| Truly dire experience yesterday 09:10 - Apr 7 with 3079 views | A1079 |
I have been to alot of games this year, home and away - but more away. In a season that I have mostly enjoyed 3 away games stand out as being awful - Sunderland away, Huddersfield away and yesterday. At least Sunderland away you have to say Sunderland were good on that day but what we had yesterday were 2 very poor teams playing as if it was a meaningless end of season game with nothing riding on it. If our intention was to keep a clean sheet and just not losing then in that respect I guess we succeeded but my god, it was dire and painful to watch.
It would be difficult to pick out someone that played well as no one did. Not one of our players had a good game or even looked like having a good game. Even the players that you could once rely on barely broke sweat. Edozie when he came on seemed to be the only one prepared to put some effort in. Bazunu had a quiet uneventful day which given his recent record is something, but only because Rovers were as toothless as we were. 4 attempts in total on goal between the 2 sides - one of ours did actually hit the bar!
Playoffs is more or less certain but if we truly think we will get anything playing like that or recently then we may as well not bother. Teams that may not have the supposed quality that we have (though I am getting tired of us saying we have a good team on paper because they are not showing it at all) will fight and give their all and get around our boring, dull and insipid tippy tappy possession, going nowhere football.
I don't know what has gone wrong but we just look a team that has lost its way, no passion, no fight, no direction. Even Frazer looks a shadow of the person he was a little while ago. We were awful on the left and what is the point of crossing high and wide
out to the wings when we have a player is about 5ft tall? Smallbone when he came on was awful - his corners - not one got past the first man and one of his corners actually allowed Rovers to make a run towards our goal. Aribo tried but to little effect. Our midfield offered little anything as an inspiration and there was no creativity or imagination. No one seemed to want to have a go..
There was a thread earlier in the week of people being tired of football and Saints and yesterday I felt that. I am tired of us as a team be it under this manager or previous ones losing their way and being unable to motivate and create a team that fights to the end. I can cope with losing if we have tried but where was the effort yesterday?
A day wasted to be honest. The trip to the ground was good and the locals appeared friendly. I was tempted to boo at the end - I didn't, but I didn't wait around to clap when the team gave nothing deserved nothing back in my view. |  | | |  |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 09:19 - Apr 7 with 3028 views | dirk_doone |
Lots of teams are tired of being stuck in the Championship but don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Blackburn are just one of many. Stoke and Swansea have equally disillusioned players and fans. It seems to have happened to our players after less than one season though! [Post edited 7 Apr 9:19]
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 09:19 - Apr 7 with 3027 views | PatfromPoole |
Smallbone gets worse every time I see him.
As with Edozie.
As with Sulemana.
As for Walker-Peters being taken off for Mara; quite the public shaming there.
It felt like an end of season game; atmosphere was non-existent. Being a Blackburn fan must be a miserable experience. |  |
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 09:21 - Apr 7 with 3017 views | dirk_doone |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 09:19 - Apr 7 by PatfromPoole |
Smallbone gets worse every time I see him.
As with Edozie.
As with Sulemana.
As for Walker-Peters being taken off for Mara; quite the public shaming there.
It felt like an end of season game; atmosphere was non-existent. Being a Blackburn fan must be a miserable experience. |
Smallbone is a waste of space, just there to make up the numbers. Opposition players just breeze past him like a training cone.
As for how dire it is to be a Blackburn fan, welcome to the Championship. They've been stuck in it for more than 10 years. At least, like most clubs of a similar size, they have their memories of winning trophies: League champions of England 3 times, FA Cup winners 6 times and a League Cup as recently as 2002. [Post edited 7 Apr 9:28]
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 09:35 - Apr 7 with 2956 views | grumpy |
Thanks for your view of the game and perspective of where we are now,A1079.
I think our problem is not so much on the field as off it.
Last season we had the players( I know some may disagree) to survive in the Premiership and now with the squad we have we should be doing much better.
The previous 2 managers were not up to the job and although Martin has us in the Playoffs most fans feel its unlikely to result in Promotion.
Vital positions in the jigsaw of a good team are missing,a good partner for Armstrong and a goalkeeper.
What most concerns me most is the lack of tactical knowledge and motivation, and that's down to the Manager and his team.
We just don't seem to have a settle team that's motivated.
Still we have a chance in the playoffs,we must go for it, because if we will lose, a lot of our best players will move on next season and I don't trust Martin to replace them. [Post edited 7 Apr 9:39]
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 10:04 - Apr 7 with 2891 views | 1ASIN12 |
Your 1st paragraph sums it up .
It was a meaningless and of season game . Be prepared for another 7 like that .
We are in a sticky situation as we have now 7 meaningless games then 2 very important ones and it’s going to be really difficult for us to get into form ready for those 2 play off games .
I think we have seen yesterday Martins back 4 for the remaining fixtures , unfortunately.
Still this season has in the main be enjoyable - next season in the championship probably won’t be as much . [Post edited 7 Apr 12:23]
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 10:37 - Apr 7 with 2818 views | Ron11 |
When they brought in Martin I thought it was a bad decision, and I see no reason to change my opinion now.
Most of those players now appear to be biding their time keeping injury free until they can move on.
Except Stephens and Bazunu of course, they'll be going nowhere. | | | |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 11:07 - Apr 7 with 2763 views | dirk_doone |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 10:37 - Apr 7 by Ron11 |
When they brought in Martin I thought it was a bad decision, and I see no reason to change my opinion now.
Most of those players now appear to be biding their time keeping injury free until they can move on.
Except Stephens and Bazunu of course, they'll be going nowhere. |
In this game of stick or twist, sh!t goalkeepers stick at Southampton. Who else would take them? How many millions have been wasted on McCarthy and Bazunu over the years? McCarthy was our highest paid player going into this season, raking in millions every year; Bazunu cost us a fee of £12 million plus his wages.
In 2020, I said on here that we should get Lukas Hradecky, an experienced Finnish goalkeeper. He'd have cost a lot less than Bazunu and would have been happy with half of what we pay to McCarthy, and, at that time, a move to a Premier League club would have been very appealing to him. That ship has well and truly passed. But, there are still experienced international goalkeepers out there. We really need to get one of them. | |
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 11:10 - Apr 7 with 2757 views | TimSaint |
Goals change games.
If A Arm had put that easy chance away in the first 10 mins, or Aribo had scored from that header instead of hitting the bar, it would have been a totally different game.
How ironic that the Division's top 2 strikers both drew blanks.
Martin said we needed to win all of our last 8 games, but did very little to achieve this yesterday. Instead, after the game, he focused on talking about the clean sheet.
Maybe we missed S Arm, the the creative driving force ?
Either way, things have to improve come Tuesday night. |  |
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 11:18 - Apr 7 with 2740 views | dirk_doone |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 11:10 - Apr 7 by TimSaint |
Goals change games.
If A Arm had put that easy chance away in the first 10 mins, or Aribo had scored from that header instead of hitting the bar, it would have been a totally different game.
How ironic that the Division's top 2 strikers both drew blanks.
Martin said we needed to win all of our last 8 games, but did very little to achieve this yesterday. Instead, after the game, he focused on talking about the clean sheet.
Maybe we missed S Arm, the the creative driving force ?
Either way, things have to improve come Tuesday night. |
The tactics need to change. At the moment our players think that their main objective is to keep possesion of the ball rather than to score goals, which means that, more often than not, when a chance appears, they pass the ball sideways rather than shoot. Even our defenders think that passing the ball sideways at the back is preferable to getting the ball into the opposition's half.
Maybe they know they will get assessed on their passing stats after the game. X number of passes completed = job done. That's why Martin says Bazunu is so good- his passing stats look good. Even if some of those passes lead to opposition goals it's OK, because the passing stats are the important thing, not the goals. [Post edited 7 Apr 11:43]
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 11:42 - Apr 7 with 2688 views | grumpy |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 11:18 - Apr 7 by dirk_doone |
The tactics need to change. At the moment our players think that their main objective is to keep possesion of the ball rather than to score goals, which means that, more often than not, when a chance appears, they pass the ball sideways rather than shoot. Even our defenders think that passing the ball sideways at the back is preferable to getting the ball into the opposition's half.
Maybe they know they will get assessed on their passing stats after the game. X number of passes completed = job done. That's why Martin says Bazunu is so good- his passing stats look good. Even if some of those passes lead to opposition goals it's OK, because the passing stats are the important thing, not the goals. [Post edited 7 Apr 11:43]
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It’s easy to pass sideways and backwards, less chance of losing possession. That in itself doesn’t win games. | | | |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 11:54 - Apr 7 with 2651 views | dirk_doone |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 11:42 - Apr 7 by grumpy |
It’s easy to pass sideways and backwards, less chance of losing possession. That in itself doesn’t win games. |
I remember when it was first rumoured that Martin was coming here, those in favour (a small minority) raved about a record-breaking 56 pass move when Martin was manager of MK Dons (it's featured prominently in his wiki and any other online biography).
What they neglect to mention is that MK Dons were in the middle of a 5-match winless run and lost that game to Gillingham or that, in a season when their "passing stats rivalled Man City's," MK Dons finished 13th in League One. [Post edited 7 Apr 12:03]
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 12:12 - Apr 7 with 2602 views | darthvader |
No Stuey ...no party simples |  |
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 12:54 - Apr 7 with 2524 views | ericofarabia |
Great post A1079
Exactly how I saw things. I actually felt it was the worst game I've seen all season. Blackburn were poor and we could only muster a couple of half chances and no proper shots on goal. Sorely missed Stuey. Nobody else was prepared to run forwards with the ball. All the passes to the wide players went straight to feet and facing towards our own goal, not into space in front of them to drive forward in attack, or as you said sailing over wee mans head into touch.
Did KWP have instructions not to go beyond the halfway line till the last few minutes?
Shoe horning Capt Jack in is completely disrupting our game. He is not a LB or CM and having Rothwell and Aribo covering LB whilst Jack was in CM was madness.
Downes and THB looked disinterested and guilty of many mis hit short passes in our half.
Saw quite a bit of shoulder shrugging ang bickrring between the players as well.
The fans were also pretty much resigned to not putting any effort in, and with having nothing at all to get excited about who could blame them.
Finally wtaf was the free kick about in the last few minutes? One last chance, everybody lined up along the edge of the box waiting for a cross to be swung in and we get a short pass sideways and lose possession  . Also as mentioned Smallbones corners were pathetic. |  | | |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 13:29 - Apr 7 with 2476 views | A1079 |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 12:54 - Apr 7 by ericofarabia |
Great post A1079
Exactly how I saw things. I actually felt it was the worst game I've seen all season. Blackburn were poor and we could only muster a couple of half chances and no proper shots on goal. Sorely missed Stuey. Nobody else was prepared to run forwards with the ball. All the passes to the wide players went straight to feet and facing towards our own goal, not into space in front of them to drive forward in attack, or as you said sailing over wee mans head into touch.
Did KWP have instructions not to go beyond the halfway line till the last few minutes?
Shoe horning Capt Jack in is completely disrupting our game. He is not a LB or CM and having Rothwell and Aribo covering LB whilst Jack was in CM was madness.
Downes and THB looked disinterested and guilty of many mis hit short passes in our half.
Saw quite a bit of shoulder shrugging ang bickrring between the players as well.
The fans were also pretty much resigned to not putting any effort in, and with having nothing at all to get excited about who could blame them.
Finally wtaf was the free kick about in the last few minutes? One last chance, everybody lined up along the edge of the box waiting for a cross to be swung in and we get a short pass sideways and lose possession . Also as mentioned Smallbones corners were pathetic. |
Thank you ericofarabia.
That final free kick summed us up. The final whistle was not far away and we get a free kick not that far out of the box and instead of launching it into the box we do a sideways move which gets closed down and we invariably give it away.
I don't know what KWP's role was yesterday. He was all over the place but not in his usual position. He looked p*ssed off and I would suggest our manager has done just that. RM has probably sealed his fate to leave our club.
Rothwell. He is no longer a footballer. He cannot play - he is overweight, unfit and cannot run. What he can do is strike a ball and for that he is (as has been proven) as a last resort can score a vital goal. If you must start with him plonk him front in the hope a ball might come to him that he can strike but does not involve much running. | | | |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 13:42 - Apr 7 with 2453 views | Ifonly |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 11:54 - Apr 7 by dirk_doone |
I remember when it was first rumoured that Martin was coming here, those in favour (a small minority) raved about a record-breaking 56 pass move when Martin was manager of MK Dons (it's featured prominently in his wiki and any other online biography).
What they neglect to mention is that MK Dons were in the middle of a 5-match winless run and lost that game to Gillingham or that, in a season when their "passing stats rivalled Man City's," MK Dons finished 13th in League One. [Post edited 7 Apr 12:03]
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Scoring after 56 passes is a bad thing not a good thing. The more passes you have, the more likely you will lose the ball and that the defence will be well organised against you.
If having 50 passes made it more likely to score, then all goals would be scored after 50 passes and this wouldn't be such a rare occurrence. But this isn't the case. Most goals are scored with 1 to 5 passes.
Obviously you don't want your keeper to take a shot, you want to work yourselves into a decent position before having an attempt, but the longer you take to get in that position, the less likely you are to score. If your players aren't elite level, then you should take less time than elite players do because you're more likely to lose the ball and less able to create chances in the tight spaces that happen after long moves.
I have no idea why people think this is "good football". It's not. It might look pretty if you're in to that kind of thing, but it's not winning football. | | | |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 14:05 - Apr 7 with 2414 views | pjt50 |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 10:04 - Apr 7 by 1ASIN12 |
Your 1st paragraph sums it up .
It was a meaningless and of season game . Be prepared for another 7 like that .
We are in a sticky situation as we have now 7 meaningless games then 2 very important ones and it’s going to be really difficult for us to get into form ready for those 2 play off games .
I think we have seen yesterday Martins back 4 for the remaining fixtures , unfortunately.
Still this season has in the main be enjoyable - next season in the championship probably won’t be as much . [Post edited 7 Apr 12:23]
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I was reading an article the other day about pointers to who wins the Championship playoffs. Historically finishing position has a bearing: 3rd: 47%, 4th: 21%, 5th: 21%, 6th: 11%. A bigger pointer is form over the last 10 games of the regular season.
If that's the case we'd better rediscover our form soon. Yesterday it just looked like we were going through the motions. | |
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 15:31 - Apr 7 with 2319 views | saint22 |
An astute post as always
I can’t believe we are here
RM has had so much time to correct these errors yet he is proving he is exactly what we all feared, bang average
The same poor decisions with mine up tactics subs etc
He also looks to pick his friends and has now seemingly pi55ed off our continually best player meaning KWP will be off no matter what
Clearly a stubborn egomaniac like our previous ones
We will coast now and be out of form when we play whomever | | | |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 15:59 - Apr 7 with 2281 views | 1885_SFC |
The problem with Russell Martin is that he's out of his depth somewhat & has a limted ability to manage or handle higher profile players. He managed at MK Dons and Swansea before us and, no disrespect to either of them, Saints are a bigger step up. I know that statement has a touch of arrogance to it, but it's true.
And while there's always the odd British manager who does manage to step up to much bigger things, they're few and far between really. The last Welsh flop was testament to that. It's also the reason why we sacked the legend that is Nigel Adkins.
Leicester, Leeds, even WBA and Norwich - all foreign managers. The only one that isn't is Kieran McKenna at Ipswich... and I'd have him and his style of play over RM any day of the week! |  |
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| Truly dire experience yesterday on 16:15 - Apr 7 with 2256 views | GRIM |
| Truly dire experience yesterday on 15:59 - Apr 7 by 1885_SFC |
The problem with Russell Martin is that he's out of his depth somewhat & has a limted ability to manage or handle higher profile players. He managed at MK Dons and Swansea before us and, no disrespect to either of them, Saints are a bigger step up. I know that statement has a touch of arrogance to it, but it's true.
And while there's always the odd British manager who does manage to step up to much bigger things, they're few and far between really. The last Welsh flop was testament to that. It's also the reason why we sacked the legend that is Nigel Adkins.
Leicester, Leeds, even WBA and Norwich - all foreign managers. The only one that isn't is Kieran McKenna at Ipswich... and I'd have him and his style of play over RM any day of the week! |
You're right RM cannot manage this bunch of ex Premier lge prima Donna's.
I remember the late great Alan Ball telling me that he found it impossible to manage players with bigger ego's & bigger salaries than he had.
If he struggled with it RM has no chance. | | | |
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