v Blackburn Rovers (H) - Matchday Thread

[Archied]

2 hours ago, Millenniumram said:

Didn’t get a chance yesterday to say what I thought of the game, though I’m sure everything I’m gonna say has already been covered earlier in the thread. To sum it up - wow! What a performance! To beat a quality team like Blackburn, who are above us in the table for good reason, with the ease that we did yesterday is an absolutely phenomenal result. Huge credit to everyone involved. With Rooney missing I thought we’d get a hard fought 1-0 or 2-1 at best, but the young lads really stepped up - especially in that last 15 of the first half - and we thoroughly deserved the convincing scoreline that we won by. 

After a bit of a sleepy start, we totally bossed the game once Sibley burst onto the scene with that strike that even Rooney would have been proud of! Gone were the lax, half arsed passes out the back and the lack of movement that epitomised the poor opening 15 minutes - replaced by a Barcelona esque style of play, at the heart of which was our incredible young midfield. They were simply outstanding! Some of the linkup between them, especially between Bird and Sibley, was a joy to behold. We played some absolutely beautiful football - quick, crisp passing from back to front, with everything centred around the brilliant Chris Martin up front, who held up play superbly and was central to everything good we did going forward - linking up with the younger energetic lads, and winning space for them to drive into, which they duly did to excellent effect. We played the possession game to absolute perfection, creating so many chances going forward owing to our excellent drives forward from midfield and quality passing around the box, as well as limiting Blackburn to chances pretty much solely from crosses and set pieces - much of which was Down to Shinnie who was an absolute monster in CDM. We really could have scored even more goals had we been a bit more clinical, which tells you everything you need to know about how well we played given we won 3-0! 

Ratings for me:

Hamer 8 - I’ve been a critic but he was excellent today, his distribution was so much better

Bogle 8 - Much more like it, more solid in defence and more confident taking men on going forward, caused all sorts of problems with his drives down the wing

Wisdom 7 - Rarely tested in Defence, played the ball out well in general

Clarke 8 - Imperious display, almost never got beat and made some brilliant tackles to cover some of Forsyths mistakes

Forsyth 8 - Despite some early dodgy passes, he grew into an excellent display and played a couple of brilliant passes going forward that deserved more than they got. Solid and rarely beaten in defence too

Shinnie 8 - Absolute defensive mid masterclass. His positioning was absolutely spot on, he snuffed out danger and stopped counterattacks on so many occasions with some brilliant energetic tackles, and did well starting attacks off when he got in possession too.

Bird 8 - Another standard, extremely composed performance by the young man. Was really impressive driving with the ball through the middle third, and as always looked after the ball extremely well in tight areas

Waghorn 7 - Think he was a little tired after quite a lot of football recently, but still worked hard as always both going forward and tracking back, and got in some good positions too.

Sibley 8 - What a debut! An absolute worldie of a goal that gets better every time you see it, and an excellent all round game too. Some brilliant movement with his runs in behind, he carried the ball forward well and pressed superbly too

Knight 7 - Classic combative performance, worked hard to retain possession and found some decent pockets of space

Martin 9 MOM - Wow. That was absolute prime Martin. His hold up play was near faultless, creating space for the young lads to run into, and playing some devastating little flicks after good pieces of close control that Blackburn simply couldn’t handle. Great poachers goal which deserves great credit, and a composed pen too

Can’t disagree with much in that ,

for me what we are seeing is a manager that understands balance and is not afraid to mix individual s around in terms of starts to achieve it,

it makes me laugh so much seeing the foot stamping over players like Shinnie on here when named starter and early in the game , the too negative calls , same for bird slated for supposed not playing it forward enough ?, they then go on to have stormer s ,, 

the cocu doesn’t know his best 11 and tinkerman stuff is also funny to those patient enough and watching closely since xmas,

best 11 ? It’s getting tougher to pick each week for all the right reasons and is going to present a challenge for some fans to accept when their fav isn’t on the start sheet

[Phoenix]

This performance without our talisaman, Rooney, reminds me of a lad I was at school with. He was head and shoulders above anyone at any of the schools we played, and was on Man City's books when he was 16.

Whenever he was unavailable for the school team, they played a blinder, because they knew they had to play there socks off, because the wonder-boy wasn't there to do it all for them.

As it was, he decided on a career outside of football and just played non-league stuff. Still a legend at Buxton, 50 years on. (No, he's not still playing).

Quote

 

 

[Wolfie20]

2 hours ago, Archied said:

Can’t disagree with much in that ,

for me what we are seeing is a manager that understands balance and is not afraid to mix individual s around in terms of starts to achieve it,

it makes me laugh so much seeing the foot stamping over players like Shinnie on here when named starter and early in the game , the too negative calls , same for bird slated for supposed not playing it forward enough ?, they then go on to have stormer s ,, 

the cocu doesn’t know his best 11 and tinkerman stuff is also funny to those patient enough and watching closely since xmas,

best 11 ? It’s getting tougher to pick each week for all the right reasons and is going to present a challenge for some fans to accept when their fav isn’t on the start sheet

In the last few weeks we've gone from a 'who on earth can we select' to 'who dare we leave out'. The Millwall team selection is going to be fascinating but I guarantee there will be moans and whingeing before we even kick off no matter who Cocu decides to start with.

[ossieram]

It looks like we've got it all wrong and the team is actually crap. It was all Tony Mowbrays fault that we won and nothing to do with us at all.

https://www.brfcs.com/mb/index.php?/forums/topic/34407-Derby-county-a-sunday-8th-march-3pm-ko/

[LazloW]

6 minutes ago, ossieram said:

It looks like we've got it all wrong and the team is actually crap. It was all Tony Mowbrays fault that we won and nothing to do with us at all.

https://www.brfcs.com/mb/index.php?/forums/topic/34407-Derby-county-a-sunday-8th-march-3pm-ko/

Pretty much follows the pattern when we lose.  It is never the fact the opposition played well, it is always our own deficiencies.   

[jono]

2 hours ago, Archied said:

Can’t disagree with much in that ,

for me what we are seeing is a manager that understands balance and is not afraid to mix individual s around in terms of starts to achieve it,

it makes me laugh so much seeing the foot stamping over players like Shinnie on here when named starter and early in the game , the too negative calls , same for bird slated for supposed not playing it forward enough ?, they then go on to have stormer s ,, 

the cocu doesn’t know his best 11 and tinkerman stuff is also funny to those patient enough and watching closely since xmas,

best 11 ? It’s getting tougher to pick each week for all the right reasons and is going to present a challenge for some fans to accept when their fav isn’t on the start sheet

Ace post. I reallly get what Cocu is trying to do. He has a style of play where the detail is variable depending on the opposition, subtle nuance, balance .. all sorts of minutiae to arrive at a recipe. He won’t get it right every time but I am absolutely convinced he knows what is what and is a real technocrat of a manager who is taking us forward. If he had had a full pre season and if Bielik hadn’t been injured we would be 7 or 8 points better off than we are now and with a young vibrant set of players to boot. 
 

I’d love it if we scraped in to the play offs but won’t be in the least upset if we don’t.... Next season is going to be very interesting. Not easy, I hasten to add, but interesting !

[Gisby]

40 minutes ago, jono said:

Ace post. I reallly get what Cocu is trying to do. He has a style of play where the detail is variable depending on the opposition, subtle nuance, balance .. all sorts of minutiae to arrive at a recipe. He won’t get it right every time but I am absolutely convinced he knows what is what and is a real technocrat of a manager who is taking us forward. If he had had a full pre season and if Bielik hadn’t been injured we would be 7 or 8 points better off than we are now and with a young vibrant set of players to boot. 
 

I’d love it if we scraped in to the play offs but won’t be in the least upset if we don’t.... Next season is going to be very interesting. Not easy, I hasten to add, but interesting !

The thing that strikes me the most is that I don’t think some of us give Cocu the credit he deserves with regards to his intellect & understanding of the game. It’s all too easy to come on here and say he doesn’t know this & he doesn’t know that but I consider him to be a student of the game, a manager who understands & appreciates the nuances of the game that  us supporters on the outside cannot grasp. This is not a criticism of forum members but merely an observation that perhaps we have an intellectual of the game in charge of our club, someone with whom we should place our trust and  simply enjoy the ride. Only time will tell but if I’m correct we are in for one hell of a journey!!!!

[jono]

2 hours ago, Gisby said:

The thing that strikes me the most is that I don’t think some of us give Cocu the credit he deserves with regards to his intellect & understanding of the game. It’s all too easy to come on here and say he doesn’t know this & he doesn’t know that but I consider him to be a student of the game, a manager who understands & appreciates the nuances of the game that  us supporters on the outside cannot grasp. This is not a criticism of forum members but merely an observation that perhaps we have an intellectual of the game in charge of our club, someone with whom we should place our trust and  simply enjoy the ride. Only time will tell but if I’m correct we are in for one hell of a journey!!!!

The thing that strikes me in post match interviews is that he is very technically precise .. they changed shape so we had to react, or we weren’t doing X so we adjusted something. 
 

he doesn’t excel at platitudes, even when It goes wrong you can see him wanting to technically explain why it went wrong .. to himself as much as us. 
 

I admit I was a bit underwhelmed in his early interviews, there was a hesitancy, partly language of course, but in those early ones he seemed a bit rabbit in headlights. On the evidence of the last 2 months he has “adjusted” considerably ! 
I have a lot of time for him especially how he has integrated young players and got the best of of our experienced members too. No doubt Rooney has been part of that but I am definitely a Cocu supporter 

[RamNut]

3 hours ago, ossieram said:

It looks like we've got it all wrong and the team is actually crap. It was all Tony Mowbrays fault that we won and nothing to do with us at all.

https://www.brfcs.com/mb/index.php?/forums/topic/34407-Derby-county-a-sunday-8th-march-3pm-ko/

There were a couple of Blackburn fans in the brunny after, and as they left one said “ see you next year, cus we’re not going up, and you’re definitely not!” 
 

I wondered what game he’d been watching.

[jono]

11 hours ago, RamNut said:

There were a couple of Blackburn fans in the brunny after, and as they left one said “ see you next year, cus we’re not going up, and you’re definitely not!” 
 

I wondered what game he’d been watching.

That was a fun 15 mins reading ?

[Patrick Rams]

12 hours ago, RamNut said:

There were a couple of Blackburn fans in the brunny after, and as they left one said “ see you next year, cus we’re not going up, and you’re definitely not!” 
 

I wondered what game he’d been watching.

What he said was absolutely true wasn't it?

[DavesaRam]

From that Blackburn forum thread, one of the issues is that Blackburn tried to take us on by fielding a two-man midfield. It is no surprise that they were overwhelmed, because it made our job so much easier. Mowbray is known for wanting to take the game to the opposition, so it seems he intended to blitz us, but there wasn't enough quality in the rest of the team to handle what we were doing to them.

At times I have missed the good old days of the opening 20 minutes or so being an absolute whirlwind of attacking football, but Cocu's approach was justified on Sunday. We took about 10 minutes to deal with Blackburn's bluster and didn't look back for most of the rest of the match. Either we sat back on our two-goal lead, (which is rather Cocu, isn't it?), or Blackburn made a change (maybe going to a 3-man midfield), and it took us a while to get back on top. 

Whatever it was, it was brilliant to watch, and then experience watching the Rams fans floating out of the stadium on a cushion of euphoria!

[Ghost of Clough]

22 minutes ago, DavesaRam said:

From that Blackburn forum thread, one of the issues is that Blackburn tried to take us on by fielding a two-man midfield. It is no surprise that they were overwhelmed, because it made our job so much easier. Mowbray is known for wanting to take the game to the opposition, so it seems he intended to blitz us, but there wasn't enough quality in the rest of the team to handle what we were doing to them.

At times I have missed the good old days of the opening 20 minutes or so being an absolute whirlwind of attacking football, but Cocu's approach was justified on Sunday. We took about 10 minutes to deal with Blackburn's bluster and didn't look back for most of the rest of the match. Either we sat back on our two-goal lead, (which is rather Cocu, isn't it?), or Blackburn made a change (maybe going to a 3-man midfield), and it took us a while to get back on top. 

Whatever it was, it was brilliant to watch, and then experience watching the Rams fans floating out of the stadium on a cushion of euphoria!

Blackburn seemed to play in a 433 all game, but it was hard to tell as they lacked structure. They certainly played a front 3 of Brereton, Armstrong and Gallagher though.