BFTG - Burton

[paultheroyal]

Thought the atmosphere was decent considering the game. The atmosphere is solely dependant on success plus away following. That will never change. Some decent teams are yet to visit.

It's a new breed of football and one I am enjoying watching before my eyes.

I just find it incredible that we are 3rd yet I have learned from this thread and others is that we are...

Boring
False position
Standard of the division is awful (as said in 15/16, 14/15, 13/14 etc)
Bristol City are amazing and will bring us down to earth
Al Habsi is a liability
No atmosphere in the ground
This position last year and look what happened
Division does not settle down till Xmas (from the posters who said it would be end of October)
Team has no identity

Feel free to add to the list.

3rd in table with further chances to cement that position. I am proud of this team, enjoying it and fully behind them all.

[Schards#2]

3rd place is way beyond my wildest expectations for this stage so well done to all concerned for that, however........just putting this out there, is anyone else really bored or is it just me?

I don't think it is, as the stadium is as silent as I can remember it in a decade or more despite our being on a good run. I guess the style of play is just passionless and that seems to transmit to the crowd. For want of a better description, I don't see or feel any "buzz" there at all. It worries my that new younger fans won't get gripped by the theatre and drama of it all as, well, there just isn't much

Does it matter if we keep winning?

Is the problem twofold - firstly fans being slow to come back after a couple of barren years or still being wary - expecting a fall from grace like last seasons implosion.

Plus, the way we play, we aren't giving the oppostion much chance to get in the game. For an atmosphere to build the game often needs to be end to end, we aren't letting teams hurt us at home - shown by the fact we have only let in 6 goals in 9 games (4 of those were against Villa and Brighton - so only 2 in the other 7). We are also more patient than we have ever been but it appears that the cutting edge is coming along and we are converting more chances.

The 106 season was dull at times, as a fan, it got to the stage where the only discussion was will we win by 3, 4 or 5 today. Once we got a goal or two up, the crowd would sit back relax and enjoy. We are starting to look very good at home and we at a stage where the opposition don't often look like scoring, so once we get ahead it is almost certainly game over.

There was a time when I would be entirely happy with us winning games regardless of how we achieved it so I can fully understand why others think this way but these days, I'm looking for some sort of entertainment too. Must come with age

Hopefully Bristol City with a large away following may perk things up a bit

[Hound]

I enjoyed the game tbh. I thought the first half hour was entertaining, and there was plenty going on.

We do 'kill' off games pretty well, breaking up any momentum the opposition gets. It can lead to tension lifting from the game. It would be interesting to see how we play if we go a goal down at home - the only game I've seen this season when that happened was Brighton, and that was a cracking game.

[No Fixed Abode]

Still early days in Stams tenure. But it's good to see I've been proved correct by the dismissal of McDermott and the appointment of Stam.

I'm sure Genome is quietly eating some humble pie right now.

[Hampshire Royal]

I'm really surprised by Schards saying he thinks it's boring. If we remember the last two seasons, our defence was really brittle. Last season, in particular, we gave away so many goals due simply to the disorganisation in defence.

We are very much a WIP at the moment, and the first thing Stam saw was to shore up the defence, which he's done. He's also improved the midfield. One of the problems we have at the moment is the link between defence and midfield, although that is improving. There are periods in every game where we discover our cutting edge, and, to me, we play some really exciting football during those periods. These periods are, unfortunately, few and far between, but we are getting there.

We are four points behind auto promotion, and have played both Newcastle and Brighton. Both those games were played when things weren't as good as they are now. We deservedly lost heavily to Newcastle, and drew at home to Brighton. We have to play both those teams again and, in my opinion, we will improve those results.

I am not getting too excited by the prospect of promotion, too much of the season to go, but I do believe we will still be there or thereabouts for the playoffs. In any case, the performances will continue to improve and we are in for an exciting rest of season.

[genome]

Still early days in Stams tenure. But it's good to see I've been proved correct by the dismissal of McDermott and the appointment of Stam.

I'm sure Genome is quietly eating some humble pie right now.

By extension it was right to get rid of Clarke too

[BR2]

Classic HNA, Muskrat and Schards daring to question things and they end up by getting hammered by most other posters.
Like Schards I found the game boring but, probably like him, accept the fact that Stam is trying to build something and we have reached the lofty heights well before schedule.
The best part for me about Saturday was the performance of young Samuel-he went to Gillingham as a boy and has come back as a man even if he still needs to be a bit stronger on the ball.
With him up front there was so much more pace when he or McCleary were on the ballor finding space and that augurs well for the future if (and it's a big "if") our best player, McCleary stays fit.

Fortunately, unlike in some previous seasons, fans on here and at the ground are not getting carried away-quite the opposite in fact as I have yet to hear any chant yet of "we are going up".

So far so good and let us hope that this is not just our purple patch, in the same way as Huddersfield had theirs early on and have now fallen away.

[bobby1413]

Boring
False position
Standard of the division is awful (as said in 15/16, 14/15, 13/14 etc)
Bristol City are amazing and will bring us down to earth
Al Habsi is a liability
No atmosphere in the ground
This position last year and look what happened
Division does not settle down till Xmas (from the posters who said it would be end of October)
Team has no identity
.

I think you're being harsh tbh and you're wrong...

Boring - our last three games: 2-0 win, 3-0 win, 3-0 win, I don't think we're that boring when compared to other Championship sides

False position - not sure what this means - we've won and earned the points

AAH is a liability - people continue to say this but he's won player of the month (is it more than once?) and he's saved us SO MANY times

No atmosphere - could say the same about most other grounds

Team has no identity - I think things are improving in that regard, there is a much much better feel about the team and they look like they're playing/fighting for each other

[NewCorkSeth]

Boring
False position
Standard of the division is awful (as said in 15/16, 14/15, 13/14 etc)
Bristol City are amazing and will bring us down to earth
Al Habsi is a liability
No atmosphere in the ground
This position last year and look what happened
Division does not settle down till Xmas (from the posters who said it would be end of October)
Team has no identity
.

I think you're being harsh tbh and you're wrong...

Boring - our last three games: 2-0 win, 3-0 win, 3-0 win, I don't think we're that boring when compared to other Championship sides

False position - not sure what this means - we've won and earned the points

AAH is a liability - people continue to say this but he's won player of the month (is it more than once?) and he's saved us SO MANY times

No atmosphere - could say the same about most other grounds

Team has no identity - I think things are improving in that regard, there is a much much better feel about the team and they look like they're playing/fighting for each other

I think you need to re-read his post?

[bobby1413]

Boring
False position
Standard of the division is awful (as said in 15/16, 14/15, 13/14 etc)
Bristol City are amazing and will bring us down to earth
Al Habsi is a liability
No atmosphere in the ground
This position last year and look what happened
Division does not settle down till Xmas (from the posters who said it would be end of October)
Team has no identity
.

I think you're being harsh tbh and you're wrong...

Boring - our last three games: 2-0 win, 3-0 win, 3-0 win, I don't think we're that boring when compared to other Championship sides

False position - not sure what this means - we've won and earned the points

AAH is a liability - people continue to say this but he's won player of the month (is it more than once?) and he's saved us SO MANY times

No atmosphere - could say the same about most other grounds

Team has no identity - I think things are improving in that regard, there is a much much better feel about the team and they look like they're playing/fighting for each other

I think you need to re-read his post?

Oh sh*t ...

Carrying on as you were ...

[maffff]

Could someone please explain the formation used today?

[Forbury Lion]

I prefer to be bored and see us win a game 3-0 than be bored and see us leave empty handed as has been the case for much of last couple of seasons.

As for the 106 season being dull, I'd take that season over any season before or since with the possible exception of our first premier league season - maybe it was the cup run as well that helped?

[Maneki Neko]

that pretty much went as gfood as could possibly be expected.
stams tactics/formation, and man management all superb.
the 4 wins in a row without conceding is not a real signal of our quality, what with the quality of opposition, but it does speak to the quality of our squad. weve coped well with injuries/suspensions well so far, and it can only help team spirit/confidence, but ill hold back my amazement till weve played a few more decent teams in the weeks to come.


as for excitement. ill take winning football over pretty losing football all day long, and for me the entire concept of reading playing passing football is a strange madness that makes watching even the dullest of back 5 passing games a wonderfully exciting surprise of itself.

[No Fixed Abode]

Still early days in Stams tenure. But it's good to see I've been proved correct by the dismissal of McDermott and the appointment of Stam.

I'm sure Genome is quietly eating some humble pie right now.

By extension it was right to get rid of Clarke too

Except Clarke had a better PPG than McDermott. So not as justified.

[NewCorkSeth]

Still early days in Stams tenure. But it's good to see I've been proved correct by the dismissal of McDermott and the appointment of Stam.

I'm sure Genome is quietly eating some humble pie right now.

By extension it was right to get rid of Clarke too

Except Clarke had a better PPG than McDermott. So not as justified.

Isn't ppg completely relative to each season?

[genome]

Don't even start

[Lower West]

the 4 wins in a row without conceding

We were being battered at Rotherham in the first 20. No control of the game what so ever. Results are at times misleading. As that's what the record books show. Doesn't tell the real story.

[tidus_mi2]

the 4 wins in a row without conceding

We were being battered at Rotherham in the first 20. No control of the game what so ever. Results are at times misleading. As that's what the record books show. Doesn't tell the real story.

We were being battered, Stam noticed this and made a substitution, we stopped being battered, what else does he need to do in that situation?

[WAZZOCK]

the 4 wins in a row without conceding

We were being battered at Rotherham in the first 20. No control of the game what so ever. Results are at times misleading. As that's what the record books show. Doesn't tell the real story.

Yeah, these 20 minute matches are really annoying. I miss the days when we had another 70 minutes to try and correct things.

[CountryRoyal]

Of course results don't necessarily reflect performance that just goes with out saying. We will win games when we shouldn't and we will lose games when we shouldn't but the fact of the matter is that we are where we are in the table on merit and that's without everything really clicking yet.

It's early days and yes, our recent results have put us at an expected height but cliche or not you can only play what's in front of you, we've done that and for the last 4 games haven't conceded a goal to boot.

Tough month coming up and if we can be within a few points of the playoffs by January than terrific.

Oh and also +1 to the "boring" winning > exciting losing.