10 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

It was kinda stupid to stop playing Havertz as the false 9 and put Lukaku there instead, while having the same tactic otherwise.

Agree. 

Now the better question what need to change to play Lukaku. 

 

52 minutes ago, Bob stark said:

Agree. 

Now the better question what need to change to play Lukaku. 

 

First order of the day is that I believe hell needs to freeze over

14 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

First order of the day is that I believe hell needs to freeze over

This is a serious question though. 

If you saw how pep adapt his team to make sure Haaland played well, you will understand why Lukaku struggle here. 

8 hours ago, Bob stark said:

This is a serious question though. 

If you saw how pep adapt his team to make sure Haaland played well, you will understand why Lukaku struggle here. 

There's two crucial differences though.

Haaland was making up for what he took out of the team and was willing to meet the manager half way, neither applied with Lukaku.

Serious, serious doubts starting to emerge. Well and truly right in the thick of the lower midtable scrap.

And when you are getting visibly worse when you are down there in December he can have no complaits if he was sacked tomorrow morning.

That was a performance as bad as any I can remember, including the Potter tenure.

Edited December 6, 20232 yr by OriginalS

Times up. Zero improvement since he came in. Awful team. Zero tactics. Team are a shambles every time they play. Only one thing for it and that’s a change of coach. 

This result is on him. He’s been here since July and what have we seen? We got utterly dominated by a poor Man Utd side for 90 mins. Weren’t we supposed to be one of the fittest teams in league, wasn’t that his mantra?

5 wins in 15 games. That’s pisspoor, even with our sh*t squad we should still be doing better.

That and Newcastle are the two worst performances of the season. I didn't think we would win either but the lack of effort is just not on. 

I don't want Poch sacked, I say we back the manager and give him the season. We sack Poch I can only see us going backwards, who the hell is going to come in and make this team winners? 

Sack him and we'll only go even further backwards, it's the last thing the players need and this club needs right now. 

I'll be here all night if I go into the players threads to describe how bad they were, but this is the first time I'm questioning Pochettino. There is no way we should still be this disjointed in December, injuries or no injuries this is nowhere near good enough.

I am getting really, really fed up with us constantly trying to play out from the back at every situation. We do not have the players to do it effectively, every game Sanchez or one of the CB's make at least one bad pass which leads to a set piece or a scoring opportunity.

We aren't prime Barcelona, Poch needs to show better game management in this regard.

Anyone calling for the manager to be sacked need to give their head a wobble no manager coming in would make a bunch of strangers okay together by December. I said when Poch started don’t expect consistency until next Feb or March. You can’t keep changing managers because you think it worked in the past it will work here. 

Not sure how much influence he has had over building this squad. Recruitment seems a complete mess, we needed some top players on the cusp of entering their prime, we didnt get them, instead we got a load of project players that are 2 or 3 years of consistant game time before possibly being better than the players they were bought to replace. 

Injuries have obviously been a big problem, but Pochettino has to take some responsibility too. I have no idea what type of team we are, and tonight he had no answers. He was ready to take Sterling off who was absolutely terrible, and replace him with Maatsen, then United scored, and he changed his mind. So was he just going to play for a draw then? Baffling decisions.

Just got to stick with Pochettino and hope by some miracle things turn around. 

Absolutely embarrassing performance, looked like there was zero tactics. He can definitely be questioned/criticised but I think he should get a minimum of a season

1 minute ago, Remodez said:

I am getting really, really fed up with us constantly trying to play out from the back at every situation. We do not have the players to do it effectively, every game Sanchez or one of the CB's make at least one bad pass which leads to a set piece or a scoring opportunity.

We aren't prime Barcelona, Poch needs to show better game management in this regard.

That was as bad as it gets tonight. Only Silva is capable of doing it, The rest are absolutely hopeless with the keeper being the worst of the lot. It is painful to watch.

The sooner he f**ks off the butter. We have not looked that bad in a long time. 

Mourinho created a winning team immediately when he arrived with no doubt a shed load of new players. There has been zero improvement in this team. They are a shambles. I keep using that word because it describes the team perfectly. 

Also the two in midfield doesn’t work everyone called for it but it’s clear we get bypass so easily and it’s inconsistent even against city they bypass our midfield so easily. 
 

 

Just now, MyWord said:

Mourinho created a winning team immediately when he arrived with no doubt a shed load of new players. There has been zero improvement in this team. They are a shambles. I keep using that word because it describes the team perfectly. 

Jose an experienced players we have kids literally kids. You are comparing apples to oranges two completely different decades 

3 minutes ago, El regreso said:

Jose an experienced players we have kids literally kids. You are comparing apples to oranges two completely different decades 

Get someone in who knows what they are doing and you can bet your bottom dollar he wouldn’t have us in 10th. I like Poch the man but it’s plain as day whatever he is doing isn’t working. The team are brutle. 

7 minutes ago, El regreso said:

Anyone calling for the manager to be sacked need to give their head a wobble no manager coming in would make a bunch of strangers okay together by December. I said when Poch started don’t expect consistency until next Feb or March. You can’t keep changing managers because you think it worked in the past it will work here. 

So you anticipate the team functioning well together by Spring? Will be interesting to see if that becomes the case. I'd like Poch to get it right but every match week I am seeing the same dysfunctional team that looks completely unprepared. 4 months in and it looks like the team was whipped up yesterday. 

In saying this, I think sacking Poch will leave more long term damage as it'll tarnish any possibility of players/managers wanting to come here in the future when it yet again looks like the club doesn't know what they are doing. I'll fully embrace mediocrity for the duration of 2 year Poch's contract if it means some form of stability. 

Are we winning games because of Pochettino's amazing coaching, or because of player quality?

 

Brighton are 6 points ahead of us whilst dealing with European games as well, yet only Mitoma, Ferguson and Estupinan would start for us. And Estupinan's been injured for most of the season. 

 

If we had De Zerbi in charge, would we be 10th right now?

Edited December 6, 20232 yr by Drogba1

Just now, MyWord said:

Get someone in who knows what they are doing and you can bet your bottom dollar he wouldn’t have us in 10th. I like Poch the man but it’s plain as day whatever he is doing isn’t working. The team are brutle. 

Who exactly? 

Nobody is going to turn a bunch of kids into worldbeaters overnight. 

Defeats to Everton & Sheffield United + a Cup exit and I can see the trigger being pulled, this might be a project but it’s not a project manager. It’s not like we’ve got Will Still or Xabi Alonso here learning with the players, like an Arteta situation. There should be a certain expectation for the here and now, and if that isn’t the case.. you want basic discipline being coached into the players, proper game management, ideas and system in full swing despite results. It’s actually genuine insanity how those pre-season games somehow translated into this. ‘Chaos-ball’ in the good and the bad.

2 minutes ago, El regreso said:

Also the two in midfield doesn’t work everyone called for it but it’s clear we get bypass so easily and it’s inconsistent even against city they bypass our midfield so easily. 
 

 

So imagine you're a manager and the owners buy you 200+ million duo for the midfield, apparently 2 world class players for you to coach. And then you give one everything he wants and the other one is expected to just play his own game and everyone is happy.

Well maybe, just maybe they were so expensive because they had their previous managers telling them what to do and when to do it. Poch can't expect Enzo and Caicedo to just do their own thing and that it will work, they need to be trained to work together. 

We need a manager that will put it in their heads that they are going to be yesterday's news fast if they don't put up the work. 22 year olds don't really care till their manager actually tells them to stop fooling around and that they are not that special after all.

If this partnership doesn't work out, we won't get anything out of this squad, anything. The whole point was to build the team around those two. If Poch doesn't understand how important it is then it will go to hell.

What's the point of changing manager, when the players are so useless? Guardiola couldn't get this team top 4.