The TP clear up.

[Smoggydownsouth 1,621]

Just now, TAPOUT said:

Thanks for the info but I can't buy it personally. JW has been at the club whilst Pulis was here so he must have known their state of mind. He has said he has good players that will score goals. He just has to implement his philosophy. Most fans, even those critical of his appointment will give him and the players a chance if we can see what he is trying to achieve in his style of play and he tells it straight in his presser. If he thinks these players can't do it I would much prefer him to come out and say we haven't got the bodies to play the way I want yet, but you will see the team give 100%. After Saturday that may be the way to go anyway because if all a poor team needs to do to nullify what little threat we have is play it long then we are not going to be very effective. 

No problem mate. Like I said just relaying what I'm told. Even I could be getting the PR spiel.

[Changing Times 12,343]

2 minutes ago, Smoggydownsouth said:

CT just to counteract your thoughts... how many of the new players have played for a club that comes with pressure like ours. I'm not dismissing what your saying far from it but you can see how confidence shot the whole team is when we concede etc. I think personally it has a massive effect on the footy we play. Just my own thoughts.. 

Well, one was at Arsenal and one was at West Ham.  One was at Charlton last season and helped them get promoted.  I'd say Charlton have more issues than we do and presumably would have had promotion ambitions and the pressure that comes with it?  So what's the difference?  There are clubs in this division with more pressure on them than us.

I think it's got bugger all to do with confidence.  We had an imbalanced squad last season and this hasn't been rectified.  We lost one of the few decent footballers we had (Braithwaite) and haven't replaced him with anything.  We have an attacking trio of Fletcher, Assombalonga and Johnson.  If at the start of the summer I'd posted on here saying I hoped that this would be our attack going into the season, this forum would have gone absolutely mental.  We have Shotton in central defence (WTF!) alongside Ayala who is better but just as rash in his own way.  We've had Howson at right back, then the new lad and Coulson at left back, then Friend.  Clayton has already been dropped and from what I can tell we played Wing as the holding midfielder on Saturday?  On what planet is he a replacement for Clayton?  McNair is getting rave reviews essentially because he runs around a lot and he couldn't even get near the side last season.  Throughout pre-season and into the start of this season, I haven't seen the slightest evidence of a more attacking philosophy or any of that crap.  I saw a team trying to press higher up the pitch and I've seen us try and play a bit quicker at times - quick freekicks, quick corners (Brentford) and things like that.  But we're not a more attacking side in any respect and we certainly aren't a better footballing side.  We're a slow team overall and teams have already sussed out certain obvious weaknesses with us - let them give the ball to Shotton and then pressure him cos he will make mistakes.  Also, why would we suddenly start playing good football in league games when we weren't doing it in pre-season?  And, if you want to be blunt about it, how will this group of players do that anyway?

A number of people on here have said that we had a good transfer window.  Now, just a couple of weeks after it's closed, I'm hearing that we signed players that aren't ready and maybe just aren't good enough?  Can someone explain what was good about the transfer window in that case?  Blaming Pulis is like blaming Monk while Pulis was here.  It's excuses for us not dealing with our problems and then wondering why things still aren't working out.  Nobody on here would have been happy at the start of the summer if they'd been told that we'd only sign a left back, a right back and one attacking player and that they might not actually be ready or good enough.  So why were/are people happy with it now?  Why are we looking for other excuses when the more obvious ones are right in front of us?

Pulis has absolutely got his share of the blame in this but he isn't picking our team now and he isn't the one making decisions about who we add to the squad and have lost from it.  We'd have to have a frighteningly weak group of people at this club if they could lose all confidence within a game and a half of the new season beginning.  No, I don't buy it at all.

[Changing Times 12,343]

24 minutes ago, wilsoncgp said:

Indirectly. This is a group of people, if you walk into a new job today and 90% of the office has their heads down and don't look happy, you may start to lose confidence yourself. They're young lads who need guidance and if any of the senior members of the playing staff are down at all, that will rub off on you.

Why wouldn't they look happy though?  This bit hasn't been explained.  We have no confidence because of Pulis?  Well, we finished 7th last season and won 20 games so it can't have been that bad.  But now they are all broken individuals just a couple of games into the new season?  How about this, we have an owner who doesn't give a ***, a head coach who is a novice and recruitment people who are the same ones that wasted the best part of £100m over the last couple of years and helped push us towards financial problems.  It's amazing how little money the club has when we were looking to appoint firstly Pulis (on good money again) and then Jokanovic (on good money as well).  Then Woodgate gets appointed, we don't have a pot to *** in and we've started the season badly because of Pulis?  It's just excuses.

[LinoJo3 3,191]

25 minutes ago, Smoggydownsouth said:

Could be.  Suppose time will tell.

Do you not find it strange that players like Wing, Britt, Clayton, shotton actually played better under pulis than they have so far?

I seen a good quote along the lines of ‘if your ears confuse your eyes, that’s propaganda!’

basically if what your being told isn’t matching what you are physically seeing then your most likely getting played.

[Brunners 7,982]

1 minute ago, LinoJo3 said:

Do you not find it strange that players like Wing, Britt, Clayton, shotton actually played better under pulis than they have so far?

I seen a good quote along the lines of ‘if your ears confuse your eyes, that’s propaganda!’

basically if what your being told isn’t matching what you are physically seeing then your most likely getting played.

I think shotton and potentially wing to some degree are the only ones you could argue that. In no way were clayton or britt better under pulis.

[Changing Times 12,343]

1 minute ago, LinoJo3 said:

Do you not find it strange that players like Wing, Britt, Clayton, shotton actually played better under pulis than they have so far?

I seen a good quote along the lines of ‘if your ears confuse your eyes, that’s propaganda!’

basically if what your being told isn’t matching what you are physically seeing then your most likely getting played.

You'd be amazed at how often it actually works though.

[LinoJo3 3,191]

2 minutes ago, Changing Times said:

You'd be amazed at how often it actually works though.

I think it’s down to some people not being able to form their own opinion or be confident in it so allow some one of perceived ‘authority’ to do it for them. In this case local media, club staff Q&A’s, conferences and statements, ‘if they say it it must be true’. 

[Duvel 2,446]

I'm not doubting SDS here but I don't buy it either, it sounds like a convenient excuse to leak out of the club. 

I don't know if anyone else has noticed but we have a habit of blaming previous managers for the present state we usually find ourselves in, it's usually the Gazette that do the clubs dirty work though. 

There's one common denominator and that's the man that hired all of them.

[LinoJo3 3,191]

Also and this is a bit ‘tin foil hat’ but what smoggydownsouth said about being ‘fed PR’ could probably be true. The following he had on here over the summer won’t have gone unnoticed by the club, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he got fed bits and pieces of positive spin, wether he knows it or not.

One minute we were flat broke and looking for loans, then the next day he was posting about buying a promising player from Belgium or trying to sign Kent for £5.5m. His info didn’t always stay consistent and it didn’t go unnoticed that he had a lot more than he has in the past.

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

33 minutes ago, Changing Times said:

Why wouldn't they look happy though?  This bit hasn't been explained.  We have no confidence because of Pulis?  Well, we finished 7th last season and won 20 games so it can't have been that bad.  But now they are all broken individuals just a couple of games into the new season?  How about this, we have an owner who doesn't give a ***, a head coach who is a novice and recruitment people who are the same ones that wasted the best part of £100m over the last couple of years and helped push us towards financial problems.  It's amazing how little money the club has when we were looking to appoint firstly Pulis (on good money again) and then Jokanovic (on good money as well).  Then Woodgate gets appointed, we don't have a pot to *** in and we've started the season badly because of Pulis?  It's just excuses.

Like I said before, if the club is giving off indications that we're not expected to do much this year then players on their last legs don't have much to fight for. After all, why would any of these players who've spent so long trying to fight for Premier League football care about a transitional season? I'm not saying they have any more of an excuse than say Martin Braithwaite to down tools but I certainly believe there's a way this could be true because they're human beings at the end of the day and are allowed to feel disappointed and unhappy in situations they don't want to be in. It could still be absolute rubbish, as SDS says.

[Foogle 2,104]

44 minutes ago, Changing Times said:

I think it's got bugger all to do with confidence.  We had an imbalanced squad last season and this hasn't been rectified.  We lost one of the few decent footballers we had (Braithwaite) and haven't replaced him with anything.  We have an attacking trio of Fletcher, Assombalonga and Johnson.  If at the start of the summer I'd posted on here saying I hoped that this would be our attack going into the season, this forum would have gone absolutely mental.  We have Shotton in central defence (WTF!) alongside Ayala who is better but just as rash in his own way.  We've had Howson at right back, then the new lad and Coulson at left back, then Friend.  Clayton has already been dropped and from what I can tell we played Wing as the holding midfielder on Saturday?  On what planet is he a replacement for Clayton?  McNair is getting rave reviews essentially because he runs around a lot and he couldn't even get near the side last season.  Throughout pre-season and into the start of this season, I haven't seen the slightest evidence of a more attacking philosophy or any of that crap.  I saw a team trying to press higher up the pitch and I've seen us try and play a bit quicker at times - quick freekicks, quick corners (Brentford) and things like that.  But we're not a more attacking side in any respect and we certainly aren't a better footballing side.  We're a slow team overall and teams have already sussed out certain obvious weaknesses with us - let them give the ball to Shotton and then pressure him cos he will make mistakes.  Also, why would we suddenly start playing good football in league games when we weren't doing it in pre-season?  And, if you want to be blunt about it, how will this group of players do that anyway?

I think committing more men higher up the pitch is a more attacking side though. Watching us I feel like we're a better football team, we play with a lot more risk in and out of possession. I suppose it all depends on what your definition of attacking football is? I bought this up last season when there was talk of sacking Pulis and bringing in someone like Jokanovic was that the spine of the team from the Keeper all the way to our Striker isn't suited to playing with a high line and possession football, that we'd need an overhaul, to be honest the way we're playing is better than what I was expecting apart from some unlucky results.

Also I think Clayton was just given a rest after starting all 3 matches from what Woodgate has said in a presser.

[Changing Times 12,343]

1 minute ago, wilsoncgp said:

Like I said before, if the club is giving off indications that we're not expected to do much this year then players on their last legs don't have much to fight for. After all, why would any of these players who've spent so long trying to fight for Premier League football care about a transitional season? I'm not saying they have any more of an excuse than say Martin Braithwaite to down tools but I certainly believe there's a way this could be true because they're human beings at the end of the day and are allowed to feel disappointed and unhappy in situations they don't want to be in. It could still be absolute rubbish, as SDS says.

If what you're saying there it true then that's not a lack of confidence is it?  I mean, you're talking about players not caring and that.  That's something different to what I thought we were talking about.  I wouldn't like to accuse the players of that at the moment.

[Changing Times 12,343]

3 minutes ago, Foogle said:

I think committing more men higher up the pitch is a more attacking side though. Watching us I feel like we're a better football team, we play with a lot more risk in and out of possession. I suppose it all depends on what your definition of attacking football is? I bought this up last season when there was talk of sacking Pulis and bringing in someone like Jokanovic was that the spine of the team from the Keeper all the way to our Striker isn't suited to playing with a high line and possession football, that we'd need an overhaul, to be honest the way we're playing is better than what I was expecting apart from some unlucky results.

Also I think Clayton was just given a rest after starting all 3 matches from what Woodgate has said in a presser.

Attacking with the ball as opposed to standing higher up field without the ball I suppose, mate.  That's just a different way of defending as far as I'm concerned.  What I'm talking about is what happens when we have the ball.

[Changing Times 12,343]

Sorry, Clayton was given a rest?  On the third weekend of the season?  You don't think that seems a bit odd?

[BillyWoofs_shinpad 1,884]

4 minutes ago, Changing Times said:

Attacking with the ball as opposed to standing higher up field without the ball I suppose, mate.  That's just a different way of defending as far as I'm concerned.  What I'm talking about is what happens when we have the ball.

We lose it.