things like injuries to key players will hit us harder than the other clubs with deeper squads. Also I think we''re hmore likely to have bad days when some of our less able (no disrespect intended) players have an off day.

Maximising our chances when they come along, through better game management, is vital and this is where I think we are able to improve.

All is not lost, though we are beginning to need some other results to go our way.

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