05 Dec 2021 22:43:37
Great win today, Super John is more important to us than Jack. Lots of positives, Nakamba has stepped up his game Jury is still out with Buendia, his passing just isn't good enough. Gerrard had definitely improved our defensive quality and its early days but I think things are moving in the right direction. Its obvious from the total lack if feedback from the contributers who criticised those of us who though Deano's time had run that they aren't prepared to accept that employing a new coach was maybe the right decision. Many of these absentees were extremely vocal its just a pity they are narrow minded not to share their current take on things.
06 Dec 2021 07:17:56
Or they just left the site because of narrow minded people slinging abuse without constructive comments (many of which also seem to be conveniently quiet might I add).
They could also just have other things to concentrate on.
We've got a few results under our belt but they are against teams that have been pretty poor lately and during our honeymoon period where players are fighting for places. We were regularly beating the same teams under Smith.
Once the team is settled after January transfers then we will see whether players are still consistently putting in those performances.
I've only really seen 2 changes.
Nakamba getting a run. Unsure why Smith kept dropping him as I always said from his first couple of matches that he could eventually go on to be very similar to Kante.
Second change is Mcginn and Luiz tracking the wide players rather than our forwards. This means better defenders are defending against better attackers.
I don't want to say Bruce is a good manager but ironically Smiths tenure ended in a similar fashion in a way. Bruce started throwing caution to the wind because fans didn't want his brand of football and it cost him his job. Smith started making changes that fans wanted and it inevitably cost him his job when it didn't work.
I also don't know if it was what Smith wanted but why did he get such a small support group while we let Gerrard bring an entire army with him?
06 Dec 2021 09:45:41
I agree with you rk far too early to say that we are fundamentally better under Gerrard than Smith, we still have some of the same issues, for example much as I like Cash he is great going forward he struggles defensively against players with real pace and on occasion needs cover from his wide man, and we also try to play out from the back far too often and I think one of the reasons we were better in the second half against both City and Leicester is we mixed it up a bit more occasionally going long from the back which makes it more difficult for the opposition to adopt the high press approach if they don’t know what approach you are going to take. In terms of Nakamba I admit I am one of those who feels he is not good enough not because of his defensive qualities but because his distribution has been bloody awful, however I have to say since Gerrard has taken over for some reason this side of his game appears to have improved early days for me in terms of changing my opinion but encouraging signs.
06 Dec 2021 10:14:33
Too many players were hiding at times forcing Nakamba to try passes that weren't on.
Nakamba isn't Kante, at least not yet but Kante won the Ballon D'or and he isn't particularly good in that department either. His job is to do what he does and let the other midfielders pick out the passes like Kante does with Jorginho.
Bissouma is a good technical player but he wouldn't do the defensive side half as well as Nakmba can. Nakamba just needed a run of games to get used to the pace and positioning which, credit to Gerrard, he's now getting.
06 Dec 2021 10:27:01
Ings and rkn, I believe there are 2 main reasons for the improvements.
1. SG’s support team are phenomenal and far better than DS had.
2. SG has the knack (along with his team) of analysing what is going wrong and quickly changing the tactics and making the necessary subs irrespective of age.
UTV
06 Dec 2021 11:11:08
Although I do agree that it’s to early to judge gerrard, it’s nonsense to say we only beat teams who were poor, Brighton were up around 7th in the league, had they even being beaten this season before we played them? Palace were on a 5 or 6 game unbeaten run, Leicester are a quality team which I think we only managed to beat twice in the last number of years, we didn’t beat Brighton last year either. we were playing dire football at the end of smiths reign, we lost against Chelsea but we played great and arguably should of being 3 or 4 up at half time (with better finishing) all the other defeats were horrid we played absolutely shocking and something had to change, 3 wins from 4 is a great start under gerrard, next match is a bit of a free hit but I wouldn’t be surprised if we got something from the game, at the moment I’m pretty happy how things are going but I’ll save judgment till the end of January or so, gerrard wasn’t my choice but it’s looking decent so far.
06 Dec 2021 11:38:03
rk when did Kante win the Ballon D’or?
06 Dec 2021 12:11:27
Thought he won it after France won the World Cup, could possibly be getting mixed up with PFA player of the year though.
Whack, I pointed out after the last game that Brighton were already on the slide before we played them and Palace drew most of those games so certainly neither were on top form.
Leicester have a good team but also have been poor for a number of weeks, especially defensively.
06 Dec 2021 13:53:08
Obviously that was when Modric won it. Still, Kante won a major individual award without being the best passer around.
06 Dec 2021 14:57:04
Palace beat city, Spurs and arsenal, I agree they ain’t world beaters week in week out but they were going pretty well, the teams we beat under gerrard were all ahead of us, 2 of them behind us now and we only a point behind Brighton after they had such a great start to the league, I’m not getting carried away but it’s a positive start so let’s see if we can keep it up.