First 10 games warped expectations massively.
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First 10 games warped expectations massively.
It's more than just Tuesdays draw. We have been boring to watch for ages. I don't care what the anti-Conte brigade say, we're as dull with the ball as we were without it.
And there's little excuse as the starting 11 on the whole is better and more capable, even without Kane in it.
First 10 games papered over the cracks too.
Drew with Toney-less Brentford and had to come from behind
Squeezed a win vs United
Squeezed a win vs Bournemouth
Hammered Burnley
Very very very nearly lost to Sheff United despite having 300% possession
Good draw away at the goons
Struggled to beat 9 man Liverpool who took off the likes of Salah etc to play for a draw
Squeezed a win vs Luton (although with 10 men)
Squeezed a win Vs Fulham
Squeezed a win Vs Palace
In 10 games we played properly well once. Maybe twice in the draw to Arse.
It's really become quite mythical how "good" the first 10 games were. But we laboured to wins.
A for effort
It's not wrong though, is it?
We spent 90 minutes passing out wide, back into the middle, back out wide, back into the middle, back to the CB, back out wide against quite a few of those teams.
I think people were so enamored with winning games with possession rather than soaking up pressure, and Ange being generally likeable, they missed the fact we actually struggled to break down some poor or numerically disadvantaged teams.
And that's exactly what has been happening since after those 10 games and, more importantly, after we got all the players back we lost after Chelsea
Steady on Matthew.
Remember where you came from.
“Winning breeds confidence. 6 wins, 2 draws, 0 defeats. It's clearly making the team believe they can go out, play their game and win far more often than not.
I felt that was why Woolwich did "well" last season.
I saw a stat that teams that have got 20 points after 8 games have finished top 4 28 times, 11 of which have won the title.”
And
Matt1882
Some of just operate on a different level than the majority.
Good to see you caught up though.
“I think we have overperformed to date and as our carabao exit showed our squad is relatively thin.
And the bottom 6 have been absolutely awful. United and Chelsea are both performing as mid table teams over the first 8. Not the forces they once were.
Playing 9 man Liverpool is IMHO easier than playing 11 man Liverpool. if every game we played 9 men then I would not be complaining one bit
Obviously you lot don’t agree with these statements in the main. Liverpool being a hard fixture this season especially.
And I’m not expecting us to win the league. Top 5 would be a good season from my point of view even at this point- I know others expect top 4 as a minimum now. “
Some of just operate on a different level than the majority.
Good to see you caught up though.
“I think we have overperformed to date and as our carabao exit showed our squad is relatively thin.
And the bottom 6 have been absolutely awful. United and Chelsea are both performing as mid table teams over the first 8. Not the forces they once were.
Playing 9 man Liverpool is IMHO easier than playing 11 man Liverpool. if every game we played 9 men then I would not be complaining one bit
Obviously you lot don’t agree with these statements in the main. Liverpool being a hard fixture this season especially.
And I’m not expecting us to win the league. Top 5 would be a good season from my point of view even at this point- I know others expect top 4 as a minimum now. “
Just putting this in response to you because you quoted me, the point is more aimed generally at a number of others on here so please don't take this all personally, but reading comprehension seems to be seriously lacking at times.
I have criticised performance, and your response talks about the result not being bad.
No, you're right, a point isn't disastrous from that fixture, but the performance was shit. If we had managed to snatch a winner, the performance would have still been shit. I'd take more confidence into the next game had we played well and drawn or even lost, than from a game where we'd played poorly and nicked a win.
A lot of our more recent wins have come in games where we have been sub-par.
That's a concern because it has proven to never be sustainable for us, we saw the same under Mourinho and Conte, it was just a different style of football on display. And in the moment under both of those there were people in the midst of those wins clutching onto the straws that performances would improve with time and that it was the points that mattered, what actually ended up happening was that the luck ran out and we began to get the points returns that our performances deserved.
However much of the ball we are having now, overall I would say we look pretty toothless in attack (which is strange seeing as stats show we score a decent amount of goals*) and always look likely to concede no matter who we are playing.
It is a concern and I don't see how ignoring/being in denial of that is helpful to anyone, or makes anyone a better fan as some seem to believe.
*On further consideration, this makes me think that we must actually be quite clinical, because we aren't creating chance after chance, yet we are still scoring a fair amount. At some point you have to expect that unless we begin to create more, this over performance in conversion will tail off and we'll be left drawing a good few blanks instead.
The xG wankers might have more to say on this.
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Squeezed a win??? You deluded to think we should piss over everyone every game?
Very very very nearly lost to Sheff Utd!! We never. We found a way to win.
Because Toney wasn’t playing we should win?
Comfortable win against Utd
Miles better than Liverpool when they had 9/10 and 11
Won at Luton with 10 men
Comfortable wins against Fulham,palace and Bournemouth.
Mate.
It’s completely unrealistic. You are expecting every win to be easy and under total control with us playing our best football every time for 90min.
Sheffield uTD you say it’s a game we could have lost but we didn’t. We dominated the game and won. That’s just one example.
We haven’t won a single game we didn’t deserve to win this year. We have lost 2 that we deserved to win, maybe more.
Some posts in this thread are absolutely embarrassing
I can't believe you've even replied to it.
Some posts in this thread are absolutely embarrassing
I can't believe you've even replied to it.
Matt goes to games though and he’s genuine. I think he’s massively negative but I’m not with you on embarrassing mate. Was definitely miles over the top though
Numerous posts riddled with inaccuracies with regards to what they see means posters are either blind or stupid. Constantly posting such shit is indeed embarrassing.
How many points have we dropped because we've failed to break teams down?
I can tell you now, as a fact, it's about a point or no more than Man City or Woolwich this season.
We were a Timo Werner being used to this system away from winning 3-1 on Tuesday.
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I agree with your comments, performances are not great and have not been for some time.
The opening weeks of the season were, exciting to watch, if not a bit kamikaze at times.
I know we had injuries but, I thought performance levels would improve when personnel came back.
But I have to confess that, I have been bored silly by performances for a while now, the front line does indeed appear toothless by comparison.
The team Tuesday night, showed very little desire or guile to be able to take three points, which was the same against Fulham and a few others.
With only 8 games left, it's about what we do next season, will Ange get what he wants or needs, that of course remains to be seen.
Yup this is the point, people's expectations were raised massively in the first 10 matches where (at times) we looked invincible and were waiting for the period of injuries to and Intl call ups to clear and expected us to bang again, doesn't always work like that!
I accept that performances haven't been great and have we been inconsistent but surely that's to be expected with a new team in a manager's first season?
XG trend is improving since the middle period of the season where we lost players, as long as that green goes up and the red goes down we will be fine:
We need more transfers both ways and another season to truly judge Ange and the football. As I have said before Richy, Werner, Kulu and BJ are good players but not top players and we need better in the attacking third to progress with this system (among other things like defending set pieces properly and conceding less shite goals)
Massive summer ahead regardless of where we finish this season but 5th would be a great start for a total rebuild.
Massive summer ahead regardless of where we finish this season but 5th would be a great start for a total rebuild.
This is the perverse part for me.
So early on there were some really promising phases and moments, personally it had me really excited for what would come, thinking that we would see more and more of those moments as we progressed.
Then Chelsea happened, and the injuries and suspensions hampered us severely as far as results went for a little while, but honestly, I still thought performances were good, especially with all of the mitigating factors.
So then even that period had me really excited for what we'd see once the injuries and suspensions were out of the way.
And then what came has so far been a damp squib. The promising things from earlier in the season haven't become more prominent, they have all but disappeared. It's bizarre because you can't point to anything that's a catalyst for it, it's like everyone's mojo has just disappeared into thin air.
We can't just bemoan every side that turns up and has the temerity to defend solidly against us and act as though the problem is them and not us.
It's fine if all you care about is the result. But a very high proportion of fans on this forum whined for years about being bored.
They also whined it wasn't sustainable to win the way we were winning. I'd argue that those concerns are just as relevant now.
I don't know if we've slightly changed the 'plan', or got nervous because of a difficult period recently, or what the cause is, but the difference to early season for me is quite simply this:
We need to be deeper when in initial possession, and then 'spring' more quickly once we've beaten the press.
I have no issue with the high line when we're defending, or when we're actively attacking (i.e. near their goal), particularly as VdV seems to have the pace to get us out of pretty much any scrapes arising from balls over the top. However when we take possession, then gradually move up the pitch with lots of balls sideways and backwards (and Romero often loitering on it for 10 seconds whilst the opposition gets their shape reset), it gets much more difficult to find a killer ball. Our current wingers are not going to go 1 on 1 with the full-back and put lots of crosses in, and the middle is always going to be congested because of our inverted FBs, therefore surely the best way is to invite them to press us very deep, then break quickly. I definitely don't mean coutner-attacking football, we're not good enough defensively for that, we need to still have most of the possession, we just need to start things much deeper and then do them quickly. I don't have the stats, but it feels that many of our best goals have been scored that way this season (perhaps they are just the most memorable ones?)
Specifically what do we need to change to achieve that? Well, for me it's simply a). get deeper when we first get the ball, and invite them on to us. If Romero wants to hold on to it for 10 seconds on the edge of our box whilst awaiting the press (and maybe playing a long ball if someone makes a great run), then that's fine. Then b). when we beat the press, move it quickly through midfield using the space that has become available (and isn't available when we build up more slowly).
Obviously Ange knows a million times more than I do about football tactics etc, but am I missing something obvious above? If not, why have we stopped doing that?
We need to be deeper when in initial possession, and then 'spring' more quickly once we've beaten the press.
I have no issue with the high line when we're defending, or when we're actively attacking (i.e. near their goal), particularly as VdV seems to have the pace to get us out of pretty much any scrapes arising from balls over the top. However when we take possession, then gradually move up the pitch with lots of balls sideways and backwards (and Romero often loitering on it for 10 seconds whilst the opposition gets their shape reset), it gets much more difficult to find a killer ball. Our current wingers are not going to go 1 on 1 with the full-back and put lots of crosses in, and the middle is always going to be congested because of our inverted FBs, therefore surely the best way is to invite them to press us very deep, then break quickly. I definitely don't mean coutner-attacking football, we're not good enough defensively for that, we need to still have most of the possession, we just need to start things much deeper and then do them quickly. I don't have the stats, but it feels that many of our best goals have been scored that way this season (perhaps they are just the most memorable ones?)
Specifically what do we need to change to achieve that? Well, for me it's simply a). get deeper when we first get the ball, and invite them on to us. If Romero wants to hold on to it for 10 seconds on the edge of our box whilst awaiting the press (and maybe playing a long ball if someone makes a great run), then that's fine. Then b). when we beat the press, move it quickly through midfield using the space that has become available (and isn't available when we build up more slowly).
Obviously Ange knows a million times more than I do about football tactics etc, but am I missing something obvious above? If not, why have we stopped doing that?
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It's not about winning 3 or 4 nil.
But we only scored 2 goals to turn a loss into a win against Sheff United deep, deep into injury time.
We only turned a rather boring draw against Liverpool into a win deep, deep into injury time with an own goal.
Brentford have barely been good with Toney. They're barely above relegation fodder this season and we barely scraped a draw. We drew 2-2 with them boxing day 2022 coming back from 2 down and fans were melting.
We needed a ref and VAR to turn a blind eye to a Romero hand ball at 0-0 vs United.
Miles better than Liverpool? Yet didn't lay a fucking glove on them. Against 9 men. We barely troubled the keeper.
We had 11 men in the first half against Luton and didn't actually score. In fairness, had Richie not been having a nightmare we might have.
We did not have a comfortable win Vs Palace. We we started shit, went 2 up, then conceded and fucking well clung on at the end.
Fulham - I don't know why but I struggle to remember than one. Think it's because I watched on TV rather than being there.
You're deluded if you think those games were as great as you think they were. Teams were trying to work us out and most now have. 10 men in the box quickly, keep themselves narrow and watch us dither around the middle and out wide.