2020/21 Carlo Ancelotti

[Street end man]

You are on a hiding to nothing doubting anything what a manager with God like status does, the maulings I've already seen dished out for doing so prove it. All will come good after January as we know so let us just say nothing about these turgid displays of late against teams we should be murdering given the squad we have.

I will be brave though and ask the question why we aren't setting up with a conventional back 4 with players playing in positions they know and are comfortable with ?

We have both a right and left back on the books, who we kept on as cover for when these times arise.
OK Kenny is not everyone's favourite but he knows his job in his position, as does Neils, why not play them? Surely it's better than picking names out of a hat as to where they play as it usually means a disjointed, unorganised, and suspect defence as we witnessed yesterday.

My betting is if Carlo went for a rest for a month and Duncan took over a 433 featuring players in their recognised positions would take place. Godfrey came in for abuse yesterday, maybe rightly so but the poor lad was lost in that set up. What if yesterday had have been a game against city of that shower across the park? I dread to think of the outcome.

 

[riddick]

You can all say he's inherited "an imbalanced side" and "half the squad is crap" but there is one thing he absolutely can and should have worked on in his time here and that is fitness. We are SHOCKING in that regards. We are constantly spent on 60minutes. At the very least this is something that could easily have been addressed by Carlo but it doesn't look any better now than it did in the beginning of the year.

 

[roy vernon]

do we? lol Delph has been injured as has tosun so nope we don’t

Tosun has been both on the pitch and on the bench far too often this season, Carlo has been at the club long enough to know Tosun is woeful. Delph before and since his injury has been poor and disruptive. The fact that they have both been unavailable does not change the fact that they are both selected when fit and are not good enough and unlikely to improve.

I know you don't think criticism of Carlo is allowed, but, he is making lots of strange decisions lately and is liable to criticism when he does. That does not mean that people want him sacked, just that they are unhappy with some of his decisions.

 

[roy vernon]

Ancelotti has been the first manager to give Sigurdsson a regular seat on the bench. Tosun hasn't started 1 match under Ancelotti. Delph has started 1 league game this season.

Maybe we just don't have any squad depth and there are no attractive options when we get a couple of injuries?

People go on about how its as simple as benching Sigurdsson (which i agree with), but the evidence shows its not. The alternative options are just as poor!

The players. It doesn't take a genius to work it out. You'd have to be an utter moron to not see it at this point. Manager after manager sacked while a core of players stay around. We have recruited terribly and brought in garbage. Combine that with being trigger happy with managers so we're in a continual state of rebuilding and how could we ever be anything else other then garbage.

How do we know if Gordon, Nkounkou or Simms ate good enough, they can't get a run in the team.

 

[roy vernon]

How do we know if Gordon, Nkounkou or Simms ate good enough, they can't get a run in the team.

Didn't mean to quote GS lad. Senior moment.

 

[degsy]

completely agree that we have problems, we’ve had problems for years. Now we can either have a manager incapable of solving those problems (Koeman, Silva) or one who works through them and comes out the other side. We’ll have to see which one Ancelotti is, but I’m not sure why there’s an expectation that we wouldn’t have problems at all, as though if we did lose the performance would have been amazing anyway, that we’d find a consistency in a way of playing when we’ve had multiple managerial chances and player changes over the last few seasons.

We’ve seen very good football this season under Ancelotti, we’ve seen some very bad football also. That’s inconsistency and is to be worked through, but after each bad performance we have the same shouts of ‘he doesn’t have a plan’ ‘Leeds and Southampton have a way of playing etc.’ This is the same Leeds who got battered 4-0 by Palace? Where was the way of playing then? The same Palace we turned over on their own patch? If all these other teams have a way of playing and we don’t why do they ever lose a game? It’s because we don’t notice when they’re losing at home on MOTD to some other mid table team and look completely clueless, we only see them when they’re beating us.

Some fair points there.
But...
Just how much 'very good football' have we actually seen.
1st game Vs Spurs we saw disciplined football Vs a poorish slow start team.
Weren't we 1-2 down Vs WBrom
Penalties
VAR got us out of jail - twice?
Just sayin like

 

[Jimishorts]

Choosing the team for Burnley

 

[ForeverBlue92]

Brands and Moshiri need to take massive slack for this as well.

I said in the summer our business wasn't done and got slated for it.

Needed another forward
Needed a RB
cover at LB
another CM
A top class GK.

Last summer was the one we needed to have broken FFP and let Usmanov worry about it later.

We brought in 2 good players, 1 decent but out of position one and 1 garbage one for the same fee we turned down for a half decent CB who we had sorted a deal for as early as February.

Brands needs to go and go now.

 

[lungo]

Sack him, get Fat Sam in with Moyes has DoF

It’s what we deserve (and some of you want)

Somebody a lot better then Brands as DOF would be a nice start. The guy hasnt got a clue. That team needs power and speed and he goes and buys Bernard, Iwobi,Delph,Godfrey, Mina Doucoure .... How idiotic can you be?

 

[Gilbert..]

You can all say he's inherited "an imbalanced side" and "half the squad is crap" but there is one thing he absolutely can and should have worked on in his time here and that is fitness. We are SHOCKING in that regards. We are constantly spent on 60minutes. At the very least this is something that could easily have been addressed by Carlo but it doesn't look any better now than it did in the beginning of the year.

Though interestingly fitness was not raised once on here when we won 7 games on the bounce.

 

[ForeverBlue92]

Though interestingly fitness was not raised once on here when we won 7 games on the bounce.

I wouldnt say fitness is a massive issue - more so we have a load of slow, immobile cowardly players with suspect mentality who crumble under any sort of pressure.

Thats down to the recruitment and falls on Brands.

 

[degsy]

You can all say he's inherited "an imbalanced side" and "half the squad is crap" but there is one thing he absolutely can and should have worked on in his time here and that is fitness. We are SHOCKING in that regards. We are constantly spent on 60minutes. At the very least this is something that could easily have been addressed by Carlo but it doesn't look any better now than it did in the beginning of the year.

Carlo doesn't do 'up the sandhills' fitness
There are tales of both Bayern and Napoli players giving themselves extra training...I reckon half a dozen of the usual suspects are getting it organised as I type.
We have a marketing director...and the marketing is shight
We have a football director...and the football is shight
We have a fitness coach and assorted gurus...and the fitness is shight
We nave a specialist 'getting the new ground built' guy...and etc etc
We have specialist left and right back who cant get on the bench

 

[LouReedwalkonthewildside]

Though interestingly fitness was not raised once on here when we won 7 games on the bounce.

The thing in those games IMO we were on the front foot and the chances we created we took. Since that Southampton game we've been run ragged in some games and had to chase games, work harder, that's what has questioned our fitness levels. if you look at the Fulham game, first half we're comfortable, on the front foot, knocking the ball around, 2nd half Fulham start pressing, we have to chase the ball more, 70 mins in we look knackered. The Man U game, they had to play away in the champs league on the Wednesday, then had that 12.30 kick - off against us on the Saturday, yet after all that they looked way fitter than us.

 

[BlueStevie35]

Carlo doesn't do 'up the sandhills' fitness
There are tales of both Bayern and Napoli players giving themselves extra training...I reckon half a dozen of the usual suspects are getting it organised as I type.
We have a marketing director...and the marketing is shight
We have a football director...and the football is shight
We have a fitness coach and assorted gurus...and the fitness is shight
We nave a specialist 'getting the new ground built' guy...and etc etc
We have specialist left and right back who cant get on the bench

One’s 17, the other is awful

 

[BlueToff]

One’s 17, the other is awful

Nkounkou isn't 17.

Kenny has played one PL game this season and was just okay.

Both of them are better options than Davies or Iwobi in the positions they played yesterday.

If we wanted to keep Iwobi at RWB after a promising game v Fulham, that's fine, but keep him there, and put our actual only back-up left-back in at LWB.

If Carlo wasn't happy with our back-up options, then he should have told Brands he wanted other options.

There's no defending what he did yesterday. It was crap. I don't care what he's won or what he's done. It was a crap decision and lately he's making a lot of them.