Brian - is he getting it wrong?

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M-U-R-T-Y
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Re: Calm down, all will be fine. Brian will sort it.

by M-U-R-T-Y » 11 Sep 2011 14:31


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Re: Calm down, all will be fine. Brian will sort it.

by Cookie » 11 Sep 2011 14:37

2 world wars, 1 world cup Weird coming from me I know but seriously, calm down everyone.

I'd love to continue my gloat about Madejski ruining the club but it's just foolish to complain so early and it's old news anyway.

We've just lost our star striker and a rock solid defender. We could have spent 20 million replacements and still get the same result as losing key players disrupts the team and new players need to gel.

Brian has proven himself beyond doubt already and results will follow.


You're right. And what other Championship team can deploy thee different players in the right back position during the SAME match.

Eat your heart out Sven. :lol:

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Re: Calm down, all will be fine. Brian will sort it.

by Compo's Hat » 11 Sep 2011 14:44

If we haven't won by the time we play 'boro i predict the atmosphere will have turned rather sour.

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by Ian Royal » 11 Sep 2011 15:20

McDermott is definitely getting it wrong. This is very much his squad now, and it has the same problem as when Rodgers took over. It's half a 4-4-2 squad and half a 4-5-1 squad, and neither system is really ideal for us.

His current tactics are one dimensional, easily predictable and easily countered. There is very clearly a lack of confidence and composure in the team.

We have plenty of players good enough, a couple of wins and the team could go on a real run of form, but at the moment it's hard to see where a win is going to come from.

I'm not going to panic yet, but things are looking worrying right now.

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by savage 4 england » 11 Sep 2011 15:42

We need to start playing with the ball on the floor again. We need Howard or another creative midfielder to feed balls into the feet of our front two (without being given a completely free role). Then have Karacan or Leigertwood becoming more disciplined and protecting the back four.

Basically a 4-4-2 diamond 8)


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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by rfc2001 » 11 Sep 2011 16:33

What annoys me most is he keeps persisting with griffin then taking him off because he's either playing SH*T or can't run for 90 then puts Karacan at right back then moves Jobi into the middle. Big F*cking clue why were not winning Griffin is W*ANK, no tempo Jobi's W*ANK atm and we haven't got a consistent team.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get rid off Griffin he is sooooo SH*T

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by LoyalRoyal22 » 11 Sep 2011 17:06

Bri is a ledge. lay off. who cares about what subs he made? everyone was shit, confidence has gone, nobody could have changed it with any sort of substitions

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Re: Calm down, all will be fine. Brian will sort it.

by handbags_harris » 11 Sep 2011 17:08

Compo's Hat If we haven't won by the time we play 'boro i predict the atmosphere will have turned rather sour.


Well people, we have a oxf*rd clairvoyant in our midsts. To coin a phrase:

NO SH*T SHERLOCK.

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by handbags_harris » 11 Sep 2011 17:10

savage 4 england We need to start playing with the ball on the floor again. We need Howard or another creative midfielder to feed balls into the feet of our front two (without being given a completely free role). Then have Karacan or Leigertwood becoming more disciplined and protecting the back four.

Basically a 4-4-2 diamond 8)


Are you serious? And leave absolutely nowhere in the side for our two most creative assets, Kebe and McAnuff? Yeah, that'll work :roll:


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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by Friday's Legacy » 11 Sep 2011 17:18

handbags_harris
savage 4 england We need to start playing with the ball on the floor again. We need Howard or another creative midfielder to feed balls into the feet of our front two (without being given a completely free role). Then have Karacan or Leigertwood becoming more disciplined and protecting the back four.

Basically a 4-4-2 diamond 8)


Are you serious? And leave absolutely nowhere in the side for our two most creative assets, Kebe and McAnuff? Yeah, that'll work :roll:


indeed, but they both miss a lot of the play because of the long balls, so would we be any worse off? not that i favour that formation.

what is so difficult for the manager to tell the players to keep the ball on the floor and feed it out to the wingers? tell the wingers to make space and make runs to be fed in to? keep it simple. we have two of the best wingers in this league and yet we lose them by humping the ball in the air all the time. the wingers suffer and the strikers suffer. why, why, why can the management not see it, or if they do, why aren't they changing it? i can only assume long ball is what they want.

as the players lined up for the second half manset was instructing le fondre about something, and then as the half went on you could see the plan was for manset to drop deeper and flick the ball on for le fondre to hopefully run clear. long ball is clearly what mcdermott wants and it has to change!

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by Cypry » 11 Sep 2011 17:35

LoyalRoyal22 Bri is a ledge. lay off. who cares about what subs he made? everyone was shit, confidence has gone, nobody could have changed it with any sort of substitions


But this is exactly the kind of attitude that prompted me to make the original post - I'm not having a go at Brian, but we have to accept that the sun doesn't necessarily shine out of his backside, and it does appear that, at this moment in time, he is pretty clueless about what he needs to change to get things moving....

He made a bit of a fuss about the change to 5 subs, and, to be honest, I think this has thrown him as much as anything - his approach to substitutions pretty much seems to have been to replace like-for-like (or in the case of yesterday and a few other occasions to maintain the shape of the team and move players around), yet he seems to have a complete blind spot to "having a Plan B"; changing the shape of the team and trying something different. I can't think of any occasion when moving Jobi to the middle has worked, yet he's tried it on a number of occasions - as far as yesterday goes, one can only guess at why he made the substitutions he made, but:

1) If Griffin was injured, then why didn't he just make a straight replacement with Cummings?
2) Maybe he felt HRK offered a better option on the left than Jobi, in which case, why not take Jobi off as a straight swap?
3) Perhaps he felt that having Jobi and HRK on would offer more attacking threat - well, given that moving Jobi to the middle rarely seems to work, I'd prefer to see HRK in the middle to be honest - or even pull Le Fondre off (he was obviously ineffective yesterday) and put HRK up front?

It just strikes me that the substitutions yesterday could be a sign that he's a bit confused in his own mind about why things are going wrong, and more importantly, what he needs to do to fix it....

The players are suffering a lack of confidence yes, but I'm wondering if they're beginning to feel they're on a "rudderless ship" and are starting to doubt Brian themselves - I've had a number of jobs in the past where I've felt much the same about my boss, and the only solution has been either for me to move on (transfer requests from Howard and Williams?) or for a new boss....the guys in question have been nice enough, but they just lost the plot when it came to running their businesses and once that happens the company's only going one way while the status quo is maintained....

I'm not actually suggesting that Brian needs to go, it just worries me that the root of the problem could be that he's starting to show that he does have limitations after all, and that's rubbing off on the players...since he's been here he's hardly put a foot wrong, and when the boss is brimming with confidence the team will often follow and vice versa.......now we've started so poorly it could turn into a vicious circle if we're not careful....

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by savage 4 england » 11 Sep 2011 17:52

handbags_harris
savage 4 england We need to start playing with the ball on the floor again. We need Howard or another creative midfielder to feed balls into the feet of our front two (without being given a completely free role). Then have Karacan or Leigertwood becoming more disciplined and protecting the back four.

Basically a 4-4-2 diamond 8)


Are you serious? And leave absolutely nowhere in the side for our two most creative assets, Kebe and McAnuff? Yeah, that'll work :roll:


Where did I say about leaving them out? :|

Karacan OR Leigertwood would have a more defensive role.

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by NR_Royal » 11 Sep 2011 18:10

Can I just make one thing clear, we need to stop disrespecting Griffin. The man was a saviour when he joined us and had a fantastic season. He made a huge commitment by signing for us. Sure he's not playing well, and yes he should be dropped, but have a bit of respect.


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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by andrew1957 » 11 Sep 2011 18:17

I cannot see how anyone can blame the manager for the current fiasco.

This is the third time in less than 2 years that he has got to fully rebuild the team and find a new way of playing. This will be the most difficult job of the three though - as a lot of the older and experienced players seem to have started this season as if they could not care a less. Harte, Griffin, Leigertwood and Kebe have been a shadow of their former selves so far.

The only possible reason I can see for their complete and utter lack of form is 1/ a loss of belief in the club (i.e. what is the point in putting any effort in when all that will happen is that the best players will be sold at the end of the season) or 2/ a complete and utter loss of confidence (i.e. they don't believe we can be successful after losing key players).

We are already so far adrift that this season is effectively a write off already (statistically even after 6 games teams very rarely progress from bottom 3 to top 6 - there are very few examples of this in recent years) so I think we need to build a team around youth. The only target left us survival and hopefully next summer lessons will be learned and no players who progress will be sold (however- that is a pipe dream as we will have another 10M black hole by then no doubt).

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by PEARCEY » 11 Sep 2011 18:21

handbags_harris
Plymouth_Royal I agree. I hate to say it but the more I look at our performances the more it reminds me of our last season in the prem and the latter of Coppell's last year with us. it's just hoof or get it to the wings as quick as possible. We spend over a million on the pitch every season and never use it effectively. I'm not saying we should become a short passing side looking for the perfect killer pass but surely a bit of variety in our play wouldn't go amiss. Take man utd for example. They can play direct, they can pass the ball about, they have overlapping full backs, creative DMs, creative midfielders, they have 2 fantastic wingers, they have a striker who can hold up the ball, a striker how is very creative, a goal poacher and they all work there socks off.

We have 2 fantastic wingers for our level, we work hard, we play direct, but we have no creative DMs, 1 creative midfielder who wants to leave, we cant pass the ball about without someone panicking and hoofing it, and our full backs are not overlapping. No wonder we're easy to predict.


That mirrors almost exactly what my thoughts are on all of this, particularly the highlighted bits. I have said it since we started playing this formation with the core personnel that have been deployed that, ultimately, it is limited and will only get you so far. It worked last season with the fairly solid base of a standard back four and two midfielders with better defensive attributes than attacking, but last season we had what turned out to be an exceptional talent at the top with Long. Under Coppell we had the likes of Kitson initially, then Doyle, under McDermott we had Long. Now we have no exceptional talent up front we suddenly look very, very ordinary because our only two attacking outlets - the flanks - are effectively and easily nullified. We are now in a situation where we have no creativity through the middle, our flanks are stifled, and therefore in order to at least abate the situation we absolutely have to play a ball-playing midfielder in the middle of the park, and we have a more than capable man who can do it at this level sitting twiddling his thumbs hoping for a loan move. He won't be a world beater, he'll make mistakes, he'll lose the ball trying to thread little balls into the channels but he rarely loses it in dangerous areas. Who do we drop though? We can only drop one of two - Karacan or Leigertwood - and up until yesterday's performance I would have said drop Karacan because he is the more limited of the two, but Leigertwood has just looked so full of lethargy that he is literally half the player we had last year.

What am I basically saying? We need another dimension to our attack, and that can only come from one area of the field in my mind - the middle of the park.



Agreed. We huffed and puffed in a fair few games last season. Long would often then score out of the blue and we would go on from there. Without Long we are still huffing and puffing but no longer have the Long get out of jail card.

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by RoyalBlue » 11 Sep 2011 18:42

McDermott got the Watford game completely and utterly wrong. And what is this about not knowing his best 11?

What the hell were the pre-season friendlies and the games we've already played about it it wasn't to get a pretty good idea of his best 11.

Yes, of course he was well and truly shafted by Madejski's book balancing but then he's been working in the shadow of the great man's ego for long enough to have known that was going to happen and that he was certain to lose some of his biggest stars, with Long being an absolute cert to go unless he picked up a bad injury. Therefore he should have been planning and building for this season on that basis.

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by andrew1957 » 11 Sep 2011 18:48

RoyalBlue McDermott got the Watford game completely and utterly wrong. And what is this about not knowing his best 11?

What the hell were the pre-season friendlies and the games we've already played about it it wasn't to get a pretty good idea of his best 11.

Yes, of course he was well and truly shafted by Madejski's book balancing but then he's been working in the shadow of the great man's ego for long enough to have known that was going to happen and that he was certain to lose some of his biggest stars, with Long being an absolute cert to go unless he picked up a bad injury. Therefore he should have been planning and building for this season on that basis.


Very unfair. He was not able to recruit replacements until AFTER Long had gone so new players have had no chance to bed in. He did plan the best he could but the disruption came after the season had started.

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by brendywendy » 11 Sep 2011 19:12

RoyalBlue McDermott got the Watford game completely and utterly wrong. And what is this about not knowing his best 11?

What the hell were the pre-season friendlies and the games we've already played about it it wasn't to get a pretty good idea of his best 11.

Yes, of course he was well and truly shafted by Madejski's book balancing but then he's been working in the shadow of the great man's ego for long enough to have known that was going to happen and that he was certain to lose some of his biggest stars, with Long being an absolute cert to go unless he picked up a bad injury. Therefore he should have been planning and building for this season on that basis.



think he wa stalking about since long and mills ahve gone, and the three new players have come in


apart from that youre spot on :roll:

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by Friday's Legacy » 11 Sep 2011 19:27

RoyalBlue McDermott got the Watford game completely and utterly wrong. And what is this about not knowing his best 11?

What the hell were the pre-season friendlies and the games we've already played about it it wasn't to get a pretty good idea of his best 11.


have to agree with that. in pre-season jordan obita was by far and away our best player and yet he's not even on the bench. head scratching stuff when kebe has been as bad as he has.

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Re: Brian - is he getting it wrong?

by peterroyal76 » 11 Sep 2011 19:30

andrew1957 I cannot see how anyone can blame the manager for the current fiasco.

This is the third time in less than 2 years that he has got to fully rebuild the team and find a new way of playing. This will be the most difficult job of the three though - as a lot of the older and experienced players seem to have started this season as if they could not care a less. Harte, Griffin, Leigertwood and Kebe have been a shadow of their former selves so far.

The only possible reason I can see for their complete and utter lack of form is 1/ a loss of belief in the club (i.e. what is the point in putting any effort in when all that will happen is that the best players will be sold at the end of the season) or 2/ a complete and utter loss of confidence (i.e. they don't believe we can be successful after losing key players).

We are already so far adrift that this season is effectively a write off already (statistically even after 6 games teams very rarely progress from bottom 3 to top 6 - there are very few examples of this in recent years) so I think we need to build a team around youth. The only target left us survival and hopefully next summer lessons will be learned and no players who progress will be sold (however- that is a pipe dream as we will have another 10M black hole by then no doubt).


Brian MUST take his share of the blame. He has not had to 'fully rebuild' the team. He has lost two players, yes they were important players but they have been replaced.

And surely he must know his best team by now, Brian has been loyal to players and in the past been repaid and now its time for the players to repay him or he must change them. I believe he can turn this around, but he is starting to remind me a bit of Coppell towards the end of tenure.

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