We bought experienced players to toughen the team..

[king canary 7,609]

16 minutes ago, hogesar said:

The mentality thing has been accused of every single one of our squads since the dawn of time (under Wagner, Smith, Farke, Neil, Hughton, maybe Lambert the only one who hasn't had that levelled), whenever you lose to 10 men, surrender a lead, go on a bad run or whatever.

I think though it is notable that Smith and Wagner both called out the squad for being quiet and lacking a strong mentality- it is quite unusual for a manager to do that. 

However, to be fair, it is also notable that neither of them felt the need to remove Hanley as captain suggesting that he may still be the best of a limited bunch when it comes to leadership. 

I do wonder if Duffy might be considered for Captain next season though.

[king canary 7,609]

2 minutes ago, TIL 1010 said:

I read this morning we have dropped 19 points from a winning position this season.

Yes this is true. We're an enigma in that respect. We seem to be better if we go behind than we are at managing a game from being in the lead.

[Feedthewolf 4,846]

2 minutes ago, TIL 1010 said:

I read this morning we have dropped 19 points from a winning position this season.

We've both scored and conceded more than most teams, so it follows that there would be more 'swings' in games involving us.

[hogesar 9,676]

29 minutes ago, king canary said:

I think though it is notable that Smith and Wagner both called out the squad for being quiet and lacking a strong mentality- it is quite unusual for a manager to do that. 

However, to be fair, it is also notable that neither of them felt the need to remove Hanley as captain suggesting that he may still be the best of a limited bunch when it comes to leadership. 

I do wonder if Duffy might be considered for Captain next season though.

I think Hanley has found it hard coming in after his injury and I suspect Duffy will end up taking his place so you could well be right. 

[Jim Smith 2,322]

43 minutes ago, king canary said:

Yes this is true. We're an enigma in that respect. We seem to be better if we go behind than we are at managing a game from being in the lead.

I think the common factor is the intensity of our play.

we often play at high intensity but then drop off after going in front, stop pressing and start sitting deeper. We aren’t good enough to do that as our defence is cr*p so we end up making errors and conceding. 
 

Similarly we often end up increasing our intensity when chasing the game if the opposition scores or equalises.

It’s a bit different when he drops Barnes and plays the extra midfielder as we have a bit more control of midfield but basically this side, set up in his preferred 4-4-2 formation only really works well when we play a high intensity, pressing game and win the ball back up the pitch. As soon as we stop doing that (or when we don’t start doing it) we get into trouble. Even last night we dropped off a bit after we got the goal and had started playing too slowly with some loose passing at the back. 

[repman 635]

50 minutes ago, king canary said:

Yes this is true. We're an enigma in that respect. We seem to be better if we go behind than we are at managing a game from being in the lead.

I think you can probably trace it back to that Plymouth defeat, last night was probably the first time since then that we went away from home and really looked like controlling the game. Obviously the red card changed things last night but at Blackburn and QPR it was a similar story.

It feels like it goes against our strengths, obviously shipping 6 goals is never a good thing but I do wonder if the overall sum would've been greater had we kept at it. The big context there is that at that point in time Wagner was fighting a battle to stay in post, so that would have influenced it too but with 10 games left I'm not sure what he has to lose now.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,551]

5 hours ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

So why did they all just fold like a house of cards the second a player was sent off? I thought we brought in a bunch of older players to add more experience and toughness to the side?

Shock, probably, at an unbelievable sending off.

Edited March 7 by littleyellowbirdie

[S_81 802]

7 hours ago, Ulfotto said:

I think that is harsh. In my opinion the signing  of Duffy and Batth points to the fact we didn’t expect Hanley back this season. He is massively ahead of schedule. I suspect after pre season next year he will back to where he was before. 

We need rid of all the centre backs. None of them are good enough. Not one of them is worth keeping for next season. I’d rather see some of the youth lads out on loan playing there next season than this bunch of donkeys. 

[Mason 47 1,382]

3 hours ago, king canary said:

Yes this is true. We're an enigma in that respect. We seem to be better if we go behind than we are at managing a game from being in the lead.

I think it was Dean Ashton on co-comms recently who echoed the idea that our players are very good at pacy & direct front-foot football, but lack the mental skills/ concentration to sit off and control space.

It's something that definitely goes back to Farke days, where if you had to put a black-and-white definition on player as there for 'attack' or 'defence' you could easily argue 8-9 of the players were the former. Even last night, I think one could reasonably say only two of the starters were in for their defensive assets (and one of those is a goalkeeper).

The pressing question in the case that this is true is- why do we regularly revert to a defensive stance when we regularly prove we really struggle with it?

[king canary 7,609]

3 hours ago, Mason 47 said:

I think it was Dean Ashton on co-comms recently who echoed the idea that our players are very good at pacy & direct front-foot football, but lack the mental skills/ concentration to sit off and control space.

It's something that definitely goes back to Farke days, where if you had to put a black-and-white definition on player as there for 'attack' or 'defence' you could easily argue 8-9 of the players were the former. Even last night, I think one could reasonably say only two of the starters were in for their defensive assets (and one of those is a goalkeeper).

The pressing question in the case that this is true is- why do we regularly revert to a defensive stance when we regularly prove we really struggle with it?

Yeah we don't seem to have the mentality at times to just do the basics- when was the last time you saw us successfully do the 'two banks of four' set up to be difficult to play through for periods? Southampton maybe? And then that came at a cost of basically having none of the ball.