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Thread | Good Half
at 15:51 12 Jan 2025
Should be job done.
First goal at a time when it looked like we weren't quite making enough of our possession. 3-0 is still comfortable if they get one back but a clean sheet and a couple more goals should be the aim.
Taylor clearly offside but only if that touch is seen, makes up for the penalty shout earlier - that's given in the Premier League (for other teams anyway). |
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Thread | Magnificent
at 22:05 30 Dec 2024
In a year with many superb results that one might just be the best one yet. Given how much we were outclassed only nine days ago the resilience this team has is impressive.
Every player did well, we had a little bit of luck at times but we were so much better at getting the ball out from defence tonight than on Friday. The second goal epitomised that.
I enjoyed the Chelsea meltdown from about 70 minutes nearly at much as how we played.
Aside from the points, that should give us the confidence to go into the second half of the season with a good chance of staying up. We need reinforcements but wet needed a home win more.
Magnificent home support, really grew as the game went on. Not sure I can speak now but we’ll need more of that too.
COYFB |
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Thread | We're a long way from being relegated already
at 08:34 9 Dec 2024
Even if yesterday feels like the sort of defeat that leads directly to that. One of the things I remember vividly from 2001-02 was how easy it is to play fairly well in a run of matches in this league and still not win.
A lot of what we did yesterday was good enough, if Palace was flat on and off the pitch then both players and fans improved on that a lot. It's still frustrating that it's not quite good enough, that combination of a lack of depth and too many critical mistakes failing us yet again.
For a squad without enough depth, the injuries to Hirst and Ogbene feel critical at the moment. We've seen how McKenna likes to change forward players within games to maintain our intensity but now we only have Delap, Omari, Szmodics and Chaplin who really look up to it. Odd bits from Burns or Clarke , Al-Hamadi is a development project who did ok yesterday but it's not enough. (I've not seen Broadhead this season so won't comment on him).
Some of that is bad luck, certainly losing Ogbene is, although the failure to get the striker we wanted in for the third successive season is more than that. We've rectified that to a large extent in January in each of the last two seasons but it's going to be more difficult to do so this season.
And then there are the mistakes, totally horrendous from Muric yesterday. And, after a bad start, I think he's been pretty decent for the most part in recent matches. There's clearly a balance there between his doing so much so well and then the total errors but it wouldn't be a total surprise to see Walton in next week.
Despite that, defensively we're mainly ok it's the lack of goals that's the big problem for us. We score more than once so rarely that it's much harder to win as just about every team in this division is capable of pulling a goal out of virtually nothing. We had chances yesterday, that one Chaplin put just wide late on would have changed everything had he made it 2-0....
It's probable we aren't going to be quite good enough, indeed that was the case back in August, but nor is that a certainty, even now. The biggest positive is that we are still in touch, indeed a win yesterday and it would be very close. Going back to 01-02 again we needed an exceptional run of form to come back into contention at this time of year.
We need to keep that gap as it is until January and see if we can improve the squad then but also need those players with Premier League experience to step up - Phillips hasn't been seen for a month, Johnson had two good games but a poor one yesterday. Not ideal when we need experience to close games down.
And now we have to want West Ham to win tonight too....
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Thread | There's a fine line on the victimhood narrative for us at the moment
at 08:38 5 Nov 2024
A sense of grievance can definitely help get the players and fans working together, and it's enormously better to have that at PR than the flat, resigned atmosphere of the Everton match, but it's important to keep a sense of perspective. Even despite Tim Robinson, there was plenty we could have done better to manage out the match on Saturday and I'm quite sure McKenna is well aware of that too.
Some fans went all Plymouth very early, complaining last season about how much media coverage we were getting compared to the relegated trio and carried that on after promotion. The Premier League is a hyperbole machine, it always was but has become increasingly more so over the last 20 years - clubs with more fans get more clicks, more views, more TV subscription packages and there's not much point complaining about it. For what it's worth, we've probably had more national media coverage over the last 18 months than at any point since Keane's ill-fated spell in charge - and this is for good reasons.
We were certainly hard done by the refereeing on Saturday, and a little bit at Brentford as Clarke's second yellow seemed to be after he had won the ball. As detailed elsewhere Robinson's choice of what was a foul and what wasn't and what was and wasn't a yellow card was all over the place. It does seem that players with more PL experience, or those at bigger clubs, can get away with slightly more than we can but we have also escaped two second yellow cards for Burns and Morsy this season.
VAR is another matter, it was never really wanted or needed except by TV companies desperate to make themselves part of the story. Using additional technical means to assist decision making works to a large extent in cricket, albeit not conclusively in every case becuase there is pause between each ball being bowled. Rugby is more stop-start than football so there has been more success there and in both sports the decision making is explained (maybe not always perfectly) to fans watching.
That clearly isn't the case in football, where no-one understands the decision-making process used on Saturday three days later. Dermot Gallagher talks about not challenging the referees decision when not necessary which is fair enough except for the Everton penalty and all the other times when a ten minute delay and a load of pedantic reasoning has been used to change onfield decisions.
VAR used in the selective and subjective way it is in the Premier League at the moment is clearly to the detriment of the game. Referees still make mistakes and I would be far happier about Robinson missing the foul on Chaplin were it not for the idea it was reviewed straight afterwards (obviously it was reviewed by Stuart Attwell...). It's not corruption or bias, it's just exceedingly sh1t.
One other thing, Saturday hurts because it's the only time we've really put ourselves in a position to win a match this season, yes Brentford to some extent but we were ahead so early and needed to get to half-time at 2-0 so it wasn't really close. We're growing as a team but whether we stay up or not will depend on how quickly we can turn that into points not any conspiracy against us. |
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Thread | So, Forest - Palace then
at 18:58 21 Oct 2024
It feels like the most likely 1-1 draw going to me.
Something I should have posted earlier because I also just saw this tweet which kind of confirms that:
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