wba at home

[thebish]

See youre trying to paint that ive always been the doom mongering misery again Bish.

no - see, I didn't say that at all. I am just musing at the different ways you and (say, Sponge) have of reacting to adversity. I'm very sure that in happy times your a jolly happy bunny - so not always a doom mongering misery, I didn't paint you as that at all.

I think it's interesting to see how different people react - and I suspect it is down to personality type (rather than being right or wrong about football or being a proper or not-proper fan in some sense.)

How did I react under the last manager though? I don't doubt that I'm pessimistic about our chances however, you also have to understand that I believe that if you vocalise that you think you're going to win you've jinxed it.......

right... so now you're claiming that your gloomy posts and constant relegation and defeat predictions are not what you actually think - but some kind of superstitious anti-jinx policy??

if so - it's not working that well - and you should be sacked!!!

[DJBlu]

Here's an outcome,

Blackburn beat Wigan,

Wigan lose to Wolves.
QPR lose to Man City.
We beat Stoke.
Blackburn beat Chelsea.

I take £5000 from my 500-1 bet on us and Blackburn staying up.

[thebish]

Here's an outcome,

Blackburn beat Wigan,

Wigan lose to Wolves.
QPR lose to Man City.
We beat Stoke.
Blackburn beat Chelsea.

I take £5000 from my 500-1 bet on us and Blackburn staying up.

sounds like a proper cunning plan!!

[Annoyed Grunt]

Here's an outcome,

Blackburn beat Wigan,

Wigan lose to Wolves.
QPR lose to Man City.
We beat Stoke.
Blackburn beat Chelsea.

I take £5000 from my 500-1 bet on us and Blackburn staying up.

That could actually happen....they'll be concentrating on the CL final the following week.

[Ianmooreslovechild]

Here's an outcome,

Blackburn beat Wigan,

Wigan lose to Wolves.
QPR lose to Man City.
We beat Stoke.
Blackburn beat Chelsea.

I take £5000 from my 500-1 bet on us and Blackburn staying up.

That could actually happen....they'll be concentrating on the CL final the following week.

Blackburn need quite a swing on the goal difference too tho but heyh fingers crossed.. Perhaps you could cover the bet with something similar on us and blackburn going down?

[Jez]

Here's an outcome,

Blackburn beat Wigan,

Wigan lose to Wolves.
QPR lose to Man City.
We beat Stoke.
Blackburn beat Chelsea.

I take £5000 from my 500-1 bet on us and Blackburn staying up.

would of thought youd get 500-1 on wolves winning a game alone

[the-Bowtun-Warrior]

Here's an outcome,

Blackburn beat Wigan,

Wigan lose to Wolves.
QPR lose to Man City.
We beat Stoke.
Blackburn beat Chelsea.

I take £5000 from my 500-1 bet on us and Blackburn staying up.

That would be spliffing delightful.
Any chance it can happen? Please? PLEASE?!!

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Our club is tormented by the ghost of Gavin McCann.

It's not the Badger's fault that his name has become a byword for a defensive substitution, but just as he came to symbolise the previous manager's terror of losing leads, so he's now coming to represent the current manager's inability to see a game out.

There was some tactical validity to Coyle's substitutions against West Brom: replacing the gasping goal-vortex that is Ngog, leading scorer Klasnic came on to link play in a 4-2-3-1 (and did so, sending Petrov through a couple of times with good angled balls), while Chung-Yong will always offer more effort than Petrov.

However, it didn't work, partly because simply standing in midfield doesn't make you a midfielder, Ivan, and partly because by Coyle's own admission the players weren't listening to him.

It's easy to say with hindsight that Vela could have come on to shore up the midfield. Being easy doesn't make it wrong. We needed an extra (energetic) body in there to help the knackered NRC and still-never-a-midfielder Mavis, and I've said a hundred times that switching to 4-2-3-1 isn't necessarily negative anyway. The only question would be which of the two shattered strikers to leave on - the gormless galloper or the one-paced warhorse. Klasnic can't lead a line alone and the new kid had been bumped from the bench to accommodate the returning Lee. But whoever ran the line, we needed to focus resources in midfield and look to build from a sensibly solid foundation.

One of the site's most venerable posters makes the very good point that making a defensive tweak to the system doesn't make it a defensive system. Sadly, our current manager seems as stuck in his ways as his predecessor.

I get where you're coming from, but this has been a consistent problem throughout the whole season. Substitutions with an attacking bias when we need a defensive one. When we're playing 442 and getting overrun with very tired or injured central midfielders in particular. And with only 18 minutes to go!

Now, it's not like we were already set up negatively and trying to defend a lead from the the start of the second half like Megson. Instead, all we need is some basic defensive pragmatism, the likes of which you'll see up and down the leagues every weekend when a team needs to defend a lead.

Consider the league leaders. Twice this week Roberto Mancini has made defensive substitutions and won games to nil. Ahead in the derby, he brought on Nigel de Jong for Carlos Tevez, then Micah Richards for David Silva; yesterday, to notable howls of derision from internet experts, he replaced Samir Nasri with De Jong at 0-0 and then again protected his lead by replacing Silva for Richards, who threw himself in front of everything. Try finding a City fan to decry Mancini's methods.

It's risky but far less risky than trusting to luck, or even to our chances of playing "you score four, we'll score five". We've conceded 75 goals in 37 matches, more than two per game on average, but only scored 44, just over one per game. We've scored the same number of home goals as Stoke, but conceded more than twice as many. That represents a fundamental imbalance. Coyle's sides can attack for fun, but they can't defend for shit.

As is so often the case in an imbalanced system, mistakes cost us dear. For the equaliser, Dedryck Boyata manfully chased the ball across the box. I'm not decrying that - he was putting his body on the line, just as Micah Richards had half an hour earlier at Newcastle. Sadly, he left a massive hole which nobody thought to fill. Lee had tracked back but was five yards off Morrison, doing nothing in particular. There just doesn't seem to be a hive mentality, a basic awareness of surroundings and determination to cover each other. In such cases you cannot play an open system.

And so to one more chance: glory or the death of a dream, win or bust (hopefully not literally). First, a horrific glance into the abyss as Blackburn host Wigan. We need Rovers to win, to give us another team we can feasibly stay above.

It's also 25 seasons since Wigan were in a higher division than us, an era of Bobby Campbell and John Thomas. I was a relative newcomer then, absorbing play-off defeats to Aldershot and 4-0 losses at Scarborough. It shouldn't ever get that bad again.

Shouldn't. I found those losses easier to adjust to, because in that galaxy-gazing gutter I had faith things would get better. I no longer have that faith, but not because we conceded an equaliser: I lost faith a while back.

"Faith is a euphemism for gullibility," notes Jonathan Meades: "it positions itself beyond proof." Over the last few months, during which I've often said we can stay up, I've preferred calm qualitative assessment to sleeve-hearted fanaticism (in either direction). There have been reasons we could have won the games we haven't. I've been able to read positive signs into certain aspects of our play, and more pertinently into poor aspects of our opponents. Not enough have come to pass.

Strip away the emotion and there's still a chance. We needed five points from the last four games, and we've got one more chance to get the three remaining. Stoke are a tired, stretched squad – although so are we – and there wasn't much worrying in their performance at QPR. They're strong down the middle but remain susceptible to wingplay and quick movement. I remain resolutely of the opinion that Coyle should drop a striker for Vela, shift Mark Davies forward and play 4-2-3-1.

Should, but probably won't. Beyond a brief spring enlightenment, our manager has put all his own faith in 4-4-2. It hasn't worked nearly enough. It hasn't worked enough when we're chasing a game we're drawing, and it hasn't worked enough when we're winning. The chill down your back at the Reebok is the ghost of Gavin McCann.

[BWFC_Insane]

A player like Gavin McCann would have made all the difference this year. Graft and experience in the centre would have made a difference especially when you're trying to accommodate mark Davies who is as much a centre midfielder in a 4-4-2 as I am.....

[boltonboris]

Coyle wouldn't have played him though.. He's not his kind of player.

[Spartan2]

Our club is tormented by the ghost of Gavin McCann.

It's not the Badger's fault that his name has become a byword for a defensive substitution, but just as he came to symbolise the previous manager's terror of losing leads, so he's now coming to represent the current manager's inability to see a game out.

There was some tactical validity to Coyle's substitutions against West Brom: replacing the gasping goal-vortex that is Ngog, leading scorer Klasnic came on to link play in a 4-2-3-1 (and did so, sending Petrov through a couple of times with good angled balls), while Chung-Yong will always offer more effort than Petrov.

However, it didn't work, partly because simply standing in midfield doesn't make you a midfielder, Ivan, and partly because by Coyle's own admission the players weren't listening to him.

It's easy to say with hindsight that Vela could have come on to shore up the midfield. Being easy doesn't make it wrong. We needed an extra (energetic) body in there to help the knackered NRC and still-never-a-midfielder Mavis, and I've said a hundred times that switching to 4-2-3-1 isn't necessarily negative anyway. The only question would be which of the two shattered strikers to leave on - the gormless galloper or the one-paced warhorse. Klasnic can't lead a line alone and the new kid had been bumped from the bench to accommodate the returning Lee. But whoever ran the line, we needed to focus resources in midfield and look to build from a sensibly solid foundation.

One of the site's most venerable posters makes the very good point that making a defensive tweak to the system doesn't make it a defensive system. Sadly, our current manager seems as stuck in his ways as his predecessor.

I get where you're coming from, but this has been a consistent problem throughout the whole season. Substitutions with an attacking bias when we need a defensive one. When we're playing 442 and getting overrun with very tired or injured central midfielders in particular. And with only 18 minutes to go!

Now, it's not like we were already set up negatively and trying to defend a lead from the the start of the second half like Megson. Instead, all we need is some basic defensive pragmatism, the likes of which you'll see up and down the leagues every weekend when a team needs to defend a lead.

Consider the league leaders. Twice this week Roberto Mancini has made defensive substitutions and won games to nil. Ahead in the derby, he brought on Nigel de Jong for Carlos Tevez, then Micah Richards for David Silva; yesterday, to notable howls of derision from internet experts, he replaced Samir Nasri with De Jong at 0-0 and then again protected his lead by replacing Silva for Richards, who threw himself in front of everything. Try finding a City fan to decry Mancini's methods.

It's risky but far less risky than trusting to luck, or even to our chances of playing "you score four, we'll score five". We've conceded 75 goals in 37 matches, more than two per game on average, but only scored 44, just over one per game. We've scored the same number of home goals as Stoke, but conceded more than twice as many. That represents a fundamental imbalance. Coyle's sides can attack for fun, but they can't defend for shit.

As is so often the case in an imbalanced system, mistakes cost us dear. For the equaliser, Dedryck Boyata manfully chased the ball across the box. I'm not decrying that - he was putting his body on the line, just as Micah Richards had half an hour earlier at Newcastle. Sadly, he left a massive hole which nobody thought to fill. Lee had tracked back but was five yards off Morrison, doing nothing in particular. There just doesn't seem to be a hive mentality, a basic awareness of surroundings and determination to cover each other. In such cases you cannot play an open system.

And so to one more chance: glory or the death of a dream, win or bust (hopefully not literally). First, a horrific glance into the abyss as Blackburn host Wigan. We need Rovers to win, to give us another team we can feasibly stay above.

It's also 25 seasons since Wigan were in a higher division than us, an era of Bobby Campbell and John Thomas. I was a relative newcomer then, absorbing play-off defeats to Aldershot and 4-0 losses at Scarborough. It shouldn't ever get that bad again.

Shouldn't. I found those losses easier to adjust to, because in that galaxy-gazing gutter I had faith things would get better. I no longer have that faith, but not because we conceded an equaliser: I lost faith a while back.

"Faith is a euphemism for gullibility," notes Jonathan Meades: "it positions itself beyond proof." Over the last few months, during which I've often said we can stay up, I've preferred calm qualitative assessment to sleeve-hearted fanaticism (in either direction). There have been reasons we could have won the games we haven't. I've been able to read positive signs into certain aspects of our play, and more pertinently into poor aspects of our opponents. Not enough have come to pass.

Strip away the emotion and there's still a chance. We needed five points from the last four games, and we've got one more chance to get the three remaining. Stoke are a tired, stretched squad – although so are we – and there wasn't much worrying in their performance at QPR. They're strong down the middle but remain susceptible to wingplay and quick movement. I remain resolutely of the opinion that Coyle should drop a striker for Vela, shift Mark Davies forward and play 4-2-3-1.

Should, but probably won't. Beyond a brief spring enlightenment, our manager has put all his own faith in 4-4-2. It hasn't worked nearly enough. It hasn't worked enough when we're chasing a game we're drawing, and it hasn't worked enough when we're winning. The chill down your back at the Reebok is the ghost of Gavin McCann.

OC has the most infuriating attitude regarding which players to buy / play. He seems only interested in young players and "fancy dans" and mainly championship quality ones at that. In the winter window, rumours were we wanted wilfred (who?) zaha for 5-7m!! (I think can't quite remember). Just the complete antithesis of the player/s we desperately need. He might, just might become a superstar but he sure as shit wouldn't have made a difference to us. Teams can only support so many attacking flair players, without becoming too exposed, we play 3 ultra attacking (i.e., non-defending) midfielders in a midfield 4 even against top teams, and OC wants more attack minded players, more step overs, more young players from the championship and below.

Your example of McCann is spot on, i'd like to add Campo, Speed, Hiero, even Kevin fooking Nolan to that. Any one of those (when they used to play for us) would have kept us up this season.

All season we've desperately needed an old pro, someone who's 30-34. Played for top teams maybe in the Champions League and now is just looking for a smaller club before he retires.

Have we ever bought so many players from lesser teams? It's no suprise we are were we are, if you fill a team with Championship players that's exactly where you end up. Championship players rarely improve a PL team, and it's easy to see why, how many goals would SKD get in the Championship? I think he'd get 20 in a decent team and he's not even a goalscorer. It's just a huge step up/down. Only clueless managers see players doing well in the championship and think they'll do well in thier team.

[Spartan2]

Sorry for tripple post, but each time I tried to post it said page not found so...

[TANGODANCER]

Sorry for tripple post, but each time I tried to post it said page not found so...

No problem. Sorted.

[Tombwfc]

As is so often the case in an imbalanced system, mistakes cost us dear. For the equaliser, Dedryck Boyata manfully chased the ball across the box. I'm not decrying that - he was putting his body on the line, just as Micah Richards had half an hour earlier at Newcastle. Sadly, he left a massive hole which nobody thought to fill. Lee had tracked back but was five yards off Morrison, doing nothing in particular. There just doesn't seem to be a hive mentality, a basic awareness of surroundings and determination to cover each other. In such cases you cannot play an open system.

Gary Nevilles just picked this apart on MNF, and the whole thing is just chaos.

The move starts with West Brom having the ball on the half way line, and us having a solid bank of four at the back, plus Davies and Lee acting as wing-backs. They come forward, and for no obvious reason Boyata covers half the pitch to take up a position in defensive midfield, where he is met by Sam Ricketts, who decided to do the same. The back four is now Knight, Ream, Kevin Davies and Lee, who was no doubt utterly confused what the feck was going on. Ball gets played in behind Davies, Ricketts and Boyata drop back into the box and by the time Morrison scores the three players furthest back are Lee, Mark Davies and Kevin Davies.

I'm honestly interested to know, iif the players had stopped listening to Coyle at this point, what was going on? Blind panic?

[officer_dibble]

Has to be panic. I rememember davo played the fella who scored onside. Absolute chaos.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

I'm honestly interested to know, iif the players had stopped listening to Coyle at this point, what was going on? Blind panic?

Yes. That's what happens in lieu of leadership and organisation.

[norm the jedi]

I'm honestly interested to know, iif the players had stopped listening to Coyle at this point, what was going on? Blind panic?

Yes. That's what happens in lieu of leadership and organisation.

Surely a responsibility of the senior pros on the pitch at the time?
Or is Coyle to be held responsible for every mental error the well paid professionals make under pressure.
Ultimate responsibility at the end of the day but if the plan is succeeding [you're ahead as time ebbs away]
and then bizarre behaviour costs a goal surely that's the players?

[ohjimmyjimmy]

He's to blame if it keeps happening, of course he is.

[norm the jedi]

He's to blame if it keeps happening, of course he is.

Or the players available aren't good enough and it won't make a blind bit of difference what he does?

For which he is ultimately culpable but he hasn't had a lot of luck either...

[ohjimmyjimmy]

Agreed, and if they're not good enough, we'll go down. But it doesnt take a bucketload of talent to follow orders and keep discipline, unless the orders themselves are not good enough to start with.