The negativity on this board is ludicrous!

[dembethewarrior]

No problem mate, it wasn't a dig as you're a good poster who presents good arguments to a thread.

From my perspective I have been a bit underwhelmed with the football as I said in earlier post since about October. This coincided with some big injury problems to some big players so I thought the players performed wonders to "hang in there" at the top.

I couldn't wait til the transfer window and I thought Warnock would unveil some diamonds who would prove to be bargains but he never really addressed what I felt were the issues at hand.

I'm not and probably never will be a fan of Patterson as an attacking midfielder and the only time I could ever see a role for him in that position is to shut down someone like Neves when we play Wolves.

Like others have said in this thread, I'm not expecting us to be Man City but the predictability of our play at present must be mixed up if we're gonna make the play offs surely.

We need more than just pumping it downbthw wings.

I would seriously drop our wingers and play hoilett centrally with 2 up ahead of him.

The 1 game I remember Tomlin starting when we were playing well we went through the middle more and we had options to play in bogle or hit it out wide and still create havoc. Bogle looked a constant thread against Ipswich.

Our wingers aren't firing and we don't have Tomlin so we need to start mixing things up.

[Bald Barry Bastad]

Seemed to me he had the ball quite a bit in Friday, but generally ran into trouble.

We can't pass the ball when we haven't got it, so avoiding giving it away cheaply is imperative

That's what I love about football. You have 2 guys watch the same game and come away with completely different opinions 😁

For me against Millwall we had plenty of ball but the players chose to treat it like a ticking time bomb and hoof it away at the earliest opportunity. All it needed was a midfielder to put his foot on it and pass the ball. I thought Millwall were poor and there for the taking. If we had played with the same personnel and same way as the first 5 games I believe we'd have blown them away. I really didn't think much of them but that goes for the whole championship which is the poorest I can ever remember it being.

[jamieccfc]

Seemed to me he had the ball quite a bit in Friday, but generally ran into trouble.

We can't pass the ball when we haven't got it, so avoiding giving it away cheaply is imperative

But that's what we continuously do Tim, everyball we play is 50/50

[dembethewarrior]

Yes he was, but he's not a brilliant passer. His game is around work rate from what I've seen and Warnock's comments. He's pretty direct . Bringing him into the side won't make us a better passing team.

At the start of the season we also had Gunnar, Zohore and NML all firing.

It looked like you were singling him out for our losses, so I thought I'd remind you of his start that's all fella.

[the other bob wilson]

To be blunt Bob, when you are fighting to overcome a pretty disastrous run of results the football is not going to be pretty as you attempt to regain confidence in your play by scrapping to get back on track. We're starting to do this but it'll take time to become more fluid in our forward movement.

I'm really disappointed in a lot of comments on this thread as I hadn't realised we'd got such a bunch of depressives on here - and you've surprised me most of all given how long you've been watching us.

The other point I'll make is that you play to your strengths and the things that have been working for you. I think we'd get absolutely battered in most games if we tried to outplay other teams in areas that are their strengths. Passing is not something we've ever been good at since I've watched Cardiff - honourable exclusions to this include Whitts and one or two others but they had other flaws to their games. You are clutching at straws if you think Gunnarsson has ever been a good passer and it's an absolute given he'll be even worse when he returns from long-term injury.

The one point I will agree with is that we need to be more in control of where the long balls are going when we're playing them out. It does seem to me that we're now aiming at Patterson a lot more from goal kicks and he is excellent at winning the headers from those balls.

I'm enjoying our football this season and I think that we'll rediscover a more fluid team game over the next few weeks. Whether that will be enough we'll have to wait and see but it's already been a season where I've seen better football from us as a team than I have in many years. I'd have thought that would have been enough to cut the side some slack but apparently not. Seems a number of our fans have 'Premiership supporter' disease already.

Once again, there is the assumption.that anyone who expresses criticism at the way we have been playing for long stretches of many of our matches since November is advocating we play"pretty, tippy, tappy" football. Maybe some are, but I'm certainly not - we'll never do that under this manager and we'd be hopeless at it if we did. However, there are more than two ways of playing football. For example, there's the way we played earlier this season and in the second half of 16/17.

We were on our run of consecutive wins at the start of the season when I first noticed one of those awful spells when we seemed incapable of playing any sort of controlled football. We started the QPR match awfully and soon went a goal down, but we came through well to record a fifth straight win and by the end we were worth more than a 2-1 win. By and large, we were able to cope with these spells where we just seemed to stop playing, but we were awful for forty five minutes against Norwich in early December before coming back strongly in the second half and since that night, I can remember a good finish at Reading, a good second half against Sunderland and a performance reminiscent of our early season form at Leeds, but, apart from that, its been a struggle in the league for us.

I'm concerned that this decline will end up costing us the top six place which looked a certainty just before Christmas - I reckon we were playing a lot better a year ago than we are now.

[Lawnmower]

It looked like you were singling him out for our losses, so I thought I'd remind you of his start that's all fella.

👍 no, not singling him out. Although we need him to get back to his early season form soon

[Lawnmower]

But that's what we continuously do Tim, everyball we play is 50/50

It's not every ball is it ?

Looked to me on Friday that there was a lot of panicking. We were under intense pressure for a long spell in the first half.

It's nowhere near as bad as being made out.

We are 4 games unbeaten (3 away) and scored 9 conceded 2 in that period.

That's decent form in my book

[Lawnmower]

That's what I love about football. You have 2 guys watch the same game and come away with completely different opinions 😁

For me against Millwall we had plenty of ball but the players chose to treat it like a ticking time bomb and hoof it away at the earliest opportunity. All it needed was a midfielder to put his foot on it and pass the ball. I thought Millwall were poor and there for the taking. If we had played with the same personnel and same way as the first 5 games I believe we'd have blown them away. I really didn't think much of them but that goes for the whole championship which is the poorest I can ever remember it being.

Definitely don't agree with this.

1. Millwall have got a superb home record, beating several good sides there.
2. They are on very good form at the moment
3. A lot of the long ball was clearances more than passes, as they put us under severe pressure. A lot didn't stick due to our target man having a battering and the ref employing different rules for each side
4. Weakest Championship ? Wolves are probably one of the best sides in here for years, Villa, Derby, Fulham all have strong squads which they've built on. Boro have spent a fortune and still can't get near the play offs. Teams that have come down are struggling due to the standard. Sheff Weds, Reading, Norwich all pushing for promotion last year are nowhere.

I'd say it was a very good standard this year.

[dembethewarrior]

👍 no, not singling him out. Although we need him to get back to his early season form soon

I know your not that type of poster didn't really mean anything by the comment.

Would be good to see them all back to early season form

[jamieccfc]

It's not every ball is it ?

Looked to me on Friday that there was a lot of panicking. We were under intense pressure for a long spell in the first half.

It's nowhere near as bad as being made out.

We are 4 games unbeaten (3 away) and scored 9 conceded 2 in that period.

That's decent form in my book

Ok at least 70% I would say. Our recent form has seen an upturn of fortunes and hopefully that will continue

[Penarth Blues]

Once again, there is the assumption.that anyone who expresses criticism at the way we have been playing for long stretches of many of our matches since November is advocating we play"pretty, tippy, tappy" football. Maybe some are, but I'm certainly not - we'll never do that under this manager and we'd be hopeless at it if we did. However, there are more than two ways of playing football. For example, there's the way we played earlier this season and in the second half of 16/17.

I haven't said people are suggesting playing tippy tappy football I don't think. It wasn't meant to come over that way. People are suggesting (maybe not you) that we play a more passing based game - which doesn't mean Swansea type football either - and I'm saying I think that would be disastrous for us. It's an opinion which I've tried to justify, doesn't mean I'm right.

If you are saying you think we should go back to how we were playing earlier this season then I don't see when we changed from that in our approach. What did happen is that we ran out of energy/form and therefore lost some confidence. If NM-L and Zohore were playing as they were at the start of the season then we'd be fine, but they are not. Therefore we're trying to fit new players into the system and naturally there's some disjointedness at the moment. As others have said, our form is not too bad at present and a couple of strong results in there will be helping the team get a bit more confidence back in their abilities.

Bolton will be a good test of how well we're doing now as they seem to have hit a bit of form too recently. There are no easy games in this league but if we beat Bolton we're right back in the frame again and I'd hope would be able to push on again from there.

[jamieccfc]

It's not every ball is it ?

Looked to me on Friday that there was a lot of panicking. We were under intense pressure for a long spell in the first half.

It's nowhere near as bad as being made out.

We are 4 games unbeaten (3 away) and scored 9 conceded 2 in that period.

That's decent form in my book

http://www.squawka.com/football-team...tal#desc#total
I'm not sure how accurate these stats are but if true only 62% completed passes from so little completed is piss poor

[blue matt]

And Back on track

[the other bob wilson]

I haven't said people are suggesting playing tippy tappy football I don't think. It wasn't meant to come over that way. People are suggesting (maybe not you) that we play a more passing based game - which doesn't mean Swansea type football either - and I'm saying I think that would be disastrous for us. It's an opinion which I've tried to justify, doesn't mean I'm right.

If you are saying you think we should go back to how we were playing earlier this season then I don't see when we changed from that in our approach. What did happen is that we ran out of energy/form and therefore lost some confidence. If NM-L and Zohore were playing as they were at the start of the season then we'd be fine, but they are not. Therefore we're trying to fit new players into the system and naturally there's some disjointedness at the moment. As others have said, our form is not too bad at present and a couple of strong results in there will be helping the team get a bit more confidence back in their abilities.

Bolton will be a good test of how well we're doing now as they seem to have hit a bit of form too recently. There are no easy games in this league but if we beat Bolton we're right back in the frame again and I'd hope would be able to push on again from there.

I don't think there has been a conscious decision to change our approach (why would there be when it was proving to be so successful?). What I'd say has happened is that the awful spells, which i first noticed against QPR, are getting longer and in December we went from the fifteen to twenty minutes spells we had been having to forty five minute ones (Norwich and, to an extent, Hull) and then on to ninety minute ones (Bolton and Preston).

I don't think we've had a ninety minute nightmare performance like those two I mentioned this year, so, hopefully, things are improving, but it's very rare now that we don't have spells in games where we play with such an obvious lack of control and they last a lot longer than they used to do earlier in the season.

That's the key word for me - "control". I don't think we are just a bunch of long ball hoofers, but we can look like one when we are in one of our nightmare spells. However, even then, it's not as if everything is whacked long - shorter passes start going astray as well. It's interesting, I've seen some teams beat our press by using short, quick passes to work their way clear from potentially dangerous positions into ones where they have got us in potential trouble instead (and I'm not just talking about Man City there), but we couldn't do that because, more often than not, we are not passing the ball well enough to make even attempting it worthwhile.

If it were me, I'd say let's play a few passes among the back four and deep midfield players for a while if it means we can regain a feeling that we can get the ball under control again and it stops becoming a hot potato.

I think Grujic was signed was signed as someone who could help bring some order and control into our game, but I believe he is finding Cardiff City a bit of a culture shock at the moment. The cynic in me asks whether Neil Warnock would have been interested in him if he had been the same type of player, but only foot nine instead of six foot three? My honest answer is yes I think he would have done, but that extra six inches of height made it a lot more likely that he would take him on.

Four of the five players we signed in January are six foot or over and the other one is the ultra combative Jamie Ward. The signal that sends to me is that Neil Warnock's solution to our game become more ragged and less effective over the last two or three months is to say "more of the same" - Leeds suggested he might be right in thinking that, but long stretches of the Millwall match didn't.

Tonight we are up against a team that have been playing a similar type of game to us, but with less success, it's an opportunity to show doubters like me that we can make it into the top six by playing as we have tried to all season - I'm confident we will do it if we can rediscover the sort of control which kept our horror spells to manageable levels, but I'd like to see some evidence that we can do that (at the moment, Leeds looks like too much of a one off to me).

[J R Hartley]

And Back on track

[dembethewarrior]

And Back on track

Cheers Matt.

[Tall Midget]

I'm going to say it again: does the cold weather suit Laing?

[dembethewarrior]

I'm going to say it again: does the cold weather suit Laing?

Probably not with his asthma.

[joecity]

Probably not with his asthma.

His change of medicine hasn't helped his end delivery any. I feel a bit for him. Hope comes through. Watching him roast John Terry was class because well its John Terry. An old John Terry but still John Terry.

[dembethewarrior]

His change of medicine hasn't helped his end delivery any. I feel a bit for him. Hope comes through. Watching him roast John Terry was class because well its John Terry. An old John Terry but still John Terry.

Mix of that and confidence it seems Joe