Davefevs

I did.

I produced two scatters, one for xP and one for xS. You could make out my four quadrants from the tiles on the floor and wall. Too much info???

I’m not sure it was a whole new philosophy? Wingback system, Grimes the focal point of building passing moves, available to receive passes, etc. Pretty similar to Cooper! Bit more emphasis on play from the keeper perhaps, but not a whole new philosophy, he already had a team that liked to pass it. It was still a decent squad, foundations built on PP money over a few years. He has done well though.

In some respects yes. I quite liked our press early this season too.

Comments embedded above. Back to the WBs and Laird from above. When our 442 faces a 352WB, if you can pin the WBs back you’ve won half the battle. If you can’t then you either: - accept that your own Wide Midfielders are gonna be pushed back or - you let your fullbacks deal with them. If you let your wide midfielders come deep to mark them, then they sit on top of your fullbacks and you can’t build out from the back. If you let your fullbacks deal with them, of course you’re creating a risk, but you’re also creating opportunity. In that match if Dasilva takes Laird and Simpson takes Bidwell, then Pring and Scott should have so much space to play in. But you have to get them the ball, and they need to be smart not to play too high and wide (boy I’ve said that some times) so that they are in touch with our own midfield who with James and Massengo are up against a 2-2 - Grimes and Fulton / Paterson and Cullen. We probably should’ve matched their “box” up or gone lopsided, but as we were chasing the game, I can see why we tried to play our MF4 in a line, because the space was behind their WBs. Grimes got on the ball more and more. Easy in hindsight though.

With all these things “big name” does / might not equal “right person”. FWIW with the situation we were in we needed someone who could take an overarching review of the club, understand the issues and build a plan to remediate. I think we did well to get someone like Nigel Pearson in to perform that role. That’s not to say that person is the right person to deliver the all of the plan nor necessarily through to the end. All projects require different expertise at different times. But we are still massively early in that rebuild and trying to do it on a shoestring. Some of the “name” suggestions we’re so pie in the sky it was incredible.

Tell me about it….that was me last weekend. Like City I couldn’t hit the target at either end! All the best Nige, get well soon, just make sure you do get well.

I don’t think they knocked it around well at all. They struggled to break through our front-line press of Martin and Scott, with Palmer and Weimann stopping their full-backs. They hit more long passes against us, than against any other team this season. Maxwell was forced to kick 25 times, the most he had kicked long in over a year. They might’ve been decent in the final 12-15 minutes, and since….but they weren’t against us….imho.

Crap goal. 100%. Agree, would love to know the comms that go on between players. I see poor examples of “passing on” markers all the time. Talking (shouting!) was a big part of my own game, and when I played with better players at Bris and Odd Down the chat was constant between the defence, especially keeper and centre backs.

Firstly agree with the whole of the post. Critchley doing really well. Had a slow start last season but then then really got going. They are building on that momentum, recruiting well, and showing the benefits of patience. A series of mid-table finishes as they recovered from the Oyston era, but what appears to be a great appointment in Critchley.

….and in the same interview, words to the affect of “stopping the root cause”, the initial pass with little pressure. We’d not parked the bus at all this season. The above quote would not lead me to think we were gonna park the bus tomorrow. Do you have a source at the training ground….quite a few “IMOs”, which is like adding a ? to a post? Nobody is gonna ask you who, but you post things like above, which you’ve taken from an interview yet imply in other posts you have some inside knowledge. That’s fine if you do btw. As above, we’ve yet to park the bus this season, and I honestly can’t remember when that has been our intention. Not convinced Vyner is at fault. It was him that chased a long ball into the bottom left wing corner, laying it to Bentley to clear to Gardner. Gardner strides on, Atkinson starts to engage Vyner not in picture yet, having been in corner. Gardner plays it wide, Atkinson marking him / closest to him Vyner now in shot with Kalas looking to mark Jutkiewicz and Hogan. Graham shapes to cross Atkinson not checked his right shoulder, he’s basically lost Gardner. Vyner realising Atkinson has got caught ball-watching tries to get across….too late My analysis, if you want to blame a player….then it’s Atkinson. But it definitely isn’t Vyner. We cannot tell what comms have gone on, but I find it hard to believe that at any stage Atkinson has said “I’m passing Gardner on”….let alone to Vyner. ???

Eddie Davis - £170m I think.

If Williams and James are out I think he has to go with Vyner.

Yep, and there’s something satisfying about doing it that way too.

Isn’t Cheesley’s son on here?

It’s funny, I see defensively fragility as a unit, because I think our defenders, in the main, defend pretty decently. Boring old cliche, but defence starts from the front, and I think we need to improve what is happening in front of the back line.

Can’t believe the 11 will deviate much from that.

FFP - clubs have to submit projected accounts in March for the current season. Essentialky though, at the start of the season (ignoring FFP for the mo), club would set their budget(s). They can flex that however they like through the season, as long as they don’t spend more than FFP (or face the consequences). As it currently stands, we have considerable wiggle room in FFP for the cycle of seasons that goes up to the end of this season. Shock, horror….so why aren’t we using it? Good question….because the profit of 18/19 (£11.9m) drops off at the end of this season. So we’d have to have a fire sale this summer….and not sure we have lots of valuable assets.

It’s funny, bar trying to watch Liverpool is they are on live and I’m free, I haven’t watched hardly any PL stuff for best part of 2 seasons. I did watch MOTD last week, because I was poorly and quarantined (by Mrs Fevs) to the upstairs of the house. I just want to see us build, and hope that includes youth. Kadji looks decent. Resembles Bakinson on the ball a bit, but looks to have the makings of a good all-round CM game.

That’s a bit of poetic license on your part isn’t it? Stopping chances doesn’t have to mean any of the things you suggest. If we can stop the root cause of chance#, it can in fact mean we create more chances. He is not suggesting playing the game as it it we’re attack v defence is he? And stop the source of those passes in the first place.

Back to Cotts for a consistent playing identity. I don’t think LJ had one. He had short periods of success with lots of different identities, and short periods of failure with those and others. Even the autumn of 17/18 never turned into “right, I’ve got my philosophy, everything is now geared to that”. I bet if you asked most fans where we fell down in 17/18, it was knackering Smith and Pack, because when he rotated Brownhill centrally he lost what he brought wide, and when he put Bryan back to LB he lost what he brought down that left side. He recruited in the summer of 2018. Webster to replace Flint, Weimann to replace Reid, Assume O’Dowda was the Bryan replacement, which was fair enough at the time. For me the combo of Reid / Paterson was consigned to the bin, because he had to accommodate Diedhiou, his record signing at the time, who didn’t fit the system he got going! But tye obvious omission was the central midfielder to compete with Pack and Smith. If he felt that Brownhill was that player, then was Watkins / Adelakun really the RM/RW replacement for Brownhill? The answer is no! That season was in fact the lowest number of players signed and lowest fees paid in his 4 seasons here.

Yep, it’s definitely not “it’ll be all fine once Jan window concludes”. I would expect to see a clear playing style / identity evolve and become established as the season evolves though. We need Recruitment nuggets. We have little capability in Europe it seems from the Gilhespy interview, and that would be a good source of finding players under the radar who we don’t have to fight with the bigger boys to get. I often think, we get player x because he’s our level, the teams above don’t want him. We rarely win a race / fight to sign a player.

I think he sees us as a mini-Leicester, great potential, but in need of a guiding hand - his guiding hand. He could easily be retiring in Devon, doing his walks, maybe not fighting wolves….although an aim to be fighting Wolves in the PL. I think he sees a generally well-intentioned club, that appears to be well-run on the outside, but those 3 months last season found a mess beneath the surface. His motivation is turning it around.