"Unacceptable"

[IlsonDerby]

8 hours ago, RoyMac5 said:

How much of that is Cocu's choice too? He's not exactly shown much wanting to sign players - don't want to block the youngsters? That's his meme?

He’s been banging on about forward options since January in fairness to him. Saying he doesn’t want to sign players is well wide of the mark. 

[FlyBritishMidland]

That’s a good point.  I consider this to be his first proper window.  Last summer he came in as preseason was starting so no real time to assess the players, etc and probably rushed into a few that he regretted.  January is a notoriously bad time to sign players with lots of panic buying.  We’ve made a few mistakes in the past in that window!!

I’m all for Cocu and losing the first game is no reason to panic.  But I agree it was definitely a below par performance.  When we get key players back and if he can get the players in we’ll see a difference.  He’s strengthened at the back now he needs the forward players to implement the style of play he wants.

28 minutes ago, IlsonDerby said:

He’s been banging on about forward options since January in fairness to him. Saying he doesn’t want to sign players is well wide of the mark. 

 

[BathRam72]

21 hours ago, Coconut said:

Hughton relies on having tall, strong defenders, big, powerful strikers and massive amounts of creativity from the wide areas. Dunk, Murray, Knockaert. There's nothing attractive about his football, it's just effective bullying of the opposition and playing the percentages.

Warnock similar, the less said the better really. If you look at our squad for the past 2 season I'm not sure exactly which of our players anyone thinks would suit a Warnock side, it'd have been a disaster.

Howe has only done it at Bournemouth, but in the Championship, yes, they played nice football, helped somewhat by having Matt Ritchie & Simon Francis is their ranks, both now proven PL players, with Yann Kermogant (had a decent enough Champ career) also getting 17 goals.

None of them would have been suitable.

 

Some very good points here. Even if we did go for one of the above, like @Coconutsays, they rely on big strong players. So there would be your problem. We don't have the funds to change the whole squad. So All of the above would have to work with what we have.

Sorry if this has been covered but didn't have time to read the whole thread.

[RamNut]

blaming the players,  instead of taking responsibility for poor preparation.

we spent all pre-season pratting  about with a three-at-the-back plan b. (Which was so reminiscent of the instruction to clement to find a plan b). Then first game, we revert to a system that we haven’t practiced. We looked like strangers at back lacking a proper centre half, and full backs who could carry the ball forward comfortably. 
wisdom looks totally out of sorts. He was a rock before his mysterious bagging in Toxteth but he doesn’t look ready to play.

We stood off - rowett style - and invited Reading to play through us, which they duly did without too much trouble.
the 4231 allows pockets Of space in front of the full backs and behind the widemen. Teams can go outside and around the two holding midfielders. Ejaria duly obliged, popping up in those spaces to probe away. Why not stick shinnie on him as a man marker? We have an army of analysts but no specific plan to deal with their dangerman.

bird is not offering a lot when invited to bring the ball out of defence and create. 
my advice to him. go and watch the video of Kevin Vogt for hoffenheim when they played us.
He dominated the game from that position.

shinnie also failed to provide a creative spark, so give him a role that suits his skills - see above. stick to ejaria.

knight and Sibley are played out of position and are starved of the ball. Both need to play deeper and central.

We are short of options out wide but Jozefzoon - a £2m signing - is nowhere, and there are no wide attacking players on the bench. where are Jozefzoon, shonibare and Wilson? we didn’t give ourselves the opportunity to change things. Jozefzoon, shonibare and Wilson may not be household names but that’s what we’ve got. they can’t contribute if they are not even there, yet we have three holding midfielders on the bench.  

We even managed to get our new full back booked before he’d even kicked a ball. 

We need to see a clear vision. Round pegs in round holes. There is still too much chopping and changing and too much time wasted chasing rainbows when we should be recruiting.

[Comrade 86]

Starting to read this thread be like...

[Tyler Durden]

The concerning matter for me is Cocu already is quite rightly getting called out on this forum for not effectively managing the resources he currently has at his disposal. 

[Longeatonram2020]

2 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

The concerning matter for me is Cocu already is quite rightly getting called out on this forum for not effectively managing the resources he currently has at his disposal. 

What resources? We have bang average players with bang average performances. And last season our final position was, bang average. 
 

And he’s managing our academy products rather well. 

[Longeatonram2020]

9 hours ago, iolanthe said:

That might be his brief from his employer 

Sure Mel has literally said that he doesn’t want to sign players that will block pathways for talented academy players. So Cocu would be following the brief in that case. 

[Tyler Durden]

2 minutes ago, Longeatonram2020 said:

What resources? We have bang average players with bang average performances. And last season our final position was, bang average. 
 

And he’s managing our academy products rather well. 

You've missed my point. The resources he's got are the ones at his disposal. Is he getting the best out of them in terms of coaching, tactics, motivation etc that's the question?

You've already accepted that as they are average players in your opinion then that's always the output you'll get. I could manage the team if that's the case then. 

[kash_a_ram_a_ding_dong]

2 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

You've missed my point. The resources he's got are the ones at his disposal. Is he getting the best out of them in terms of coaching, tactics, motivation etc that's the question?

You've already accepted that as they are average players in your opinion then that's always the output you'll get. I could manage the team if that's the case then. 

Unfortunately we are getting sub par performances from players who don't seem to understand their role or direction...and that comes down to the management team not instilling what they want and need from them.

[DommRileyy]

#InCocuWeTrust!

[Jram]

This thread is unbearably emotional ? 

You’d think we were a club who’d spent 50 million who were languishing in 21st after 35 games 

Its ridiculous 

[Alty_Ram]

I'm sure that Cocu will be as frustrated as we all are with that performance but at the moment we are badly hampered by injuries either with players unavailable or playing while unfit. We've already thrown plenty of the youngsters in there already so our hand is pretty limited in terms of what we can do with current personnel. We need some players back from injury, we need some other players match fit and we need new these new signings in key weak areas. None of those shortcomings are a massive surprise and the number of outgoing players  means that the squad is a bit threadbare so I think many of us expected a sticky start.

I think if we recruit well and get some of these players back from injury (and firing) then I feel that we have enough quality to be competitive but my personal opinion was always that we didn't have enough quality to be involved at the sharp end as it stands.

A slightly different worry is the style of play. Languid, possession-based football with no zip just doesn't really work in the fiercely competitive Championship. All successful teams in this division seem to play with an intensity and we seem to have very little.

[RoyMac5]

57 minutes ago, Alty_Ram said:

A slightly different worry is the style of play. Languid, possession-based football with no zip just doesn't really work in the fiercely competitive Championship. All successful teams in this division seem to play with an intensity and we seem to have very little.

I think this is the point many are worried about - doesn't matter whether it's an international or an U18 if they're not set up to play in the correct way?

[Tyler Durden]

1 hour ago, Jram said:

This thread is unbearably emotional ? 

You’d think we were a club who’d spent 50 million who were languishing in 21st after 35 games 

Its ridiculous 

I'm definitely not mixing emotions with facts. Truth is this level of performance was witnessed over the latter part of last season with a lot of the players being present whose absence now is being used as a lamentable justification for the output yesterday. 

[Reggie Greenwood]

11 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

I'm definitely not mixing emotions with facts. Truth is this level of performance was witnessed over the latter part of last season with a lot of the players being present whose absence now is being used as a lamentable justification for the output yesterday. 

Maybe not mixing emotions with opinions might be a better description ? ?

[kash_a_ram_a_ding_dong]

2 hours ago, Longeatonram2020 said:

What resources? We have bang average players with bang average performances. And last season our final position was, bang average. 
 

And he’s managing our academy products rather well. 

Is he though?

They were most effective immediately after they left the academy and joined the first team....they have gone off since then (well the last six league games)

Perhaps it's says more about the quality of our coaching staff in the academy than Phillip....certainly they deserve more credit than they get for bringing these kids on.

[Rammy03]

22 hours ago, BramcoteRam84 said:

Cocu explained his view that the players weren’t confident and scared yesterday and that’s what he couldn’t explain and that also we can’t afford the players to be like that. When players aren’t confident what happens? They take an extra touch, they play safe, they don’t make runs the result is slow ponderous football. Can’t blame Cocu for that.

Why are they lacking confidence? It's the managers responsibility 

[Tyler Durden]

9 minutes ago, Rammy03 said:

Why are they lacking confidence? It's the managers responsibility 

You beat me to that response due to the fact I didn't want to get tarred with being anti Cocu. 

Cocu can cite that as an observation, absolutely, the truth is that it's the managers responsibility ultimately to rectify that. 

[RadioactiveWaste]

Just now, Tyler Durden said:

You beat me to that response due to the fact I didn't want to get tarred with being anti Cocu. 

Cocu can cite that as an observation, absolutely, the truth is that it's the managers responsibility ultimately to rectify that. 

I really want Cocu to succeed and I have pretty realistic expectations of the current season and squad, but it was poor Vs Barrow and reading.

I believe in what he's trying to do, but I do think he needs to accept a championship version of his vision (quicker, more mistakes, less perfect, more pragmatic). 

I still think we'll be ok once we get the attacking players back, but at the moment it's pretty rubbish.