v West Brom (A): Post Match

[Norbs]

strikers who can replace luis suarez, or even danny sturidge, don't exactly grow on trees. not sure how much we can blame the setup when you take 50 goals out of the side and the few players who could really add something up top for us don't want to come. we know one of them just wanted to live in london...it's not necessarily a wage issue. if you were a top tier player, what teams would you be holding out for? us, or chelsea, barca, real--the clubs who can guarantee success?

bottom line is you take 50 goals out of any side, and they are going to struggle. replacing them was never going to be an easy, straightforward process.

Spot on. People talk about us not having replaced Suarez but that is an impossible task

[danperkins]

Dear lord

1. Recruitment I agree with it wasn't great but mainly due to two main positions not being adequately covered the central midfield area which allowed far too much exposure to our defensive unit so much so we've had to accommodate how poor they are with supplementing it with an extra CB due to any combo of Sakho, Skrtel, Lovren and Kolo not being up to doing their jobs properly. The striking issues are well documented losing one of the best players in the world alongside Sturridges well documented injury problems was always going to be a tough job but the players we ended up with have been nowhere near the standard or have the required characteristics for how we wanted to play.
2. injuries - problematic of course but again rolls back to not having the right recruitment and previous depth of squad to deal with them.
3. Gerrard - I'm not sure anyone could have seen just how far and quickly he'd fall in terms of performance but again it comes back to who else we have available.Lucas of course but another player that can't stay fit for any length of time
4. What other choice did we have, some could have been dropped but wholesale changes wouldn't have worked either the problems we had were down to a lack of movement and work rate up top putting more pressure on the midfield and defence which showed as it was wasn't up to it.
5. Naive tactics - not even sure what this means other than an easy sound byte to throw out there, the 4-3-3 didn't work due to the lack of movement up top and pressing leaving our midfield and defence exposed, 4-4-2 again we didn't get to see much of due to lack of options and the 3-4-3 was moved towards to help with the defensive issues we had whilst also recognising the lack of options for how we want to play up top. Problem with this is the centre of midfield gets congested and without runners in behind I.e Suarez and Sturridge breaking sides like West Brom down will be tough when they camp on their 18 yard box.

Two main areas need to be fixed this Summer the striker options that suit the way we want to play perhaps Origi will help to an extent with that but we will need to also bring in a real 15+ Goal scorer IMO to help cover off Sturridge and also someone to take control of the midfield that can offer both cover for our defence but also help link to our attacking options.

Essentially recuitmemt this Summer is key but really in those two areas if we get them right and allow us to move back to a front foot pressing game with movement up top we'll also see more from the likes of Lallana and others that signed last Summer

Not quite sure what the shake of the head is at, hopefully not me as I thought all my points were reasonable & seem to tie in with your own and most other opinions. 4 and 5 can be combined into 1 I suppose. Seem to agree on the rest, but i'll be more specific on the naive comment

- Playing an ageing player in such a demanding position which is not natural to him & when his legs were going even last season... is both naive and bad for the player himself. Made even worse with a ready made out and out DM on the bench.

- Playing one up top & playing it with likes of Balotelli & Lambert which is polar opposite to anything they've been doing their whole career.... in a formation that relies on the lone striker to be a workhorse and defend from the front. Considering the two players in question it was terrible judgment and a gamble that has cost us. I suppose that ties in with recruitment too and buying the wrong players for the whatever way we were suppose to play.

- Persisting with a CB in Lovren for the first 3 months when he was a liability to the team and his confidence was shot to pieces. Doing the team and the player no good.

- Playing too many young players too much. Again ties in with recruitment and not buying experience in the market. Put too much pressure on these young lads. Can was great for a time to be fair to him but has dipped badly in last few motnhs, Moreno overall has been poor defensively & Markovic has had a nightmare. All of them played so much more than expected & couple that with playing them in the wrong positions to really pile the pressure on.

I expect all 3 players to be better next season & hopefully lallana can stay fit but we were very naive in the transfer market as i think everyone agrees & IMO tactically. Big summer ahead.

[dww]

strikers who can replace luis suarez, or even danny sturidge, don't exactly grow on trees. not sure how much we can blame the setup when you take 50 goals out of the side and the few players who could really add something up top for us don't want to come. we know one of them just wanted to live in london...it's not necessarily a wage issue. if you were a top tier player, what teams would you be holding out for? us, or chelsea, barca, real--the clubs who can guarantee success?

bottom line is you take 50 goals out of any side, and they are going to struggle. replacing them was never going to be an easy, straightforward process.

Three points:

We often played without a nature goalscorer in the team. It's not that we didn't replace Suarez/Sturridge with equivalents but that we left ourselves with Sterling who is young and not a natural finisher as the only option who fitted how we wanted to play for most of the season.

The corollary of that is that we had two other strikers in the squad with decent goal scoring records who we failed to find a way of playing to suit.

Not applicable to yesterday, but we have probably dropped as many points due to lack of ability to defend as we have failure to score this season.

[G]

I wonder how much of it is down to the individuals though. Perhaps the details of the system need tweaking. I think the targets identified, with the exception of Lovren, last summer were quite good.

Balotelli was clearly a panic buy at the end and we should have had more options that were a natural fit. In the end we were possibly right not to go for another crock in Remy but he could still have contributed more than Mario.

Well it's been said that FSG acceded to Brendan's request last summer to stop signing potential as he needed players ready for the first team. The players he chose were Lambert, Lallana and Lovren. So if we are following the same approach this season which is the noise Brendan is making I hope it's not him picking the players, lest we forget his other picks Allen and Borini and his desire for Ashley Williams.

[Bender]

He said: 'It'll be very difficult, I felt of the six games we certainly needed to win five at least so now we have five to go and we'll have to look to win them to give ourselves a chance.

'You never know what happens above you, that's the thing with football, but what you have to do is make sure you keep the pressure on.

you have to win and get 3pts

'This is a difficult place to come, Tony's teams are strong, we have got a point and now we look to our game in hand in the week (against Hull) and look to get three points there.'
And how is that any easier of a game
Classic BR Comments

[chadrtc]

He said: 'It'll be very difficult, I felt of the six games we certainly needed to win five at least so now we have five to go and we'll have to look to win them to give ourselves a chance.

'You never know what happens above you, that's the thing with football, but what you have to do is make sure you keep the pressure on.

you have to win and get 3pts

'This is a difficult place to come, Tony's teams are strong, we have got a point and now we look to our game in hand in the week (against Hull) and look to get three points there.'
And how is that any easier of a game
Classic BR Comments

Again, I really don't see what he has said wrong there. It feels like you're looking for a stick to beat him with.

[Chris]

Saying we are looking for 3 points in the next game is a ****ing disgusting comment.

[Ams12]

:

We are not a quick fix or a few players away from turning things around... it's deeper than that IMO. The balance of the team is off, we have no idea what our best 11, we have no idea what our best formation is for that 11 or any 11 for that matter. We have no leaders or balls in the team & our transfer policy is absolutely baffling. What are we trying to do exactly?

I kinda agree with this bit.

[DannyMan2006]

Again, I really don't see what he has said wrong there. It feels like you're looking for a stick to beat him with.

Agreed.

What's he supposed to say? "The seasons over, we can now stop fighting as 8th place won't catch us and Arsenal will likely win the cup, meaning how we finish the season matters very little".

I've been watching football a long time now, and I'm sure everyone on this site has. Permeations that are odds on can change in an instant in this game. What we needed to do yesterday was win and try and put pressure on the the three clubs above us who all had tough games. We failed to do that. So what we now need to do is win away at Hull in midweek and beat QPR at home. Get 6 points and see what the others do.

Yesterday's result was a massive kick in the teeth and tbh even I've given up on fourth now. But you still need to keep trying and see what happens.

[fidget]

Seeing united losing make this hurt even more.
We could easily have shut them out of the top four but for some of the poor decisions with recruitment pre season and team selection all ****ing year.

[Kenneth]

Yep, we ****ed up a lot.

[DannyMan2006]

Seeing united losing make this hurt even more.
We could easily have shut them out of the top four but for some of the poor decisions with recruitment pre season and team selection all ****ing year.

If we'd have won this Everton game may have turned out differently.

Points & goal difference means we still need United to drop 5 points whilst we win every game, which includes Chelsea away.

[danperkins]

Sick having lost yesterday now that United have got stuffed.

[Exiled_red]

Didn't eveyone think this was inevitable? if we had won all our games so would the other teams, if we **** up and drop points we'll find out that 4 wins or so could have been enough

[ChrisDR1968]

Sick having lost yesterday now that United have got stuffed.

We didn't lose