Not having a go - is unacceptable!!

[Google Bot 3,298]

18 minutes ago, hogesar said:

Bad day at the office, but I don't think it was down to a simply "negative" manager

I perceived it as a coach who's not confident in his players, otherwise he would've kept at least one up top as an outlet and certainly would've utilised Hooijdonk if he had any belief in the lad.

[shefcanary 2,437]

28 minutes ago, hogesar said:

Mclean ... were poor

Wow! Finally.

And he was like this far too often during our poor run. But no, never can this ever be said against our Kenny. 

Until now ...

I wonder what I was watching back in those dark days, when every game he played like he did on Saturday? 🤔

I feel vindicated at last. 🙂 

[Canarywary 110]

30 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

Wow! Finally.

And he was like this far too often during our poor run. But no, never can this ever be said against our Kenny. 

Until now ...

I wonder what I was watching back in those dark days, when every game he played like he did on Saturday? 🤔

I feel vindicated at last. 🙂 

You feel vindicated that your (erroneous) view has somehow been proved right? A perfect example of 'A stopped clock is right twice a day'. Months of being arguably our best player, followed by one bad game (where no-one played well) and suddenly you're 'vindicated'? How many months of great performances would it have taken for you to finally admit you were wrong about him, or would you forever be waiting for a bad performance so you can pounce on him?

"He was like this far too often during our poor run" - wasn't every one of our players poor during that run?

[Badger 2,407]

1 hour ago, hogesar said:

I don't think we set up "too" negatively. People seem to confuse set-up with outcome. They're different and there's 22 players on the pitch that impact it.

Exactly - we were pinned back but that doesn't mean that it was part of the game strategy - it simply meant that we kept losing the ball and couldn't get it back so were forced onto the defensive. As NCFC Analysis suggested - "The classic 3-0-6-2. Who needs a midfield anyway?" 

This suggests that rather than sitting back we tried to moved the ball forwards too quickly, lost possession and then had to retreat  into all the space that left behind us. We did exactly as some of the Neanderthals recommend - got the ball forwards quickly - rather than "messed about at the back."

[hogesar 9,711]

1 hour ago, shefcanary said:

Wow! Finally.

And he was like this far too often during our poor run. But no, never can this ever be said against our Kenny. 

Until now ...

I wonder what I was watching back in those dark days, when every game he played like he did on Saturday? 🤔

I feel vindicated at last. 🙂 

The problem is, he didn't. And even then, the problem was that other players were poorer than him but he was picked out by posters such as your good self 🙂

Statistically, Mclean has the third highest average rating out of the entire squad. Only Sargent and Sara are better. Worth noting goals and assists carry such a high ranking factor here that Kenny could do every other aspect of play better than the above and still be below them statistically.

In terms of previous performances, the only one that ranks worse or on par with his game yesterday was the 4-4 draw vs Southampton.

In the bad run he made more successful passes, dribbles, tackles, interceptions, forward distribution, key passes and ball recoveries than yesterday. So quite a difference!

[repman 635]

The more I think about it I don't think we set up yesterday not to have a go, but instead we found ourselves up against a good side who are better coached than us. What that resulted in was us reverting to sitting deep and hoping for the best as nothing else was working.

Leicester's press is very well organised, the only sides that come close or are better are the other teams above us. We saw in the home game how they shut us down from playing out so yesterday we made an attempt to push them back to allow ourselves to get up the pitch slightly more, that worked in the first phase but resulted in us struggling further up the pitch.

The other issue I thought was that every time we tried to go direct into Sargent or Barnes the ball came straight back, the inability to hold the ball up there gave us no outlet at all.

I read that Wagner said in his press conference about being braver on the ball. This is a nice soundbite, I too would've liked us to have been, but the issue wasn't a lack of bravery in possession. The issue was that the players didn't have any solution to the problems they were set, that's more a coaching issue than an attitude one.

[Conrad 177]

1 hour ago, repman said:

The more I think about it I don't think we set up yesterday not to have a go, but instead we found ourselves up against a good side who are better coached than us. What that resulted in was us reverting to sitting deep and hoping for the best as nothing else was working.

Leicester's press is very well organised, the only sides that come close or are better are the other teams above us. We saw in the home game how they shut us down from playing out so yesterday we made an attempt to push them back to allow ourselves to get up the pitch slightly more, that worked in the first phase but resulted in us struggling further up the pitch.

The other issue I thought was that every time we tried to go direct into Sargent or Barnes the ball came straight back, the inability to hold the ball up there gave us no outlet at all.

I read that Wagner said in his press conference about being braver on the ball. This is a nice soundbite, I too would've liked us to have been, but the issue wasn't a lack of bravery in possession. The issue was that the players didn't have any solution to the problems they were set, that's more a coaching issue than an attitude one.

So are you advocating a change of manager?