billycopper
Player Valuation: £40m
It's very worrying. We're showing all the hallmarks of relegation fodder: no fight, poorly organised and we're struggling to score goals. Roberto took a lot of hammerings at Wigan and if City give us a good pasting it could put a lot of pressure on Kenwright to act.
I still think Martinez is the right man for the job but we can't afford to get sucked into a relegation battle. Three centrebacks made sense today so that we can afford to send Coleman and Baines forward without getting too exposed but Jags is just coming back from injury, Barry is out of position and is almost finished and Alcaraz has never looked comfortable. And then we're asking the inexperienced Besic to cover a lot of ground in midfield. A fully fit trio of Jags, Stones and Distin should handle it better. And McCarthy could handle being the anchor by himself.
We need to start keeping clean sheets and we need to start scrapping. Besic, Barry and McCarthy could potentially be our Dogs of War. If we start defending deeper it will give Lukaku the sort of space to run into that he enjoyed at West Brom and it should help to make Mirallas more effective too.
We've got the best squad that we've probably ever had and that's quite possibly made us over-confident. We've also had a lot of injuries. Important players from last season Barry and Distin now appear to be over the hill and this season's Player of the Year so far McCarthy has been a huge miss. We need to get back to basics and put an end to the losing streak. It doesn't matter if we park the bus against City. If we take a beating it will be very damaging for our confidence though.
I still think Martinez is the right man for the job but we can't afford to get sucked into a relegation battle. Three centrebacks made sense today so that we can afford to send Coleman and Baines forward without getting too exposed but Jags is just coming back from injury, Barry is out of position and is almost finished and Alcaraz has never looked comfortable. And then we're asking the inexperienced Besic to cover a lot of ground in midfield. A fully fit trio of Jags, Stones and Distin should handle it better. And McCarthy could handle being the anchor by himself.
We need to start keeping clean sheets and we need to start scrapping. Besic, Barry and McCarthy could potentially be our Dogs of War. If we start defending deeper it will give Lukaku the sort of space to run into that he enjoyed at West Brom and it should help to make Mirallas more effective too.
We've got the best squad that we've probably ever had and that's quite possibly made us over-confident. We've also had a lot of injuries. Important players from last season Barry and Distin now appear to be over the hill and this season's Player of the Year so far McCarthy has been a huge miss. We need to get back to basics and put an end to the losing streak. It doesn't matter if we park the bus against City. If we take a beating it will be very damaging for our confidence though.