LinoJo3

I think that’s irrelevant at this point, we have enough of the squad available for it not to affect our performances. There’s only really been Conway and Clarke missing of note. Edmundson has filled it more than adequately for Clarke and Conway hasn’t cemented himself enough on the team to be ‘a miss’ and even so McGree or Azaz should more more than adequate replacements.

Yes we shouldn’t be in that 5th-12th section of the league hoping to get a play off spot, by now we should have out grown that. The excuses are gone, we have the players, we have a settled and pretty experienced team and Carrick is in his 3rd season as a manager. For comparison karanka who had a very similar career path to Carrick was about to get us promoted at this point. I expected/expect us to be in the group of teams from 1st-6th for most of the season otherwise despite all the work in the summer there is just no improvement on last season. If that happens then you have to look at the coaching. That said I think the Watford result is clouding judgement a bit, if we’d even just snatched a draw I think the outlook would be very different. We out performed them for most of the game and I think a lot of the anger at the result is because it felt like we’d get a pretty comfortable win right up until they equalised. It feels like we are right on the center of the ‘fine line’ between success or failure sometimes we push above and then drop below. We need that consistency.

If we’re looking at what this team is lacking from then it’s Akpom all day long for me. Strong focal point in the center of the final 3rd, knew how to keep the ball, knew what to do with it, knew how to make us tick. Thats what we’re lacking in this team imo.

“Whatever way we view it, it highlights just how ineffective our attacking play tactics are.” Looks alot like making a point to me. The stats you then post literally suggest the opposite which is why i questioned your post, how can we have ineffective attacking play tactics yet be top of the league by some distance on shots? There’s literally no other way of seeing it but the tactics work, the players are the problem as they are having the actual shots. Dont tell me ‘they’re probably all from distance/hopeful shots’, because i can name 4 just from yesterday that we had from almost the 6 yard line. If Carrick doesn’t pick those players then who else will come in? Is burgzorg gonna start banging them in suddenly? As frustrating as it sounds, maybe the best thing is just persevering and hope it starts clicking as it did last season. Someone has already posted the ppg stats which show we aren’t even that far off the pace. This panic is totally bizarre imo and you seem to have this weird issue with Carrick ever since he dropped Engel 😂

Seems to be way worse this season for some reason

Can i just point out it was only 3 days ago people were arguing wether Conway should be on the bench or taking Laths place because there was no way he should be replacing Azaz at #10 😂

I’m not really sure what your point is? You point out we have the highest amount of efforts at goal and then finish off saying how ineffective our attacking tactics are? Poor conversion rate suggest a personel problem over tactical.

The Azaz header, the rebound from a shot from the edge of the box. There’s a reason most football games end 1-0/1-1/2-0 etc, because it’s pretty rare that a team will create a boatload of very good chances in every game. In today’s game Watford created 3 and we created 3, they took 2 of theirs and we only took one. That was the difference, not how long it takes us to play, not where we shoot from, not our style of play, not who played at #10 and who was injured. Barely any teams will have loads of amazing chances so I don’t get why it’s any different for us?

So if we’re so bad at attacking how is one of the major complaints of this game/season the amount of clear chances we miss? Teams are putting literally every player in the defensive half of their half against us, the amount of work we have to do sometimes just to create a chance is insane. Yes we aren’t perfect every time but we’re never gonna be, we played well today, should have scored more and got at least a point.

No there is less defenders because they’ve pushed higher up the pitch and left gaps which gives our forwards space and more time, makes runs and passes easier to make. Hence why it’s called ‘on the transition’ since possession has transitioned from one team to the other. Incidentally if we set up to play that way and it didn’t work perfectly every single time I have ZERO doubt this thread would be full of people moaning that we ‘sit far to deep’ and ‘invite pressure’ etc etc.

Breaking news! Football team looks better at attacking when there are less defenders back shocker!!

The reaction to this defeat is crazy, we were so comfortable up until their subs and equaliser, no way did we deserve to lose that game.

Also why are people suggesting ‘trying something new’ up front? This is getting ridiculous now. The difference when burgzorg replaced lath on Tuesday was very noticeable, Lath is our best striker and he starts up front end of.

How else will he see any passing options?

What exactly has ‘unravelled’? We’re away at Watford and quite clearly are the better team for most of that half. We’ve created chances, dominated the ball and looked pretty sound at the back. You can’t start panicking just because we aren’t 2-0 at half time in every game, come on let’s be real.