Maybe not quite full stretch, I do see a degree or two bend at the knee.
The teflon man just can’t be criticised, I get it.
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Oh no, really? Please won’t you tell us more about how unprofessional this team was compared to those in the age of Ruddock, Dicks, Redknapp and the rest of those bastions of professionalism.
I think the realty is both Grav and Szobo were in the shit with not much else either could have done, at least if we focus only on the keeping possession bit and ignore how weak Grav was in his attempt to win it back. The ball was absolutely fired at Dom with players right on top of him, but there wasn’t much else Grav could have done either short of throwing himself on the ground and hoping the ref bailed him out with a freekick.
For me I look at that sequence where we’re not exactly set up to play it out and try to anyway and quite predictably come unstuck. At best it was a low percentage idea
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I think the argument is a bit too fine tuned and entrenched.
Let’s look at it more generally. We were chasing a late winner, the play got stretched, we were caught out with not enough back in defence, and not enough people busting a gut to get back. Chiesa kept going and he blocked it.
Another day it would have been a loss and even more despair on here.
It is a growth area for this team to keep a better shape and stay more compact. For the optimists, four points and one goal conceded in the last two games is a step in the right direction. For the pessimists (maybe realists) if you widen the lens to the last ten games, it is completely unacceptable.
Let’s not kill each other though!
I’m more concerned with the attempted tackle than the pass. The pass is just part of a larger pattern of him being crap with the ball.
I’ve just watched the incident again - Grav actually drops the shoulder and moves away from the forward instead of attempting to get goalside. Comical actually.
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Yeah, it wasn’t comical, it was infuriating. It didn’t register immediately in real time, I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing for a second or two. Although, singling out this player and that player is pointless. You’ll find faults for all of them.
There are massive issues with the coaching, and they have to be addressed before we start looking at individuals. Slot and his staff are making everyone look bad, themselves included.
Ha. I did not pick up on that in real time.
He should have continued with the bit and kept dribbling towards their goal, shimmying past all the imaginary defenders before beating the keeper with an imaginary shot from 20 yards 
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I think the moaning is getting to the point where it’s borderline boring.
Like I can look at a match and find you several stills and clips that look terrible and yet have zero influence on a result.
It’s clear there seems little urgency at time and then panic at others. Certain players deserve a lot of criticism for their performances this season.
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I think xG is a useful tool, but not so much if you take just one or two games and look at those. Because there are so many anomalies and it only shows what it shows. Since it is statistics, it is only ever able to give you good data if you have a larger sample and repeat the process several times. So single games and xG isn’t that useful to assess much really. Not with any sort of certainty anyway.
Yeah it’s not perfect but it’s not horrendous.
I think the issue for me isn’t the criticism of Gravenberch but more the idea that these things are the fault of one person, irrespective of who the finger is being pointed at.
As with most “errors” it’s often the compounding of multiple smaller errors that’s the real issue. Say that chance results in a goal, you’d expect Alisson to get a lot of the blame. But before he is forced into making a save there’s the mistake of no on closing the attacker down with any degree of urgency. Before that it’s a fairly weak tackle attempt by Gravenberch which comes from Szobo’s pass being overhit. He over hits that in part because Gravenberch’s pass is slightly off but Gravenberch has two men on him, Szobo is his only option for a pass and we absolutely cannot lose the ball there because we can no longer defend with any authority.
I haven’t even looked back to see who/how/why Gravenberch receives the ball where he does but he does do what he got so much praise for last year which is turn his man and break that initial press. He’s trying to do the right thing, as I’m sure they all are but everyone’s confidence is shot and it’s these little errors that creep in because of that which then compound into bigger errors.
I get the argument some are making about us taking it easy towards the end of last season but we still went into the summer as champions and full of confidence. What’s happening now isn’t because of over celebrating six months ago. It’s a lack of confidence in what we’re doing and it shows up time and time again in the endless series of mistakes every player is making now.
I don’t think you can really point the finger at any one player when in that one sequence alone almost half the team could have done better and any one of them does their bit as well as you know they can we’re probably not even talking about this.
Are you taking the piss? You are still waffling the same bullshit years later..
Yes we are two pts off 4th..thats only off the back of some pretty lucky results in the 1st 5 games where we got 15/15 though 10/15 would have been closer to what those preformances deserved and I’m even being generous there..
7pts from the last 9 league games.. Four 3 goal losses in the last 8 games.
Slow and tepid attacking football which let’s be honest had started to take hold from about February last season when we seemed to have transformed fully from klopp’s style to slot’s
Trying to put this preformance down as some sort of positive is a joke..
Slow and inept.. No creativity.. No responce after going 1-0 down… The only time we showed and urgency was after we scored and this had fuck all to do with slots tactics and more to do with that onus of games change after a goal.. And then was no real coercion
Slot needs to be gone.. Should gave gone after the forest embarrassment, really should have been gone before that.. You can give him all the time in the world but he won’t turn this around.. We are playing worse football now than we did under bodgers and that face slapping owl.. We need to get someone in who has different ideas because slot is absolutely clueless in getting any sort of creativity out of the best attack in the prem lge..
We are painful to watch
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While I agreed with you post, you are not fair to him. Because he is right, many did write those complaints in the latter half of the season, due to how much we dropped off, so your accusation of revisionism is absolutely unfair. And fair one should always be, irrespective if one agrees or not.
To claim he is revisioning to fit his narrative, as someone who has spent a lot of years in college, I actually find that a bit ugly. It’s a serious accusation on integrity and not a word one should just throw out (imo).
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proffessionalism is a degree of the era, of course they were more proffesional than Neil fucking Ruddock like for like, but Neil Ruddock could get away with eating maccas for a pre game era becuase that was about where the sports science sat. but compared to the degree of waht was expected, yeah, im kinda on Jaffods side and said so at the time.
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its irrelevant though and i hope we can move on from whether it was as bad as the lads on the lash in 1982 or not
the overiding point being made was we were pretty poor for a stretch of last season, suggesting we werent, is actually revisionist, it was amazing to get the title win, i put the sketchiness in play down to pressure, but once secured and instead of working on it we got on the piss in Dubai (i think) and Slot was on stage DJing a set in Ibiza…during the season…it was definately discussed at the time… i said at best, hes making a rod for his back…
there was even a Meme about us vs Palace floating around about every player from both teams were still pissed to play a game…etc etc etc…
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Agreed definitely not a hospital pass!
I would say welcome to the forums and that you’ve joined at the best possible moment but something tells me this isn’t your first rodeo….sooo more of a welcome back!!
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An hospital pass is one where the player receives a ball and an opposition player in full flight at the same time, I also think that is the passes we should be brave in trying to play and Szob should have done better.
Gravs poor attempt at tackling does need criticizing, but not his initial pass
Not questioning there was talk around the drop off in performances. But were the discussions really around the team being unprofessional and not arsed? Did people really suggest they downed tools and went on the piss before we secured the title?
Because if that wasn’t the conversation before we won the title, and I remember talk of nerves and tiredness but not lack of professionalism, that means we’re talking about a period of four games. Four games in which we still drew against the team who finished second which doesn’t exactly point to a team that couldn’t be arsed.
I think it’s very easy to look back now and say that four game period when we perhaps, understandably, weren’t at full gas, is the cause of our current issues. However, the signs of us not being as effective or easier to play against emerged around March time, well before they let their hair down and with plenty of things still to play for.
Add in a couple massive doses of hyperbole and I think it’s more than a fair amount of reason to question what’s being said.
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My take is that the players did drop off, but that was also due to the high amount of games they had played, as Arne didn’t rotate much and it started to show even before we were beyond catching.
Yes, some suggested what you mention in the first paragraph. I am in fact pretty damn sure that the words “downed tools” and “not arsed” were used at least once or twice. Now, I am not willing to hunt down old comments, takes way too much time, but I do remember 3-4 people complaining about this several times. I am not sure Jaffod was one of them. I remember the discussions, not so much exactly who said what. I didn’t agree with them, agreeing instead with those who thought our “lack of effort” was more a natural consequence of having won and that there was no team pushing us to the brink that season. But I do remember the discussion, several times, even though I did not agree.
I have no problem with your main message, I actually in general agree with you. I just think that you should use a bit less mockery towards him and don’t insist that he is making shit up to suit his narrative. Because the latter I don’t think is true.
But sure, there is some hyperbole here (always is). But that swings all ways too.
Now, I have to log off to do work.
All the best and take care !
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