Forest v West Brom: Match Fred sponsored by George's, meeting your battered and breaded needs | Page 14 | Vital Football

Forest v West Brom: Match Fred sponsored by George's, meeting your battered and breaded needs

Despite Pope's bewildering array of stats I'd say West Brom will do well, based on yesterday's performance.

Crisp passing, pace, organised defence, lots of big strong players - didn't create many chances, but as their manager said afterwards, they should have done.

Muric let everyone down for their equaliser and it deflated the whole ground. Maybe he could have done better with the second but it was a fluke, just rubbed salt in the wound.

Cash was clearly targeted as Osborn often was last year. Note to CP - Robinson popped up at RB to help Cash out in the second half. Pretending Cash did better at fullback than Robinson is laughable.

Overall, it's still a squad with plenty of changes and might take a few more games to gel. What worried me was Lolley's form (also v Palace and Real Sociedad). How many times did his final ball or cross beat the first defender? None that I remember.
 
Always hurts to lose at home on the opening day, but in 1966/67 we started by losing 2-1 home to Stoke. We finished runners-up to Man U with a home record of W16 D4 L1.

Not saying we'll repeat that sort of home record this year, but it's much too early to write the season off!
 
Leeds looking like they did last season, high tempo pressing and quick swift counter attacking. Sky gushing over them currently.
 
1976/77, we started our home campaign with 1-1 v Charlton followed by 1-3 v Wolves. With two away draws, that was 3 points from 4 games. (Sack Clough!)

We won our next five home games with GD 23-7 (!), went on to get promoted by the skin of our teeth, and the rest is history.
 
Old Red Fart said:
What's happening with regard to Pants ?

I'm trying hard to keep faith with our owner but it's proving to be a losing battle. I understand about behind the scenes activity but on the pitch it's a different matter. The impression I got from yesterday is that our players heads dropped far too quickly, didn't see the game so could be wrong, hope I am.

Until we can put the ball in the oppositions net we're going to be in trouble.

Didn't Clough and Taylor sign their own players ? Seemed to work well for them.

I haven't lost hope yet but it's a bit of a worry.
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Pope John XXIII said:
When was the last time we lost at home on the first day?

I've been going to all the games since 98 and I'm pretty sure it's never happened in my time.

Old boy near to me thought the last time was '89. Can anyone verify that?
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They said yesterday on sky, I was getting a beer but sure they said 88/89

May be wrong
 
Every season we have done well in my memory we have started badly.

In 2007 in L1 I don't think we won in our first four games and lost the first home game to Leeds.

2009 we drew away and lost at home

We were a bit slow in 2010 as well, took a few games to get going.

Pretty sure in 2002 we had a bad start. I remember going down to Pompey and watching us taken apart, and a home game against Watford where we went down to 9 men I think.

Nothing was ever won or lost in the game yesterday. I really don't think the team as a whole were as bad as some people think.

I think we had a problem at RB that we all knew about. That contributed to us losing but didn't cause it.

The cause for me was disastrous goalkeeping. Simple as that for me. Yes, West Brom controlled the game but we let them have two goals to lead. We made it easy for them while our players were utterly shellshocked and had no confidence in one or the key players on the pitch.

Good thing is that is easy to fix. He gets massively better very quickly or we ditch him.

We'll lose and be in the bottom few on Saturday. Season starts from there with a winnable game against Birmingham. West Brom always get lucky at the CG and do us. Haven't beaten them here since about 2004 I think in the cup, even longer in the league. They always have ridiculous luck here. We are better at their place. Elland road will be one of our hardest away games and we play the other one at Craven Cottage at the end of August..
By the end of this month we'll be done with 2 of the hardest away games of the season
 
Pope John XXIII said:
Every season we have done well in my memory we have started badly.

In 2007 in L1 I don't think we won in our first four games and lost the first home game to Leeds.

2009 we drew away and lost at home

We were a bit slow in 2010 as well, took a few games to get going.

Pretty sure in 2002 we had a bad start. I remember going down to Pompey and watching us taken apart, and a home game against Watford where we went down to 9 men I think.

Nothing was ever won or lost in the game yesterday. I really don't think the team as a whole were as bad as some people think.

I think we had a problem at RB that we all knew about. That contributed to us losing but didn't cause it.

The cause for me was disastrous goalkeeping. Simple as that for me. Yes, West Brom controlled the game but we let them have two goals to lead. We made it easy for them while our players were utterly shellshocked and had no confidence in one or the key players on the pitch.

Good thing is that is easy to fix. He gets massively better very quickly or we ditch him.

We'll lose and be in the bottom few on Saturday. Season starts from there with a winnable game against Birmingham. West Brom always get lucky at the CG and do us. Haven't beaten them here since about 2004 I think in the cup, even longer in the league. They always have ridiculous luck here. We are better at their place. Elland road will be one of our hardest away games and we play the other one at Craven Cottage at the end of August..
By the end of this month we'll be done with 2 of the hardest away games of the season
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I find it hard to believe you were happy with the midfield performance Pope, or thought any of them even had a half decent game? Their midfield completely dominated ours for all but the first ten minutes, which I find unacceptable at home.
 
Hardy Forest said:
I find it hard to believe you were happy with the midfield performance Pope, or thought any of them even had a half decent game? Their midfield completely dominated ours for all but the first ten minutes, which I find unacceptable at home.
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They didn't 'completely' dominate ours at all.

They had the lead and shut up shop. Let a half decent championship team who happen to have very good defenders have the lead away from home and watch what happens. You just can't do it.

We were able to get forward and able to offer sustained pressure. But like all of last season, that pressure is toothless. It doesn't result in a decent cross, and when it does there are no forest heads near it. We do a lot of passing on the edge of their area and they were comfortable letting us, knowing that we didn't have the penetration or space to get through and that sooner or later we would make a mistake and gift them possession. As we always did.

Was I happy? No, but I wasn't massively alarmed. The just looked no different to last season. Same old problems. We needed to upgrade our fullback positions so we had an additional attacking outlet. Putting Cash there gave us that but also cost us more in defensive positions.

I remember a few seasons ago when it felt like we had a huge whole in the midfield and the opposition would just walk straight from box to box unchallenged. I remember last season watching us completely unable to get the ball from defensive midfield to attacking midfield. There were first halves where you couldn't imagine where an attack was coming from.

If anything, we were marginally better than that. Semedo got better, Silva got worse. Lolley took a few games to get on it last season and will probably do so this.
 
Wtf is up with Hernandez’s fringe! Watching Leeds game...his hair starts about an inch back and it’s shaved before that! Looks mental
 
Hardy Forest said:
I find it hard to believe you were happy with the midfield performance Pope, or thought any of them even had a half decent game? Their midfield completely dominated ours for all but the first ten minutes, which I find unacceptable at home.
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Why pick on the midfield?

WBA kept possession very well, hardly misplaced a pass. You have to defend against that as a team. Going forward, we made several chances but most efforts were off target. We didn't keep the ball well enough but I'm not sure that was all down to the midfield.
 
Pope John XXIII said:
They didn't 'completely' dominate ours at all.

They had the lead and shut up shop. Let a half decent championship team who happen to have very good defenders have the lead away from home and watch what happens. You just can't do it.

We were able to get forward and able to offer sustained pressure. But like all of last season, that pressure is toothless. It doesn't result in a decent cross, and when it does there are no forest heads near it. We do a lot of passing on the edge of their area and they were comfortable letting us, knowing that we didn't have the penetration or space to get through and that sooner or later we would make a mistake and gift them possession. As we always did.

Was I happy? No, but I wasn't massively alarmed. The just looked no different to last season. Same old problems. We needed to upgrade our fullback positions so we had an additional attacking outlet. Putting Cash there gave us that but also cost us more in defensive positions.

I remember a few seasons ago when it felt like we had a huge whole in the midfield and the opposition would just walk straight from box to box unchallenged. I remember last season watching us completely unable to get the ball from defensive midfield to attacking midfield. There were first halves where you couldn't imagine where an attack was coming from.

If anything, we were marginally better than that. Semedo got better, Silva got worse. Lolley took a few games to get on it last season and will probably do so this.[/QUOTE

No, you see I disagree completely with that. I thought our central midfield virtually stopped nothing, WB walked through them with relative ease and it was only good defending from Worrall and Dawson that stopped them. Watson put in the occasional tackle, to give some credit, but the other two won nothing.
I’m not too worried about our flanks, but the central midfield is a real concern for me. That was as bad as I’ve seen our centre midfield, and I’ve seen some shockers.
Totally agree re the fullbacks, both positions need improving on.
As you’ve said, WB weren’t great and there are far better teams than them, that’s what worries me, if there aren’t significant improvements in the centre, then a lot of teams are going to tear us apart.
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We are talking about different things, defence and attack.

Defensive midfield wasn't great. Of course it wasn't; we have replaced Colback with Watson. It didn't feel disastrous to me though.

I was more talking about attack, which was our Achilles heel last season
 
pebble said:
Why pick on the midfield?

WBA kept possession very well, hardly misplaced a pass. You have to defend against that as a team. Going forward, we made several chances but most efforts were off target. We didn't keep the ball well enough but I'm not sure that was all down to the midfield.
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Because I thought they were the worst three players on the pitch and it’s arguably the most important area of the team.
 
Can Ribeiro not just play right back. Of course we should sign one don’t get me wrong, but surely full backs should be fairly comfortable playing either side. Lolley ska left footed and cuts in - less important for a full back to have to do that but I’d hope he’s a little two footed?
 
Colback not the answer, sawyers ran the show yesterday but he did the same at the city ground last year for Brentford, against colback. Why our recruitment can't pick these players up is beyond me, ironically their other midfielder who controlled the game a loanee from benfica! Midfield is the problem, but more importantly we need need a new head of recruitment. On the field, until we get a commanding midfielder we can look forward to many more games of watching the other team control things, similar to the second half of last season. Just no joined up thinking between recruitment, manager, playing style. Same merry go round different personnel. West brom were all on the same page, as we're sheff utd last year.
 
Mike78 said:
Colback not the answer, sawyers ran the show yesterday but he did the same at the city ground last year for Brentford, against colback. Why our recruitment can't pick these players up is beyond me, ironically their other midfielder who controlled the game a loanee from benfica! Midfield is the problem, but more importantly we need need a new head of recruitment. On the field, until we get a commanding midfielder we can look forward to many more games of watching the other team control things, similar to the second half of last season. Just no joined up thinking between recruitment, manager, playing style. Same merry go round different personnel. West brom were all on the same page, as we're sheff utd last year.
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Agree, recruitment has been some of the worst we have ever seen. Scattergun approach, dependent on one agent.

This for me has been on of the top three worst transfer windows ever, after 2012 and 2016
 
perhaps we should give the "recruitment department" the last 4 days of the window to right wrongs before finally passing judgement but not optimistic I'm afraid
 
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