Derby v Liverpool (Leicester v Dortmund)

[Ramarena]

8 hours ago, Howard Canitbé said:

If only we'd appointed one of the most highly regarded coaches in Europe. 

Why didn't MM think of this?

Well it was either Klopp or Pep, but that fool Morris plumed for Pearson didn't he 

[Ramarena]

1 hour ago, irobinson said:

Great point made - just like Man U last season - doesn't seem to be anyone who can have a go

And Chelsea and Burnley and Leicester and Boro and Bournmouth, etc, etc!

When the going gets tough our players look at their feet and shrug their shoulders.

[Duracell]

15 minutes ago, sage said:

He may be a genius and everything will come together next season. At the moment it looks like a car crash.

Pearson's style seems to be taking his mates's Alfa Romeo for a spin, wrap it round a lamppost and then taking it to the local garage to slowly rebuild it with bits from a Ford Transit van.

[G STAR RAM]

8 hours ago, Mostyn6 said:

It's the chain of events. Confidence is a brittle thing, especially in the almost insular world of football where your every action is monitored and scrutinised. 

The reason you are the problem is that you believe footballers are immune to real world human problems such as depression and stress.

Add for Keogh, he has no problem with confidence, he's borderline delusional. He will always be up for the fight and always give 100%. Sadly he's thick as sausage when he needs to be intelligent. He's panicky add sausage when he needs to be composed.

You're coming across as very hypocritical I'm afraid.

Lecturing people in how to treat the players when you are one of the more vociferous when it comes to slating Keogh.

Do you not think Keogh may be panicky the to his the fans react when he makes mistakes?

[wixman1884]

11 minutes ago, Duracell said:

Pearson's style seems to be taking his mates's Alfa Romeo for a spin, wrap it round a lamppost and then taking it to the local garage to slowly rebuild it with bits from a Ford Transit van.

A local garage aptly named "League One Auto Centre"

[Warren Hobhead]

It was a very negative, defensive system and shape that we set up with last night. 4-5-1 was it? Awful to see. Hughes in everyone's preferred role behind the striker. Unfortunately that striker was Bent who looks ready for the knackers yard. I'm a huge fan of Butterfield but the lad is wasted out wide. He had to play right midfield and right back in the first half such was the performance of Christie who continues to regress after last season. 

 

As sad as it was to see us line up as we did, Liverpool weren't creating a thing until Keogh did a Keogh. Game over after that. He was pretty culpable for the second half goals too. Not his finest hour. 

 

In terms of positives I thought Mitchell did well, Butterfield much better when central and BJ wasn't dreadful. 

 

Huge game on Saturday.

[ariotofmyown]

14 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

You're coming across as very hypocritical I'm afraid.

Lecturing people in how to treat the players when you are one of the more vociferous when it comes to slating Keogh.

Do you not think Keogh may be panicky the to his the fans react when he makes mistakes?

These posts are so hypocritical it could just be a parody.

Saying another fan is part of the problem as he questioned if the squads confidence could be destroyed by a few isolated idiots shouting their mouths off.

The apparently sensible point about depression and confidence is then followed up with a bizzare personal rant at Keough about how thick he is. Wtf?

The added irony too of all this coming from a poster who utterly abused Clough for months and months. You know, the same guy who built up the amazing squad that the fans destroyed.

 

[toddy]

Our opponents last night were Liverpool, were people seriously expecting anything more than the result we got?

Slating Keogh for being a championship player is madness.

[PistoldPete2]

3 hours ago, Angry Ram said:

Agreed LFC are a class outfit but it's the way we lost.. We are one division behind them but looked 10 behind them.

I can take losing to a better team and can always find a positive but we never laid a glove on them. We never rose to the occasion like underdogs do.. We simply whimpered in the corner.. The core of our team are spineless I'm afraid. Fragile men who hide when it gets tough.. 

Bury would have given them more to think about last night.

Agreed. We need to have a go and go down fighting. Started with a very defensive line up and got what we deserved for that.

[Curtains]

1 minute ago, PistoldPete2 said:

Agreed. We need to have a go and go down fighting. Started with a very defensive line up and got what we deserved for that.

What all get sent off or injured  

Thats a good idea for Blackburn and Cardiff games  

We got  a few bookings last night chasing shadows 

[Warren Hobhead]

6 minutes ago, toddy said:

Our opponents last night were Liverpool, were people seriously expecting anything more than the result we got?

Slating Keogh for being a championship player is madness.

I'm not slating him. But he was badly at fault for at least the first two goals, and the first one (the key goal) was the sort of defending I'd expect to see from a novice making his debut at L2 level, not an international centre back and club captain of many years experience. 

[King Kevin]

9 hours ago, PodgeyRam said:

You're right I didn't. But that's because it's not my job to pick the new manager and I have other things to do with my time than learn the names of every assistant manager in Europe. If it had been my job, who knows?

Spot on mate it's their bloody job to know who's around .

[toddy]

Looking at the game last night, did show the golf between an average championship side against one of the best premier sides in terrific form.

And to put it into perspective we were no better against Chelsea under Mac nor Manchester Utd last season......

[duncanjwitham]

39 minutes ago, Warren Hobhead said:

4-5-1 was it? Awful to see. Hughes in everyone's preferred role behind the striker. Unfortunately that striker was Bent who looks ready for the knackers yard.

Personally I don't think it's Hughes best position - he's a passer, so he needs people in front of him to pass to, and if you push him to far forward he's stuck trying to thread inch-perfect through-balls to the lone striker, past the entire opposing backline.

But ignoring whether it's Hughes best position or not, that position in this style of football is literally the positional equivalent of a hospital pass.  In theory, what should happen is that everything should flow through that player, they should dominate the game, and it bumps everyone's expectations up.  What happens in practice is that the player spends the vast majority of the time watching the ball sail 10 yards over his head, to the likes of Darren Bent who just flicks it on to their keeper,  And the odd time they do get a decent ball into feet, they're so isolated they instantly get swamped by 3 or 4 defenders and lose the ball.  It's exactly what happened to Tom Ince when we started the season playing 4411.

[toddy]

22 minutes ago, Warren Hobhead said:

I'm not slating him. But he was badly at fault for at least the first two goals, and the first one (the key goal) was the sort of defending I'd expect to see from a novice making his debut at L2 level, not an international centre back and club captain of many years experience. 

The first goal was Keogh's fault, yes an international defender, but for Ireland. Keogh is a championship center back and I dont think he will play at a higher league level. Mistakes like the first goal are championship mistakes.

The 2nd goal was a defence/ midfield error, everybody sat off Liverpool and gave them too much space and time. A team like Liverpool with the quality they have will punish you.

Average championship side against a top European side, what do fans really expect?

[Dimmu]

I'm trying to find some positives..

- Some first team experience for Mitchell, Lowe and Elsnik.

- Johnson and Bent, both played alright.

- Pearson hopefully realized Hughes shouldn't be playing so far upfront.

- we can concentrate on league from now on...

[ollycutts1982]

As has been said prior, we needed to get in their faces and ruffle them up abit. But, like Man Utd last year we stood off them with very little pressure. The have quality players and what did we think would happen if we gave them 10 yards of space and several touches before closing them down. A common factor of a lower league team beating one from a higher league is work rate. The very least you need to do in order to compete is match the oppositions work rate and last night we came nowhere near. Against Man Utd last year they were a team who were suffering with confidence and instead of getting stuck in we sat back and let them play and you could visibly see the confidence coming back to them. Let's have a bit of fight. We barely laid a finger on them until 70 mins last night. They only had a slight hint that they were in a game when they were 3-0 up. 

[Van der MoodHoover]

Ah well the Hants' came north last night and  (eventually ) returned south after witnessing a sound beating.

A few little vignettes from the game....

- we had just one or two encouraging moments in the first half. Some passages of one touch play. One down the right just following the first goal but unfortunately that released butters and he is not a winger. One down the left resulted in a bent header from an olsson cross.

- pearson tweaked things a number of times. Hughes pushed forward,  then swapped with Butterfield. The players looked confused. I was.

- basic moves being poorly executed.a Christie short throw in to Hughes for a first time flick down the line to Butterfield who has run the full back and has space. Except the timing was out and Butterfield was offside.

- is the team being given any team instructions?  No midfield runners (bryson ) so why play to bents head for flick ons?

- were we pressing or standing off or getting back into shape when we lost the ball? Different players appeared to be doing different things.

 

I am actually quite worried at how little cohesion we seem to have. Can easily see a possible drift of a further 5-6 games where we only pick up a few draws. Then we could be in the mire. 

[Ramarena]

35 minutes ago, Dimmu said:

I'm trying to find some positives..

- Some first team experience for Mitchell, Lowe and Elsnik.

- Johnson and Bent, both played alright.

- Pearson hopefully realized Hughes shouldn't be playing so far upfront.

- we can concentrate on league from now on...

Bent's got slated on here, but I thought he did ok too. No service and spent the game chasing shadows, he put the effort in and looked o.k.

[Tony Le Mesmer]

56 minutes ago, ollycutts1982 said:

As has been said prior, we needed to get in their faces and ruffle them up abit. But, like Man Utd last year we stood off them with very little pressure. The have quality players and what did we think would happen if we gave them 10 yards of space and several touches before closing them down. A common factor of a lower league team beating one from a higher league is work rate. The very least you need to do in order to compete is match the oppositions work rate and last night we came nowhere near. Against Man Utd last year they were a team who were suffering with confidence and instead of getting stuck in we sat back and let them play and you could visibly see the confidence coming back to them. Let's have a bit of fight. We barely laid a finger on them until 70 mins last night. They only had a slight hint that they were in a game when they were 3-0 up. 

Spot on. Thing is its really easy to work out yet Pearson wasn't able to instil this passion and enthusiasm in us. Stand off them, play poorly and get battered vs get stuck in, press, get men forward quickly , play well and with heart and get battered. For over 70 quid for a family of 3 the least I expect is the latter. Gulf on class or not. Pearson let the fans down last night. The man doesn't appear to have any passion in him. I'm not one of these who thinks managers going mad on the touchline is necessarily a good thing but the bloke looks empty inside. Klopp is fantastic, a great communicator, bundle of energy and drive and encouragement. Just an observation. Probably a hugely unfair one which I hold my hands up to but Pearson is not my cup of tea. Bland. Hodgson-esque and can't see how he motivates or instills hunger.