The Carabao Cup Thread | Page 56 | Vital Football

The Carabao Cup Thread

Thought 11 changes from the Fulham game was fine. If the players aren't good enough to be picked then they shouldn't be at the club. They're here because they should be good enough to slot into the first team if called upon to do so. Playing them means that they're in a much better place to do that. It also means the first team are less exposed, in what's going to be a long hard season.

That's the theory. It worked against Bristol City. It should have worked last night; we had chances. Tactics were poor, too many shots lobbed into a well-defended penalty area, not enough getting behind the defence.

What was worrying about last night was a lot of the players not offering what was needed. How we can ditch Samatta when Davis is so patently not good enough beats me. Guilbert has had some good games but last night wasn't with it, either in attack or defence; has DS been trying to ship him out, if so considering the thinness of the squad it's poor tactics. Ramsey is, overall, nowhere near first team standard and needs to go out on loan to see if he can crack it.
 
@McParlandTheGreat I don't know who said it but nobody complained about the team when we played Bristol. Were there even any complaints an hour before kick-off?

This is simply a wake-up call for us all. Some suggested Ramsey shouldn't be going on loan but I think its fairly clear he needs game time. I think he will now go on loan since we're out of the cup. He isnt getting ahead of Marv or Hourihane.

Traore went missing last night too which is a bit of concern and AEG who was our brightest spark still didn't do anything to suggest he has a future. Jed Steer once again is one of the only players to hold his head high. He made a great save in the first half and almost levelled for us at the end.
 
One thing that was glaringly obvious to me last night that I don't think has been mentioned here yet is Guilbert is not a very good defender and I can fully understand why Cash was brought in.


Guilbert let so many crosses in last night and was getting made to look very amateur against Powell. I didn't rate him too highly last season but others did and I think that elevated my opinion of him until last night. He isn't good enough.

Yep have to hold my hands up and say I've made the case for Guilbert and was surprised to see Dean and Co consider him 3rd choice behind Elmo....after last night's performance and if he's performing the same way in training, I'd be selecting Elmo in front of him too. He was poor. Think he could well go out on loan.
 
I’m not calling for his head just yet, but what does he bring, if he can’t get the guys playing for that shirt. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Were there many Wolves fans asking the same thing about Nuno when they lost to Stoke 2 weeks ago and with a stronger XI than we put out last night? Doubt it. Cup games....yes disappointing to surrender so meekly...League games, a different matter if they're not playing for the shirt because it's the first team, not the second string. And ultimately as I said last night, that's what Dean will quite rightly be judged on. So far, 6 points out of 6....first team certainly playing for the shirt as they were, finally, in the run in. I hate losing any game but when 11 changes are made and with the lack of quality in that starting XI, I cant say it surprised me and probably didnt surprise many others tbh.
 
Were there many Wolves fans asking the same thing about Nuno when they lost to Stoke 2 weeks ago and with a stronger XI than we put out last night? Doubt it. Cup games....yes disappointing to surrender so meekly...League games, a different matter if they're not playing for the shirt because it's the first team, not the second string. And ultimately as I said last night, that's what Dean will quite rightly be judged on. So far, 6 points out of 6....first team certainly playing for the shirt as they were, finally, in the run in. I hate losing any game but when 11 changes are made and with the lack of quality in that starting XI, I cant say it surprised me and probably didnt surprise many others tbh.
It still doesn’t excuse the disgraceful performance we witnessed last night. And its happened to many times under him, (1st team as well) I wouldn’t be making this comment if it hadn’t.
I really hope you guys are right and he is the man to take us into Europe, but at the moment I just don’t see it sadly.
 
Were there many Wolves fans asking the same thing about Nuno when they lost to Stoke 2 weeks ago and with a stronger XI than we put out last night? Doubt it. Cup games....yes disappointing to surrender so meekly...League games, a different matter if they're not playing for the shirt because it's the first team, not the second string. And ultimately as I said last night, that's what Dean will quite rightly be judged on. So far, 6 points out of 6....first team certainly playing for the shirt as they were, finally, in the run in. I hate losing any game but when 11 changes are made and with the lack of quality in that starting XI, I cant say it surprised me and probably didnt surprise many others tbh.

It does matter losing cup games. I respect Stoke and knew it would be a big ask, under O'Neill they've got back to being typical Stoke. But they lack quality. We had enough quality to win it; the problem was performance. Other clubs manage to put out a B team which performs; last night we didn't. That surprised me. DS does have to take some responsibility.

Losing also surprised me. Stoke only scored because of poor defending of a corner. If Mings had been organising the defence it wouldn't have happened, so yep that was one area where we lacked. After that Stoke understandably played it tight. But we still had chances. We could have had more with a better game plan; we shouldn't wait to the last 15 minutes before turning it on.
 
@McParlandTheGreat I don't know who said it but nobody complained about the team when we played Bristol. Were there even any complaints an hour before kick-off?

This is simply a wake-up call for us all. Some suggested Ramsey shouldn't be going on loan but I think its fairly clear he needs game time. I think he will now go on loan since we're out of the cup. He isnt getting ahead of Marv or Hourihane.

Traore went missing last night too which is a bit of concern and AEG who was our brightest spark still didn't do anything to suggest he has a future. Jed Steer once again is one of the only players to hold his head high. He made a great save in the first half and almost levelled for us at the end.


To be fair plenty of people commented and mentioned they were disappointed with the starting 11 selected against Bristol City with several mentioning the team looked weak and had 3 full-backs in the defence.

Sure we won convincingly but it was a very poor display from Bristol who gave too much respect and time to the Villa players creating a false impression and we paid for that when we came up against a Stoke team that was far better organised regardless of how many changes they made.

https://forums.vitalfootball.co.uk/threads/league-cup-2020-21-thread.107918/page-25
 
It's being reported that after last nights' (Thursday's) performance v Stoke City, that both El Ghazi and Lansbury have both deactivated their Twitter accounts.

Obviously not keen on taking the stick for inept performances I guess.
 
It's being reported that after last nights' (Thursday's) performance v Stoke City, that both El Ghazi and Lansbury have both deactivated their Twitter accounts.

Obviously not keen on taking the stick for inept performances I guess.
It’s sad that people’s first instinct is to abuse someone on social media if they play badly. You wouldn’t boo your own player in the ground but you can say all sorts to them online where they can actually read it. Too many twats around.
 
El Ghazi deserves stick (privately) because he should have won it for us but he kept fannying about - but in that sentence it means he put in a reasonable albeit not perfect performance so he doesn't deserve stick for his effort.

Most shots, joint most on target, joint most key passes, fourth most touches & 80% passing accuracy.

Score the goal or get the brace and people would've been raving about his performance.

:wack:

Totally irrelevant to the thread but on the subject of Twatter, a good few months ago I did an article that slightly laid into a player....some utter no mark replied agreeing and went far further in language than I could when kiddies could be reading - and then tagged in said player.

I deleted my original Tweet out of disgust and no doubt lost out on views in the process.

I can have an opinion, I'm not going to shit through a players letterbox because I think I'm superior.
 
I think fans have every right to give the players stick however they can do it - we're the guys paying the wages remember, nobody else and if certain players only want a social media account for plaudits they hardly ever really deserve then more fool them.

I'm probably Ghazi's biggest critic but I thought he put a shift in, relatively speaking, in this game and certainly more than Lansbury did.

I'll back off from giving stick to players I think are taking the piss if I can at least see them sweat for the cause, Ghazi, Hourihane and all but if they're grafting yet simply aren't good enough then that's on DS/the club for keep picking players who clearly just aren't up to the job.

Risking this game/cup by resting virtually the entire first team because of a game we're virtually certain to lose on Sunday makes not a jot of sense to me but that's very much on DS whichever way you slice it.
 
Completely disagree with the notion that making the changes was wrong.

We are a premier league club and i am sick and tired of players not earning their corn and sitting back and either 1- not coming up to proof and pushing for a start or 2- sitting on the their lazy arses content with taking a fat wage and giving fcuk all back.

This defeat is squarely at those players who are simply not up to scratch. After Bristol City Smith quite rightly would have expected a performance from this lot.
 
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He's paid for foresight, otherwise there's no point having anyone selecting teams, they may as well do a raffle for each game.

You can't qualify the wrong unless we lose on an abominable penalty decision etc.
 
He's paid for foresight, otherwise there's no point having anyone selecting teams, they may as well do a raffle for each game.

You can't qualify the wrong unless we lose on an abominable penalty decision etc.

Yes. And his foresight was that the same team comfortably won only 7 days before!. So easy to tap away on a keyboard after the final whistle and say the decision was right or wrong

I can’t be bothered to read back but I would be fairly confident that the general consensus was that the team that beat Bristol city would have enough to beat Stoke reserves.
 
It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks and this isn't subjective - the team he decided to put out, presumably of his own free will, clearly cost us that game and we've gained nothing from it unless he wasn't being truthful about the cup being important to us then it's a different matter and he got it bang on!
 
It's being reported that after last nights' (Thursday's) performance v Stoke City, that both El Ghazi and Lansbury have both deactivated their Twitter accounts.

Obviously not keen on taking the stick for inept performances I guess.
Taking stick or exposing yourself to moronic comments are two different things.

Not sure many on here would take such abuse from others if they were watched at work. I don’t blame them for removing themselves. Football is a confidence game, why destroy your own players? Constructive criticism is one thing, pure abuse is another.