6 hours ago, The Rising Sun said:

Spot on mate .Thanks for your post

There was a "Neal out" banner at the Bridge years before that, Bates stuck with him and John Neal turned it around too..

As we started to improve under Hoddle then after he left, I was telling everyone to get back down the Bridge to watch and support us again because the football was great .

I even wrote to Batesy to thank him for some of the best football in decades !

Yes. Things looked dire under Neal for a while. But he really turned it around after the scare over dropping into the old Div 3. Bates held his nerve, then backed him. The rest is history....

It's not just we aren't scoring enough, we haven't created much since the Potter era. We could pin it to the usual factors of injuries, lack of time etc, but it needs to improve fast and no throwing under the carpet under the usual 'we need time' banner. I'll be interested to see how Joao Felix plays next time in a few weeks, if he suddenly stops doing the good things he was doing in the Fulham game ( up to 58 minutes), then I will suspect the theory of being 'coached out' may have some points.

12 hours ago, icecoolguy22 said:

It's not just we aren't scoring enough, we haven't created much since the Potter era. We could pin it to the usual factors of injuries, lack of time etc, but it needs to improve fast and no throwing under the carpet under the usual 'we need time' banner. I'll be interested to see how Joao Felix plays next time in a few weeks, if he suddenly stops doing the good things he was doing in the Fulham game ( up to 58 minutes), then I will suspect the theory of being 'coached out' may have some points.

Not saying I'm not excited to see Joao again, but surely the most exciting return will be that of Reece James?

He simultaneously makes us more likely to score and harder to score against

City and Liverpool have shown for years that you don't need a ' target man " striker to score tons of goals. Unless it's Haarland of course!

We need to find a different way to score goals, like Brighton seem to be doing...And Arsenal. And Utd maybe.

With our disastrous past record with strikers, it'll be a miracle of we luck on one who'll score goals, especially with our slow build up and transition.. If Rashford and Saka were playing for us, those 2 strikes yesterday would have been sideways passes 😁😁

 

 

4 hours ago, The Rising Sun said:

We need to find a different way to score goals, like Brighton seem to be doing

They changed their manager.

49 minutes ago, TimesUpPotter said:

They changed their manager.

Yeah I know.. . So did we 😆😆😆

On 22/01/2023 at 04:57, ozboy said:

As for unreasonable expectations, you are joking aren't you. What is a reasonable expectation for one of the most valuable football clubs in the world (no 8 according to Forbes) ? A club that has spent a gross US$ 500 m on players since the transfer to the Boehly consortium

I think what you are completely ignoring is the fact that the club is undertaking a root and branch rebuild. This was made plain when the new owners came in. The thing about rebuilds is that they take time, probably seasons. There's no point showing your dissatisfaction after just half a season, and many doing so after half a dozen games under the latest manager. If the problems inherent within the club were so superficial as to be sortable in this short amount of time then it wouldn't be a rebuild, it would be the usual papering over of the cracks that we've wasted so much money on over the years. I suggest you bite your tongue until the end of the season and see where we end up, especially if we are able to get some of the injured players reliably back sooner rather than later. You may not like the facts being reiterated ad nauseum but no side in the league would be able to carry on business as usual with at least ten first team players (mostly starters) out injured for protracted periods of time and this on top of an already hopelessly unbalanced squad. Patience my laddo.

On 22/01/2023 at 00:39, Droyman said:

We haven't had a clinical attack since Costa left us, I'm not sure how its all been Potters fault since then!?

Quite honestly you could put Costa into this team and he'd struggle. The reason he worked back them was because he had Fabregas and Hazard creating for him. We're not missing a striker, we're missing a midfield.

1 hour ago, Arrow in the knee said:

Quite honestly you could put Costa into this team and he'd struggle. The reason he worked back them was because he had Fabregas and Hazard creating for him. We're not missing a striker, we're missing a midfield.

We really are. You're going back almost three months until you find one of our strikers scored a goal from open play with their feet.

4 hours ago, Arrow in the knee said:

I think what you are completely ignoring is the fact that the club is undertaking a root and branch rebuild. This was made plain when the new owners came in. The thing about rebuilds is that they take time, probably seasons. There's no point showing your dissatisfaction after just half a season, and many doing so after half a dozen games under the latest manager. If the problems inherent within the club were so superficial as to be sortable in this short amount of time then it wouldn't be a rebuild, it would be the usual papering over of the cracks that we've wasted so much money on over the years. I suggest you bite your tongue until the end of the season and see where we end up, especially if we are able to get some of the injured players reliably back sooner rather than later. You may not like the facts being reiterated ad nauseum but no side in the league would be able to carry on business as usual with at least ten first team players (mostly starters) out injured for protracted periods of time and this on top of an already hopelessly unbalanced squad. Patience my laddo.

I have plenty of patience, and I am optimistic that at vast expense we’ve improved the team.  Yet I still ask what do you think is a reasonable expectation for this season? Wioukd you rate the transition to Boehly a success if we come 10th? For the record I will rate anything less than 5th as a failure and my expectation remains top 4  

I am not anti potter and I’m all for building a team for the medium term. And yet like Arteta was potter is unproven at this level. And Chelsea have spent I think more than any other club this season to be in 10th place. And still not scoring goals. 
 

and the ijuries to James and Chilwell were predictable. Indeed that’s why we bought cucu and kept azpi. 
 

yet for all that we look like a mid table team. 
 

to my eyes there are small signs of improvement I suppose actually I wonder how to measure that. One way would be to look at a moving average of net xg I guess. If I ignore the stats all I see is that the back line looks better thanks to bashiale who is fast and uses the ball efficiently and we have more midfield energy thanks to Gallagher/Zakaria. 
 

then you could throw in two more January additions Felix and Mudryck and we might even score a goal. We needed r]the players for sure but it’s the players making the difference right now not the manager or system. At least in my opinion.  It that’s ok. Mostly it’s the players that matter more than the manager. 

So far this season, believe it or not, our points total  is a bit higher than what the stats suggest it should be. So far.  

Edited January 24, 20233 yr by ozboy

On 24/01/2023 at 16:13, Arrow in the knee said:

I think what you are completely ignoring is the fact that the club is undertaking a root and branch rebuild. This was made plain when the new owners came in. The thing about rebuilds is that they take time, probably seasons. There's no point showing your dissatisfaction after just half a season, and many doing so after half a dozen games under the latest manager. If the problems inherent within the club were so superficial as to be sortable in this short amount of time then it wouldn't be a rebuild, it would be the usual papering over of the cracks that we've wasted so much money on over the years. I suggest you bite your tongue until the end of the season and see where we end up, especially if we are able to get some of the injured players reliably back sooner rather than later. You may not like the facts being reiterated ad nauseum but no side in the league would be able to carry on business as usual with at least ten first team players (mostly starters) out injured for protracted periods of time and this on top of an already hopelessly unbalanced squad. Patience my laddo.

Good post! I also think that sometimes people don't realise just how competitive this league is! Fans of City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs, Man U, Newcastle (now theyre the richest club in the world) all 'expect' their club to win the league, add to that Brighton, Fulham etc (extremely well run clubs) now also having expectations to compete, not to mention the one time Champions of Europe clubs like Villa and Forest and their expectations based on their past and you end up with a LOT of expectant fans.

Excellent winner by Mitoma to knock Liverpool out of FA Cup 😁

Perhaps we can sign him.... very dirty tackles by Liverpool - glad they lost.

10 hours ago, Bebe1980 said:

Excellent winner by Mitoma to knock Liverpool out of FA Cup 😁

Perhaps we can sign him.... very dirty tackles by Liverpool - glad they lost.

It was an excellent winner. worthy for the season cup highlights reel.

On 22/01/2023 at 21:11, icecoolguy22 said:

It's not just we aren't scoring enough, we haven't created much since the Potter era. We could pin it to the usual factors of injuries, lack of time etc, but it needs to improve fast and no throwing under the carpet under the usual 'we need time' banner. I'll be interested to see how Joao Felix plays next time in a few weeks, if he suddenly stops doing the good things he was doing in the Fulham game ( up to 58 minutes), then I will suspect the theory of being 'coached out' may have some points.

You seriously think a professional footballer can have his talent 'coached out' in 3 weeks? I mean really!  Also we haven't been 'creating much' long before Potter got here!