Staying Up Thread 2019/20 | Page 20 | Vital Football

Staying Up Thread 2019/20

DeanoVilla said:
It seems to me our whole season now rests on 3 games. Newcastle, Palace and West Ham.

Win all 3 of those and hope that 34 points (maybe 35 or 36 if we can scrape a couple of draws) is enough.

Would anyone put money on us winning those 3 games though?
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The way things have been against even those teams lately I would have to say nope...
 
Over the last 20 years when the stripeys, Portsmouth, Fulham, west ham and Leicester survived they all went into the last 10 games doomed. The year west ham stayed up they were 10 points adrift with 10 to play, Leicester won 7 of the last nine, there are some astonishing turn arounds and as much as I agree we don't currently have the fight in us if we can get John mcginn back for the Newcastle game anything is possible because our goal difference started to plummet when he got injured and then mings followed.
 
Stephen Jay Hawkings said:
Home games are key. They will decide whether we stay up or not. Away from home we are like a bunch of little kittens.

We should have had a point against Spurs, we could take points from the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea if we can put in a performance. We actually need to if we're to survive.
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Yeah, I think a lot of games at home look tough on paper but we are actually playing a lot of sides with not much to play for/more to play for in europe.
 
DeanoVilla said:
I think I've be fairly positive most of the season, but yes Saturday was disgusting really.

Southampton had the worst home record in the division going into that game having lost 8 of their 13 home games yet we made them look like 70's Brazil.

It's come to the point now that you have to question the coaching and the tactics.

Why are we always so open?

Why are we always conceding chances?

Why do we never capitalise when the opposition go down to 10 men?

Why can we never hang on to leads?

Why have we only earnt 1 point against the top 10 sides this season, yet other teams in our situation find a way to be competitive against the better sides one way or another.

We need to start asking questions and looking for solutions, as if we continue to just keep approaching the games the same week in week out we are definitely going down.

Smith was lauded as some type of tactical genius before he came and yet he seems incapable of changing anything dependent on the opposition.

I tell you one thing for absolutely certain we'd not have conceded a league worst 52 goals in 27 games if Bruce was in charge.
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Here's an attempt at a few answers:

Why are we always so open? We don't keep our shape. It's got worse under 3 at the back. Partly because 2 of the preferred 3 are rookies. At the start of the season at least it looked as though we knew what shape we needed to be.

Why are we always conceding chances? Too many unforced errors. Also see above. When we have the ball we no longer find routes forward. Guilbert should be speeding down the line with the ball; they're not finding him in space.

Why do we never capitalise when the opposition go down to 10 men? When they've got 11 they're thinking of attack. When they've got 10 they shut up shop and we don't know how to unlock it.

Why can we never hang on to leads? We do sometimes. But too many players can't play through tiredness, and there seems to be little coaching in seeing a game out.
 
pvb1968 said:
Over the last 20 years when the stripeys, Portsmouth, Fulham, west ham and Leicester survived they all went into the last 10 games doomed. The year west ham stayed up they were 10 points adrift with 10 to play, Leicester won 7 of the last nine, there are some astonishing turn arounds and as much as I agree we don't currently have the fight in us if we can get John mcginn back for the Newcastle game anything is possible because our goal difference started to plummet when he got injured and then mings followed.
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Losing McGinn, Heaton and Mings was huge for us. Even when we had those three and Grealish was out injured (Liverpool at home comes to mind) we looked strong. Douglas, Nakamba and co. Just arent fully premier league ready.
 
McParlandTheGreat said:
Why do we never capitalise when the opposition go down to 10 men? When they've got 11 they're thinking of attack. When they've got 10 they shut up shop and we don't know how to unlock it.
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Disagree with that. Arsenal and Watford continued to come at us when they went down to 10. Think there was another game too where the same happened.

I think it's purely down to tactics. For me when the opposition goes down to 10 men you need to react immediately and make an offensive change. It sends a message to your players to go for the jugular and puts the opposition on the back foot.

In every game (and there''s been a few) where the opposition have gone down to 10, Smith has failed to react, keeping things the same for 15-20 minutes and we fail to press home any advantage.
 
All is not lost, we've been dreadful at times this year but we're not cut adrift and we're in the driving seat.

For me its about staying in the fight until McGinn is back and Smith abandons this 343. Flip back to a flat back 4 and shuffle Mcginn and Grealish into the middle. Maybe leave Hause Left back with Targett in front of him and put Engels back in beside Mings.
 
Just checked Palace their record since early season is worse than us but they had the points in the bag, same with Newcastle
 
DeanoVilla said:
Not buying Cahill was the single biggest mistake of the summer.

The arrogance of Smith and Purslow thinking we didn't need to add any experience was flabbergasting.
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No claiming he was the biggest single mistake Deano, striker being another, just saying experience at the back would have made a big difference... Chester never even got a chance, we have leaked goals all season.... beside Tyrone an experienced CH would have been invaluable... Cahill or whoever... Just not 2 Rookies who haven't been convincing...that's my point
 
Villa1955 said:
No claiming he was the biggest single mistake Deano, striker being another, just saying experience at the back would have made a big difference... Chester never even got a chance, we have leaked goals all season.... beside Tyrone an experienced CH would have been invaluable... Cahill or whoever... Just not 2 Rookies who haven't been convincing...that's my point
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Yes I was agreeing with you. For me it was the single biggest mistake. Such an obvious signing that would have made a HUGE difference.
 
The UK chief medical officer is now talking about the possibility of canceling all football matches in the UK if Coronavirus show any significant spread.
Could this be the thing that keeps us up if the season ends up being cancelled.
 
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