Being bullied

[Hector74]

Is this team strong enough to stand up to teams away from home against big strong side like Rotherham Bolton stoke lucky against Sheffield Wednesday even villa at home we got bullied round the pitch. a lot of nice footballers but not enough grit. And when the chips are down in a big game like last night do u trust them to deliver??

[G STAR RAM]

I'll be honest, I don't think we got bullied last night.

We just failed to defend properly and failed to create chances, they are the reasons we lost.

[AdamRam]

I thought the team selection went against us, which is easy to say in hindsight. He went for legs and sacrificed that creativity which didn’t help when they went down to 10. We are a team that likes to attack at pace or zipping the ball around to create chances, we couldn’t or didn’t do either in the 2nd half. Also agree that the defending was good and that’s more of a concern going forward.

Also credit to GR, Stoke have a good team, they battled well in the 2nd half and didn’t rweally give us any chances of note, this was the type of performance he sets his teams up for and with the sending off it gave him an excuse to do it, without the home fans getting on his back.

[Millenniumram]

We weren’t bullied, we just couldn’t defend and didn’t turn up at the start of the game, same as every week. Only this time we couldn’t be bailed out by some individual genius because stoke were well organised, which is why I continuously made the point that conceding the the first goal would be a killer... and even when we did recover from that we fell asleep again. These sort of results have been coming they way we’ve approached games and will continue to come until we sort out how we start games and how we defend, not just as Individuals, but as a team.

Its hard for our attacking players to show off their talent when they’re always trying to break down a team because we’re always losing..

[Richard246]

We simply can't defend and we have to start looking why???

You have to look at all 4 defenders I like bogle but simple mistakes he gets on the wrong side of attackers and that is basic and far too many crosses from this side now is that due to little support with other players to far forward and the same with Malone we are not defending as a unit.

Too me Marriott a lot of the time looks isolated and he should not be but needs to be sorted we gone one step forward 2 steps back.

IT may be a change in information with a 4-2-3-1 where we can play Huddlestone/ Johnson as the 2 or Bryson and Huddlestone

 Something like this            

                                                          Carson

                 Bogle               Keogh                     Tomori               Malone

                                          Huddlestone               Johnson or Bryson

                      Waghorn                 Mount                     Wilson

                                                     Marriott

[MACKWORTHRAM]

Id have to agree about Bogle. It's a big ask for an 18 year old to go a full season in the Championship. It looks to me like other teams are targeting him too. But with Davies injured it looks to me like Bogle will be right back until we could possibly strengthen in January. Lampard clearly doesn't like Wisdom. I'd have liked to have seen Tomori out there. But that isn't going to happen.

Didn't understand the line up last night at all. Johnson for Huddlestone was baffling. Not in hindsight as I said it at the time. Huddlestone just gives us so much control. Whereas Johnson just doesn't have the quality to play that DM  roll. Also Lampard was praising Jozefzoon after the Sheffield Weds game and then he gets left out. He's not going to get any consistency unless he gets a run in the team. Holmes completely out the squad too.

For me we aren't going to go anywhere unless we stop conceding goals. We weren't bullied by Stoke last night. We gave them a chance and they took it and then we couldn't break them down. Also we need some sort of stable team. I get he likes to make the odd change and sometimes it's enforced. But I felt last night it was too many changes.

I'd be tempted to play the usual back 4 with Huddlestone and Evans Infront of them. Mount just ahead. Then the front 3. Waghorn, Marriott and Wilson. Try and give us a strong base. Could also give Mount license to get forward. Cos I'm not sure what Bryson is bringing to the table at the minute. Our best football we have played this season has come when he's not been in the team.

Next 4 games are massive. Swansea, Wigan, Forest and Bristol City. 3 of them are at home. We need 10 points from these imo. Cos after Christmas our run in is horrendous. 

Get to January in the top 6 and let Lampard make 3 or 4 signings. (I wouldn't have said we needed that many but now we have 3 long term injuries)

[Mucker1884]

The only bullying that went on last night was that Burton Lad, who clearly had a go at the school kids so he could ride shotgun on their empty school bus!  

 

...Either that, or the passengers fled voluntarily because he'd shat imsen!

 

Bully or pant spoiler?  Which one was it, BurtonLad?  

[JoetheRam]

Trouble is (if indeed we were bullied, which is open to debate), the players we have that mean we might get bullied by thuggish Rowett style teams are the same ones that mean we can out press and out pass a lot of other teams. Bring in a bunch of hardmen and they might stop us being bullied, but we'll probably also struggle to win the games we do at the moment by virtue of skill.

Up to Frank to find the balance.

[BramcoteRam84]

Not bullied. We have an issue defending wide areas which is partly down to tactics and players not quite on it in midfield areas due to coming back from injury. We’ve lost the pattern of play we had 4-6 weeks ago. We’ll get it back just might take a few games.

We’re where I hoped we would be. Need to hopefully stay in contention while we ride this dip in form, strengthen in January then hopefully for once finish strongly and we’ll have a great chance.

[europia]

11 hours ago, Hector74 said:

Is this team strong enough to stand up to teams away from home against big strong side like Rotherham Bolton stoke lucky against Sheffield Wednesday even villa at home we got bullied round the pitch. a lot of nice footballers but not enough grit. And when the chips are down in a big game like last night do u trust them to deliver??

Probably not.