ruggles1995

thinking about the shortness of cm, could pickering fill in if needed? square peg in round hole and all that? 🤷‍♂️

with Bradji now likely to not feature till probably December, and forshaw being injured, we really are short at cm. The international breaks have probably helped us a little in terms of keeping our cm duo of hinckman and tronstad fresh ish. Tavares needs to pull his finger out and adapt, or the start of saturday\tuesday matches are going to take its toll on a thin\lack of quality squad. We are already struggling with practically a full squad to select from let alone add more injuries to a couple that can actually do a job at this level. Take cantwell and either tronstad or hinckman out, then we really are bottom of the barrel team.

Lets hope ranges go for lampard before this fixture... If i had to pick a team: Toth Alebiousu mcloughlin wharton Hedges Miroshita tron hinckman De neve cantwell Gueye Play percentages and for 2nd balls. Make it ugly. I dont like any of our strikers, but we lack any height in midfield or up top. Or put 2 strikers up there and go 352 and give it a go. Does feel like we have a back 3 capable and we do have wingbacks. toth Miller Mcloughlin wharton alebiousu tron hinckman de neve cantwell yuki Andri

I’m putting myself in the category who thought that was not good enough yesterday . What I watched was massively worrying. Until de neve came on it was massively worrying. A team that did not look championship level. Apart from cantwell there really is an alarming lack of quality. The turnover of the football is embarrassing, it’s not about possession but it’s about what you do with the ball what the game plan is, you can have possession football, you can have non possession football and you can play both those ways on purpose, but we can’t make 3 passes together most the time. Goal kicks are practically giving the opposition the ball back, I must of counted way too many times a goal kick gives the ball back to the opposition whether it’s a long goal kick or whether it’s short goal kick where toth chips a hospital ball to alebiousu. Apart from de neve who came on and morishita, nobody seems to have any technical ability to actually cross a football. It’s very easy to just pass through us because our pressing is abysmal. The long throws we try time and time and time again. We’ve had 1 long throw that’s worked this season which was in this game and that’s only because nobody won the header, how about mixing it up. We can’t take set pieces, and if the ball does go in the box nobody can win a header. We look worrying defending set pieces, and our goalkeeper doesn’t come off his line. the only time we looked a threat before de neve came on is if stoke gave us the opportunity to. We had no cm as backup on the bench yesterday. The lack of technical ability in our side and lack of depth is so bad I really worry. If it wasn’t for cantwell having some bit of magic we don’t score yesterday. it’s hard to tell whether Andri up front is good or bad, the lack of anyone able to get near him because we’re so deep in defending because we aren’t good enough to press in a good shape or because we’re all running around hard chasing shadows because we keep giving the ball away that when he does get any action he’s feeding off scraps because we don’t create a thing and that he’s spent 40 minutes doing doggy’s chasing shadows he’s probably tired. Or he’s just not good enough I don’t know. But apart from morishitas cross all he did was just run to the left cb or right cb or chase down a hopeless pass/punt forward to him. I watched yesterday thinking, we can’t cross a ball, we can’t take set pieces, we can’t make enough patterns of play where we make 3 + passes together, keep turning over possession we are constantly chasing the ball. We won’t seem to have any really individual quality apart from maybe 2 players. Stoke for example could have been rubbish but you know cresswell or thomas might just put in a decent set piece that will decide the game. Or have that moment of quality. I just think when you struggle to be able to do the basics and keeping being sloppy with the ball you aren’t going to go very far. I mean it was a lot better when de neve came on but when balls are falling to players like tronstad on the 18 yard line you already know for all that hard effort we won’t score unless it falls to maybe 1 or 2. You know the long throw pressure will probably turn into an opposition attack. You know if we get into a crossing position the ball probably won’t be a first man or the cross will turn into an opposition attack because of the lack of quality. for me the only positive from that game is that it’s opened up a door for a partnership of de neve and hedges, they worked very well together. Rather than just relying on alebiousu to gallop down one side and pitching wedge a cross in, we can maybe now have something down the left wing a bit with a full back and a winger that are happy to get forward. But boy are we hoping baradji can actually Get fit and have something about him. Hickman and tronstad do ok cm but they are limited, you need a 3rd option. People can say draws a good result, to me it’s an alarming performance. A good last 25. That’s my opinion. Let’s hope it improves

everything points to a stoke win. But the championship has its way of producing the unexpected... here's praying.

score prediction: 1-1 if i could pick out of an available 11: assuming alebiosu is injured: Toth Miller Wharton McLoughin Ribeiro hickman tron miroshita Cantwell hedges Andri

Modern day football can be so over complicated. Thats gone down as one of the worst matches ive watched. So frustrating when somethings clearly not working they continue to carry on doing it. How many times did we create our own problems, trying to play out from the back and turning over possession. It was so predictable, every time we passed the ball the to our fullbacks it was so easily read you can see the charlton wingers already running to our fullbacks before toths passed them the ball. I do think when bringing on Andri he should of left Morishita on for a bit to give him a chance to link up with him, Morishita was having a poor game but sometimes when a player has ability they can produce it at any moment, and with Andri coming on you'd of thought a clever striker near him might of helped Morishitas game a bit. Bringin on kargbo to cross balls whos not the best technically just seemed a bit brain dead, chasing a goal probably should of left morishita and kargbo on rather than hedges, but because our teams so small thats probably why hedges stayed on over morishita at the time. Also I think we need to give up with these long throws, we literally only have wharton that may win a header, smallest team ever, and the 2 players any good at winning headers is the one taking it or the other Cb, who then have to sprint the length of the pitch back to defend. Very bad day all round, and its always going to happen. Massive week ahead, really need to get 3 points tuesday. Charlton put balls into the box when they could, and pressed us well because we were so predictable in how we did things. An easy basic game plan, unmarked first goal set the tone. Set pieces at both ends a real worry for us. Ruined a good drinking day that.

my predicted 11: toth alebiousu miller Wharton ribeiro tavares tron Ryo cantwell hedges Yuki bench - pickering / carter / taylor / monty / katgbo / gudjohnsen / goalie I dont see us getting anything better than a draw at the very best. I thought this against hull and we were superb. Still dont see a win. I do wonder if we may just prefer playing away than at home, as i think it might be less pressure for them away.

Michalski, i couldnt be assed to google the name.

I dont see us signing any of these free transfers, I dont see the club offering more than 10k a week, think it may upset a few if they decided to sign a dawson or bamford to be on double more than anyone else. I imagine they are saving money thinking they can get through to january with 2 strikers. Seems the cost cutting continues, a bare bones squad, do they not realise that injuries and suspensions happen in a 46 game season. Guess there thought pricess is: Toth/Mikelski(young kid) alebiousu/taylor miller/carter wharton/mcloughin ribeiro/pickering tron/forshaw/monty tavares/balaji cantwell/henriksen hedges/miroshita de neve/kargbo yuki/gudjohnsen/iygor with the following able to play in various: miller taylor miroshita henriksen I mean the numbers of players are there, but the quality to rely upon is not.. iygor not ready, mikleski(young keeper) not ready, forshaw, de neve not looking good enough, and tavares has not started well, and gudjohnsen is a unknown. When you take those 6 out potentially not good enough that leaves you 19, and a few injuries to some of those or suspensions could leave you with like 15/16 on matchday, but not the best of quality all round. And with the injury record some of our lot have its probably going to be like 15 players maybe solid enough to compete available. I imagine pears will be tried to be offloaded to somewhere like turkey to. Cost cutting at its finest. I do get a hunch that the cb free transfer links are a bit of a smoke screen to try and calm things down a bit. Lets hope some of the newbies hit the ground running after the international break, not ideal that half of them are away on international duty, yuki and gudjohnsen come back both injured, who you picking up top...

I’m going to keep the cantwell train going here. I thought he was the standout player today. Worked his nuts off with out the ball and seemed to be everywhere in my opinion. Proper skippers performance. Gets a lot of plaudits with the ball for his technical play, but without it he didn’t shy away with not putting a shift in. Keep it up skip

Pretty basics options I guess but fine. surprisingly the blues bar was rammed in the end tbf

Wow I’m in the blues bar, zero atmosphere in here. Can’t believe they’ve taken sky sports away. Sky news and itv on… great.

Good win Saturday with a good performance. I like the fact we are now linked with more than 1 player. We’re about 2/3 players of quality short to have a potential playoff sniffing squad I think. Can’t say I know anything about the players we are lined with. But the good sign is hopefully they want more than 1 more signing. Need the depth

A very random post from me here. Just going to post a very old article https://www.theguardian.com/sport/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2010/dec/21/blackburn-rovers-venkys-jerome-anderson to me it reads they aren’t billionaires that we all think they are… ? Having used a bit of chat gpt as well it doesn’t exactly sound there’s any proof they are billionaires. Few statements in that article also stating there was no information about where they used the money to acquire us. I know it’s old news but thought I’d give it some old spotlight, especially when we are still linked to hiring people of similar agencies…