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Alex Moss

Defensive substitutions changing the balance...

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In your opinion Morty, which will always prove you right to you, as mine will to me, although you have not explained why you think the way you do, still c''est la vie.

Enjoyed the chat gents, got an early start tomorrow and need some zzzzzz''s, so time to put the keyboard away - cheers.

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Thanks for the link there, Eddie, I think Alex made his point on this really well with Chris G and I can totally understand the thought process there re substitutions. Very brief comment re Klose, interesting that he was waiting to see how his knock develops, I''d have thought by now that it''d have ''developed'' surely?. I hope the players use this disappointment to give Wolves some backlash, the table still looks very very rosy and I''m sure we''ll all move on from this defeat very quickly, just as we did after the Brum game 👍 OTBC

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[quote user="Ray"]In your opinion Morty, which will always prove you right to you, as mine will to me, although you have not explained why you think the way you do, still c''est la vie.

Enjoyed the chat gents, got an early start tomorrow and need some zzzzzz''s, so time to put the keyboard away - cheers.[/quote]You have an obvious dislike for Alex Neil, and his methods. Quite why is entirely up to you.Have you listened to his post match interview above? Tell me what you disagree with.Try not to use silly analogies about war. Or get all *rubs chin* "Well if I was a manager in that situation......."[:)]

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Morning Morty,

To use a phrase you used earlier to me, with all due respect, I suggest you re-read what I have written as 1) you may not have made some of your latest statements and 2) may not have repeated some of your questions.

Anyhow for clarity, I do not have a dislike of AN, as previously stated, so it cannot be obvious as you state, however I do have a dislike of some of his methods, which is undoubtedly obvious, also as previously stated, so you are correct there.

You then say "quite why is entirely up to me", correct again Morty, it is up to me, however again for clarity, I dislike some of his methods because they disagree with my preferred methods, as outlined in what you call "silly analogies", rather judgemental of you me thinks.

Now, let''s get back to you outlining why you think the steps taken, and outlined in his interview, which by the way I heard long before it was linked by you on here, were the correct ones and superior to those I suggested and please use whatever analogies you so wish, I promise I won''t call them claptrap or summarily dismiss them. Furthermore, at what stage of the game did you think to yourself, you know what I would put another CB on and take off our paciest player. Please accept on face value, that I was working on ways to stem the flow around the 75th minute, or slightly before, I hadn''t come up with a definitive answer, but the answer would have been centred around stemming the flow, attacking the cause, rather than handling the effect.

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Ray, I honestly do not think Newcastle cared a jot about how many pacy attacking players we had on the pitch. Benitez had a very simple game plan - score more goals than us.

It worked - by the skin of it''s teeth. With some marginally better defending by us it wouldn''t.

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as damaging as going 5 at the back, was leaving ourselves with no pace on the field in advanced areas. We left ourselves with absolutely no outlet in the last 15 mins and couldnt get out of our half.

We were reduced to launching it long to Oliveira who didnt have the physique to win the ball in the air, even if he did there was nobody within 20 yards of him.

at least a bit of pace i.e Josh Murphy could have attempted to carry the ball up the field or a chance to play it over the top for him to run onto to outpace their defence

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@Ron

It isn''t about Newcastle caring about the players we had but about our players having a chance to relieve the pressure. With the Bennett change we were basically left with Jerome/Nelson on their own, meaning any clearance from defence either had to be perfect or it was coming straight back at us.

Having someone like Murphy up there would have meant a long clearance into the channels could have been chased down or a shorter ball into his feet would have allowed him to carry the ball 20-30 yards up the pitch and let the defenders regroup.

Spending 15 minutes pinned in our own penalty box was always likely to lead to a Newcastle goal.

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All these theories seem to include the premise that we wouldn''t have conceded if the manager hadn''t made the change. He obviously thought differently and that''s why he made it.

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People are not questioning this change with the benefit of hindsight, several posters immediately questioned it as soon as Neil did it just as they did when he took Tettey off last season. The outcome of both changes was sadly predictable and even had we clung on for a point or better I still would have maintained it was an incredibly poor substitution that demonstrates Neil''s lack of game management skills and reading of the game.

His explanation about putting his three biggest players on beggars belief. That might work when being bombarded by Arbroath but its a simpleton''s approach that has no place in the upper reaches of the championship or the premier league.

The best way to prevent the defence coming under that type of pressure is ball retention, giving Newcastle something to worry about defensively themselves and stemming the flow of balls into the box at source by pressing rather than backing off. His continued dropping of Hoolahan for the harder away games suggests that he still does not understand this and has learnt very little if anything at all.

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That''s all very well Jim but I can''t remember anyone saying we would win the game. So events don''t appear to back up the view that he picked the wrong team.

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[quote user="morty"]Jim are you seriously claiming to know more about this, than Alex Neil?[/quote]

Here we go again with the default "nobody can know more than the manager" line.

Its an opinion. I may not have played the game but I''ve watched an awful lot of football over the last 30 years (as i''m sure most of us have) and I do not accept that the manager is always right or that the fans views (not just mine) are never valid. Managers get a lot of things right but also get a lot of things wrong and sometimes, just sometimes, the fans are able to see and entitled to voice an opinion on what they think the manager is getting wrong whilst they appear to be blinded to it.

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[quote user="nutty nigel"]That''s all very well Jim but I can''t remember anyone saying we would win the game. So events don''t appear to back up the view that he picked the wrong team.[/quote]

We should have been 3 or 4 down by half time Nutty. Would have been very different had we been.

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[quote user="Jim Smith"][quote user="morty"]Jim are you seriously claiming to know more about this, than Alex Neil?[/quote]

Here we go again with the default "nobody can know more than the manager" line.

Its an opinion. I may not have played the game but I''ve watched an awful lot of football over the last 30 years (as i''m sure most of us have) and I do not accept that the manager is always right or that the fans views (not just mine) are never valid. Managers get a lot of things right but also get a lot of things wrong and sometimes, just sometimes, the fans are able to see and entitled to voice an opinion on what they think the manager is getting wrong whilst they appear to be blinded to it.[/quote]The point is though Jim, its his job. He gets paid to do it. He''ll lose his job if he gets it wrong.He is paid to make decisions based on what he sees, and if you watch his interview then I personally find it difficult to question the logic of the decisions he made.Fans, and I include myself in this obviously, do not know better than the manager. End of.

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My take on the substitutions last night.

As soon as mitrovic came on I was worried because of how good he is in the air, I thought Ry Ben would come into the fold because of his superior heading ability. I liked the switch to three at the back, I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. The ball was being bypassed over midfield and Wes wouldn''t have touched the ball.

My only issue is that we had no pace for a potential counter attack. We were lumping it to Nelson who had no support largely. If we kept Jacob on or even had a fresh Josh instead of Brady it could have set us up better to counter.

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[quote user="Mark Fotheringham City Legend"]My take on the substitutions last night.

As soon as mitrovic came on I was worried because of how good he is in the air, I thought Ry Ben would come into the fold because of his superior heading ability. I liked the switch to three at the back, I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. The ball was being bypassed over midfield and Wes wouldn''t have touched the ball.

My only issue is that we had no pace for a potential counter attack. We were lumping it to Nelson who had no support largely. If we kept Jacob on or even had a fresh Josh instead of Brady it could have set us up better to counter.[/quote]We didn''t need "the potential counter attack" though, as we were leading at the time. Newcastle were on the front foot, we were defending a lead.Like you say, the three cb''s made sense.

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It all comes down to how you think the best way to defend is

1. Bring another defender on, sacrifice a forward player & leave yourself open to wave after wave of attack

2. Leave forward players on, try to defend from the front to prevent the bombardment. Also, a long ball coyuld be missed by the opposition defenders, allowing you to push up the pitch. However, you then risk leaving yourself too short at the back

Personally for me, last night I would have gone for the second option. Newcastle have arguably the best passer in the league in Shelvey & he seemed to pick passes at will all night. After 90 minutes I would have the made the change at the back - yes i know Newcastles goals came after that, but they wouldn''t have been able to get such a head of steam up

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[quote user="morty"][quote user="Mark Fotheringham City Legend"]My take on the substitutions last night.

As soon as mitrovic came on I was worried because of how good he is in the air, I thought Ry Ben would come into the fold because of his superior heading ability. I liked the switch to three at the back, I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. The ball was being bypassed over midfield and Wes wouldn''t have touched the ball.

My only issue is that we had no pace for a potential counter attack. We were lumping it to Nelson who had no support largely. If we kept Jacob on or even had a fresh Josh instead of Brady it could have set us up better to counter.[/quote]We didn''t need "the potential counter attack" though, as we were leading at the time. Newcastle were on the front foot, we were defending a lead.Like you say, the three cb''s made sense.[/quote]

ridiculous.....did you actually see what was happening last night?!?

.of course we needed a counter attack, we couldnt get out of our half for 15 mins as nothing was sticking to Oliverira at all, it was relentless.

we obviously needed a counter attack ,not just to pose a goal threat, but to get the ball away from our goal, give the defence a breather, run down the clock, break up play...

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If the defenders had defended their box for 2 more minutes, we wouldn''t even be debating this. This forum would be like the grave instead.[:D]

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I agree with the thrust of your post Morty, although I would change it to; If the team had defended.......

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