ItsBoris
Well-Known Member
- Jan 18, 2011
- 7,970
- 9,414
Had a bit of time to gather my thoughts on the Wigan game and just wondering if people see it the same way I do.
If that had happened under Harry, myself and many others would have crucified him. So to be fair and consistent, I have to say that I feel like AVB cost us the game yesterday, at least in part. There are a few reasons why but I think the ultimate point that we HAVE to learn as a club - players, coaches, executives, etc, is that the spoils go to those who are bold and brave. People who are cowardly and who play it safe rarely experience glory imo. It's funny that the motto of our club is 'Audere est Facere', while from top to bottom in our club, that saying is the antithesis to how we act.
Just quickly on the team selection yesterday - I thought if we had learned from the Man City game, then neither of Naughton or Parker would have started. Our midfield looked good against City after Parker went off, and BAE played well in the City game. Starting Parker felt like a 'safe' choice from AVB, and what I often see is that 'safe' choices are more risky than the 'risky' choices. Indeed many posters tell me it would be 'too big a risk' not to start Parker, which suggests that he is not starting because he merits it. The selection of Naughton inhibited us later in the game when we needed to bring Dempsey AND Parker off, but since we only had 1 sub left it had to be Parker. Lennon came on to give us another attacking player but we really also needed a third player in midfield to retain control of the game. Carroll or Sigurdsson would have been ideal, but we couldn't do it since we had to bring BAE on for Naughton. So those were AVB's problems yesterday and I think that had we played the right team from the start we could definitely have won.
AVB though I think is a fantastic manager and he isn't the problem with this team and club. The people running the club is the biggest issue imo. We had so many chances to take the bull by the horns and strengthen in the positions we needed to strengthen. Think about it, how many points would a top striker have been worth to us in these last few seasons? Probably at least the number of points we would have needed to make CL last season and this season. We had plenty of chances and never took them. If you want to get top players it always requires financial risk, either on players that are already top class, or younger players who aren't yet proven but who you are willing to take a chance with. Levy thinks he can buy quality players ready to come into the first team on the cheap, and that grenade blew up in his hand with Adebayor.
There's just so many issues that come to mind, I don't want to take a paragraph for each of them. But they bring in a promising young manager and then don't let him determine the transfer targets, they always leave our squad 2 or 3 players short of what it needs, they have weakened the team in successive January transfer windows and brought in stop-gap solutions which never paid off. It's so frustrating, even if say we had bought Moutinho and Leandro last summer, it would have been easily worth it because we definitely would have qualified for the Champions League, while now we look unlikely to do so. It can be seen as a risk, but like I said you only achieve success by taking chances. I think Levy has good intentions, I think he's done a good job in many ways but also a lot of our actions are indicative of great cowardice and excessive frugality, and you can never expect to win anything or succeed if that's how you are going to act.
If that had happened under Harry, myself and many others would have crucified him. So to be fair and consistent, I have to say that I feel like AVB cost us the game yesterday, at least in part. There are a few reasons why but I think the ultimate point that we HAVE to learn as a club - players, coaches, executives, etc, is that the spoils go to those who are bold and brave. People who are cowardly and who play it safe rarely experience glory imo. It's funny that the motto of our club is 'Audere est Facere', while from top to bottom in our club, that saying is the antithesis to how we act.
Just quickly on the team selection yesterday - I thought if we had learned from the Man City game, then neither of Naughton or Parker would have started. Our midfield looked good against City after Parker went off, and BAE played well in the City game. Starting Parker felt like a 'safe' choice from AVB, and what I often see is that 'safe' choices are more risky than the 'risky' choices. Indeed many posters tell me it would be 'too big a risk' not to start Parker, which suggests that he is not starting because he merits it. The selection of Naughton inhibited us later in the game when we needed to bring Dempsey AND Parker off, but since we only had 1 sub left it had to be Parker. Lennon came on to give us another attacking player but we really also needed a third player in midfield to retain control of the game. Carroll or Sigurdsson would have been ideal, but we couldn't do it since we had to bring BAE on for Naughton. So those were AVB's problems yesterday and I think that had we played the right team from the start we could definitely have won.
AVB though I think is a fantastic manager and he isn't the problem with this team and club. The people running the club is the biggest issue imo. We had so many chances to take the bull by the horns and strengthen in the positions we needed to strengthen. Think about it, how many points would a top striker have been worth to us in these last few seasons? Probably at least the number of points we would have needed to make CL last season and this season. We had plenty of chances and never took them. If you want to get top players it always requires financial risk, either on players that are already top class, or younger players who aren't yet proven but who you are willing to take a chance with. Levy thinks he can buy quality players ready to come into the first team on the cheap, and that grenade blew up in his hand with Adebayor.
There's just so many issues that come to mind, I don't want to take a paragraph for each of them. But they bring in a promising young manager and then don't let him determine the transfer targets, they always leave our squad 2 or 3 players short of what it needs, they have weakened the team in successive January transfer windows and brought in stop-gap solutions which never paid off. It's so frustrating, even if say we had bought Moutinho and Leandro last summer, it would have been easily worth it because we definitely would have qualified for the Champions League, while now we look unlikely to do so. It can be seen as a risk, but like I said you only achieve success by taking chances. I think Levy has good intentions, I think he's done a good job in many ways but also a lot of our actions are indicative of great cowardice and excessive frugality, and you can never expect to win anything or succeed if that's how you are going to act.
