Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
Agree with you entirely. In an ideal world, I'd like to see us having 50% plus possession every week, but it's not going to happen with this squad. There has been plenty of proof though in the last few years that you don't need to be dominating possession every game to win trophies, but there surely can't have been many teams that have won automatic promotion to the Premier League that valued possession less than us.

On that point, I'm glad to see one or two others on here sharing my complete bafflement at the tactic when we have possession about fifty yards from our opponent's goal of playing the ball back to Etheridge, whose kicking is the only aspect of his game that gets consistently criticised on here, who wellies it upfield and in nine cases out of ten puts the opposition back in possession with them having done little or nothing to win it back - if someone has an idea of what the thinking is behind this "tactic", I'd be fascinated to read it.

One other thing, I think you mean John Beck with Cambridge United, not John Still.
The big kick out is a throwback to the ‘big man, little man’ days. Very effective it was too in the Toshack/ Keegan (wouldn't say Toshack/Clark as Clarkie was no slouch in the air and couldn’t be regarded as the little man) era. Would be a great retro tactic if a team had a monster of a centre forward with a couple of speed merchants either side of him.
We certainly haven’t got a centre forward of that ilk so every kick out is nigh on a 90/10 in the defender’s favour. Is Warnock that dubious about our players ability to find a bit of space to enable them to receive a throw out? It annoys me immensely when Etheridge does that little ‘throw out’ dummy before the huge kick, surely we’ve got the players to mix it up a bit.