Why though? Like seriously I know everyone keeps saying it but look at those teams. Fulham were on a long unbeaten run and had already made life difficult for Chelsea and then beat Liverpool. Burnley didn’t even lose at Anfield last season and won there this season. These are not rubbish sides or even particularly easy ones to break down.
I’ve just explained that we effectively have two attacking options given the players we have. James wasn’t fit so that reduces it even further. I don’t know why people have these visions that it’s fine that Gomes can barely direct a 5 yard pass properly, and that he won’t tackle, or that Coleman and Holgate can’t cross a ball, or that Davies and Siggurdson can’t seem to run faster than Zlatan jogs these days. People accept all that, but still seem to think these same players will waltz up against premier league opposition and just somehow ‘have enough’ to beat these teams.
We clearly do not have enough. I don’t know how many more times it needs to be proven. I don’t see many premier league teams who have right backs who can’t play football. I don’t see many premier league teams who have midfields that can be dominated by Rotherham at home. I don’t see many premier league teams with midfielders who are ran past more than our midfielders. The harsh truth is that if you take James Docuoure and Allan out this team it’s completely awful and is the bottom half outfit it was last season.
We have no right to win football games in this league. We win them at the moment because we have a world class manager who fortunately recognises what a pile of rubbish he’s working with, we have decent defensive players good at set pieces, and we have two world class strikers supplied by one of the best 10s in the world (when he’s fit).
Now there’s one school of though that says it’s the coaching and there’s another that says it’s the players and this is causing the divide. But if you ask me where I’d put my money between Ancelotti (who has coached DCL, Keane, Godfrey, Holgate, Pickford, Docuoure into their top form) on one side or Gomes Davies Siggurdson Bernard Iwobi on the other I know where I’m putting it.
Those players are terrible, especially the first three who in my opinion are the worst midfielders in the league by an absolute country mile. I think all three would struggle on a Sunday league pitch. It’s been hidden in the past because they’ve always had a Barkley, Gueye, McCarthy around to patch up the holes, but those three were decent, the same way Docuoure is now. As soon as they’re not there or playing badly and we’re looking at someone else to step up then we’re looking at the wrong players. Some fans think there’s a higher level performance in them that Carlo isn’t getting out of them, I think he’s getting as much as he can out of them and they’re still utterly diabolical. They got bossed by Rotherham.
Mate, we're going for 'Europe' (of some description). There is no way on God's green earth we can take 4 points from those 18 on offer and say it's ALL on the players. Carlo has done some daft things, his subs have been crap, and the tactics worse.
I love the fella to bits, I'm still amazed he's our manager. But he's got the team this far and while that shows how good he is, you can't then say the players are totally not to get any credit for that, but all the blame when we keep messing up.
We don't just have two attacking options. We do have more, we showed with the goal the other day, but these patterns of play have to be worked on.
These are Premier League players. They are capable of doing certain things quite well, as we've seen in games when there's been a specific plan. This seems to be the issue. If you give these lads a plan, they'll stick to it. So let's start coming up with some attacking plans, other than give it to James or revert to Digne lobbing crosses in against grock CBs.
Any other manager would get questioned, and has done. So Carlo gets the same questions in my book. We can't have it both ways. We should be beating these teams - not by some right to, but because we are better than them even with some of the dross we have.
We've been blaming 'the players' now for 5 years - over about 4 different squads (the only players here in 2016 when Martinez left that are here now are Coleman, Davies and Holgate).
We're a moments team. That's fine. We don't need to dominate games (we can't do it). We do, however, need to create more 'moments' if we're going to keep playing this way, though.
I'm hoping it'll come. I really am. I have confidence Carlo can do it. But it's not blind faith anymore, not with anyone. We need to start seeing something resembling a sustainable structure or model to just pieces of our attacking play over the rest of the season. And that, unfortunately, isn't going to be relying on James, as much as I'd love to be able to.
