This manager doesn’t know any other way to play football, he consistently plays players out of position and treats players completely differently to one another. He has been here 22 months and for 21 and a half of those months he has drilled it into the players that defending is the only way to play, he has drilled it in to them NOT to have the football, the retrobell even has training days at a football club without a football, grinning from the touch line as young athletes are being physically sick ffs.
This is a manager who plays his favourites regardless of both fitness and form but uses those exact reasons as an excuse not to play other players. Surely any manager with anything about them tries different players in positions which have consistently failed? Not this one, oh except when we played Bournemouth off the park and he stood there watching as half the team were blowing out of their arse and decided to take our best player off and then watched on as Bournemouths 5 fresh players had free reign to bombard us and claw back a defeat with 3 quick goals and he just stood there and didn’t make a single substitution (he still had 3 he could make at FT ffs!) to help visibly physically exhausted players. So because of his awful game management, he doubles down on safety first dross and gets his favourites who do well in his bleep test back in the team.
He offers absolutely nothing anymore if his team concede goals for fun, 12 goals scored from open play in 32 matches is absolutely disgusting, the sort of stat San Marino and Andorra would be embarrassed about and yet he’s still here, lying, denying the team he sets up is failing because of him, absolving himself of any blame, blaming problems that existed nearly 2 years ago yet not acknowledging he has no idea how to fix them other than throwing the players under the bus and aiming for Tarkowski at the back post from set pieces.
Here we have a manager, the 6th highest paid in the entirety of English football, after nearly 2 years of his coaching methods taking off attacking players when a goal down at home when his whole gameplan was to not have the ball against the 1970 Braz… no wait, Fulham, so he could reveal his tactical masterplan to put his CB up front in a professional game of football in 2024. Blow smoke up this fella’s hoop as much as you want but the facts are he’s got a worse points return than both Benitez and Lampard after 13 games this season, we went 13 games without winning under him (the worst winless run in our near 150 year existence) and have gone backwards this season (after achieving 48 points last season) because he doesn’t have anything else in his locker to improve himself or anyone else.
Yeah, but the players…