Jump to content
oneBoro Forum

Bruce

Members
  • Content Count

    1,251
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

Everything posted by Bruce

  1. Exactly this. If you play rush goalie, you concede more goals than if you don't regardless of how good your defenders are. Carrick has set us up to play a certain way which is fine when it works: some of the football last season was breathtaking. But it's awful when it doesn't work. For it to work you need forwards that are a class above the defenders they will face and can hold onto the ball under pressure. You need central midfielders who can break a press and are savvy enough to snuff out a counter when it starts. You need pace out wide and a massive goal threat from multiple aven
  2. From Burnley vs Bournemouth. Sounds familiar.
  3. I don't think so. Akpom scores goals for Ajax whenever they let him play. Giles looks to have picked up where he left off at Hull. I agree that Carrick's system makes attacking players look better I the same way that AK's system makes defenders look better. I think Giles is a classic case of too good for the Championship but not good enough for the Premier. Akpom is caught in limbo. Archer is good enough for the Premier but playing in the wrong team. Ramsey is made of glass. Personally, I think the attacking 4231/325 that De Zerbi pioneered and Carrick copied has been rumble
  4. Wednesday was a worse first half and some individually worse performances but at least we turned it around, partially, in the second half. Yesterday there was nothing positive anywhere across the board. I'm not ready to make that judgement yet. It does feel like Woodgate: a manager who has an ideal image in his head of what he wants who doesn't know how to get there. I think last season led us down the garden path. Because we had Akpom playing at a Champions League level and Giles who was on his wavelength we were playing on cheat mode. When we had to get real at the end of the season,
  5. Thing is, the team wasn't horrendous. The problem was that Wilder was poisoning the club. The second he was out of the door, things started to improve. Then Carrick got Akpom back fully fit for his first match of the season and the rest is history. Carrick's first team was Steffen Smith - Fry - Lenihan - Giles Howson - Hackney Jones - Akpom - McGree Muniz He swapped in Forss for Muniz after 70 minutes then stuck with them. Right now, Carrick isn't the problem. The club and players are still united around him. The problem is the same one that Woodgate had; Car
  6. Taken as a complete package, that was the worst match of the season. We've had worse performances, worse results, made worse mistakes, had worse individual performances by a player, picked worse starting teams, worse tactics, made worse substitutes. But yesterday was a solid 0/10 across the board. There isn't a way forward from yesterday that doesn't start with change. There's no way to look at the performances this season and say that it will come good if we just keep on improving on what we're currently doing. Usually the change is the manager. I don't think that makes sense at thi
  7. 👆🏻This. We have lost the ability to play out from the back and forgotten what the point of it is. This is a failure of coaching leading to players having to make it up as they go along.
  8. Carrick needs to put his 4-2-3-1, possession-based, attacking football in the bin and come up with a system that suits the players. It hasn't worked since the end of last season, it's not going to work this season and it probably won't work next season. It doesn't mean 4-5-1 Pulisball, it just means that we have a collection of decent players who are unable to play the way Carrick wants them to. I don't get the impression that they have given up on Carrick, they're still trying, but their confidence is shot.
  9. I presume Azaz is injured, if so. Dropping him for Greenwood would be mad.
  10. I guess Carrick will go one of two ways. He could be determined that his system works. To be fair, our away record is very good. Or he could decide that he needs to change the system. I'm guessing the former. In that case, assuming that Dieng either is off the naughty step or never was on itm, I reckon it will be Dieng Ayling - McNair - Clarke - Thomas Barlaser - O'Brien Forss - Azaz - McGree Silvera This is assuming that Latte Lath isn't quite fit enough to start and Forss isn't allowed to play in the middle. I think we want to give Thomas a run of games to
  11. Of course it's PR but doesn't mean it's also not largely true. Let's face it, if McGree was agitating for an exit and refusing to negotiate then his agent would be on the phone to a tame journo the moment he saw the piece. So yes, every reason to suspect that the piece is broadly accurate. Not every deal may get done. Personally, I think we'll see Hackney and RVDB stay and Carrick sign a new contract. I think Jones will sign an extension. I think we had been planning on selling McGree but the Rogers' and Crooks' sales have changed things. I think there'll be a lot out the door
  12. That's the thing, and it's definitely how Gibson operates when he agrees to increase the funding. The problem we have at the moment is that we don't know if we have the foundations for a good team next season or not because this season has been so disrupted by injuries. Depending on whether you're a glass half-full type or not, we're either a couple of quality signings away or heading for league one. For example, O'Brien. One of the best midfielders in the league two years ago. In the next 12 games he might stay fit, get back to where he was and we might be able to get him off Forest for
  13. That might seem like the case but, look at the actual numbers. We're 17th in the Home form table with 20 goals conceded. Our goals conceded, however, are relatively low. We're 9th in the table for goals conceded but only two teams in the league have scored fewer goals at home than us. Our massive weakness is an inability to score goals at home. Even worse when you realise that 4 of those goals came in one match against Preston. That leaves 13 goals in the other 16 home matches. Look at the away form and we're 7th in the away table. We've scored close to double the nu
  14. Indeed. We're in a position where we can refuse to sell any of our key players, except McGree, if we decide not to. Thing is, we're probably looking at needing to spend £20m if we need the right quality and there has to be a question of whether Gibson will sanction that if we end this season in the bottom half of the table. In AK's first full season we spent around £10m and received about £5m and had a lot of loans. The season after, we spent about £30m and received under £5m. However, we had got to the play-off finals as opposed to flailing around in mid-table. To be honest, if I w
  15. No matter how good a manager is, they can only work with that they have. If we have another summer window of prospects and rejects then I don't see us getting anywhere. This summer was not an unreasonable change of direction but a this point we have had 30+ games and we still don't know how good the majority of the buys were. If we sold and/or didn't re-sign Glover, J Jones, Engel, Bangura, Thomas, Ayling, O'Brien, Greenwood, Silvera, Late Lath, Gilbert, Agyemang and Nkrumah I think we would mostly forget them instantly. Engel seems a decent person, Bangura might be good, we have no
  16. I don't see it as that bad. I'm probably 70/30 that Carrick will turn out to be the real deal as a manager. He is flailing around at the moment and making bad decisions but he has had a massively difficult job. Turn of the season, I thought we would probably end up 6th-10th due to the overhaul and loss of quality but I didn't expect this many injuries. Given what he has had to cope with, if we end the season 10th-12th with inconsistent but improving performances, I think he'll have done probably par for the course.
  17. The bad and the good thing is that, I think, nobody knows. Bad because, well, nobody knows. Good because at least it means we haven't settled on giving up on the current plan. Last 8 games have seen 2 wins, 2 draws and 4 defeats. First 8 games of the season was 1 win, 1 draw and 6 defeats. Really hard to see any signs of progress this season. Indeed, right now, it feels like we're going backwards with our wins being flukes when the other side misses multiple chances. However, this season has been such a disaster in terms of injuries at the same time as overseeing a huge rebuild with
  18. So, I had a look at Aitor Karanka and Steve McClaren, both of whom were first time managers with us. Both of them were assistant managers for about 3 years beforehand as was Michael Carrick and Steve McKenna. Carrick and McKenna served their apprenticeship under Solskjær, which it could be argued was the blind leading the novices. Karanka and McClaren served under elite level managers. When McKenna went to Ipswich in December 2021 he had an immediate impact which faded towards the end of the season. Highly respectable 23 games, won 11, draw 8, lose 4. Just shy of 2ppg. The next sea
  19. It's too early to right off Carrick. I see no signs of him losing the dressing room and no signs of the club losing confidence in him. Any manager would struggle with the injuries this season and overseeing a wholesale replacement of players with poorer quality. Last season at WBA, Corberan started really well but then tailed off. Last 15 games of the season for WBA were won 5, draw 3, lost 7: bottom 6 form. Despite that, despite literally spending nothing on transfers (just Maja on a free) and despite horrendous injuries, Corberan has them sitting pretty in the playoffs. Keeping faith wi
  20. Every single penny of the sales of Akpom and Payero has been spent. The sales of Rogers and Crooks, no, but the Rogers sale wasn't expected and Crooks happened after the window closed. I expect every single penny of their sales plus whoever else goes, will be spent in the summer as well.
  21. Hard pressed to find any evidence that Carrick has improved us. He has a lot of fair excuses this season, especially the injuries and having to deal with a massive drop in quality in his players but I still look at the team he put out today and it looks to have all the same failings as the team he put out for the first match of the season. Today's performance was as poor as the dregs of the Woodgate season.
  22. And captain as well. I suspect that there are indications of Clarke breaking down again if his workload gets too much. Aside from Glover, the team picks itself. Almost like the 70s where you had about 16 players to pick from.
  23. I guess another issue is whether any of the U21s are ready to step up to the first team squad. This year, Coburn was (accidentally) developing quite well until he fell victim to the curse. Assuming he can get whatever's wrong fixed, he is presumably in contention next season. Hemming and Brynn have both had good loans this season and are presumably ready to play in the Championship. We bought Nkrumah and Agyemang in the summer who both seem to have sunk without trace. Ditto Gilbert who is this season's Boyd Munce. Looking at the actual U21s, Willis and Finch seem to be retu
  24. Feels like, after a really good spell at Luton, Drameh's gone backwards a bit. That said, I think Mowbray has been picking him. He's had enough loans that next season is probably his make or break one. Not sure I buy the links to Andrian Kraev. It feels like an agent ringing around Championship clubs with a bit of money and then claiming they're interested. He also doesn't seem to fit the profile of midfielders Carrick picks.
×
×
  • Create New...