WBA

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
If this doesn't convince those up top that Cooper is not up to it then nothing will. And by that I mean LEON, CURT and TREVOR BIRCH. They are equally culpable. We are a club in freefall and they are presiding over it and doing fcuk all about it. :mad: I'm going to shut up now because if I gave full vent to my feelings I'd have to ban myself. I'll just say, COOPER OUT!!!!!!!!!!!
 

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Oh, and by the way, that team of cloggers up the road, the ones we pour such scorn on, are now above us in the table. Merry fcuking Christmas. :sick:
 

KVetch

Key Player
Something is going to have to change well before transfer window. This can't go on much longer. I've seen the table too and that should be enough reason to get Cooper out. Brutal. I would be shocked if he wasn't gone after today.
 

Yankee_Jack

Key Player
Thank god that’s over.

A complete dearth of quality and commitment and grit when it mattered. Anybody can produce quality when there’s no risk or threat; we flatter with that shit and even then we are too loose and ultimately do something stupidly lame.

Cooper has no idea where to go from here. We are now in a battle to avoid relegation and maintain mid-table mediocrity. What a waste of a season.

we either play Ayew at #9 or we don’t play him at all.
Dyer added nothing and was a subtraction from Peterson, who for better or worse was willing to take defenders on and drive forward.

Our midfield ... Byers adds little, Grimes is a shadow of last year, and a Fulton can’t make every tackle himself.

Roberts has got to look in the mirror and ask himself where he’s going and what he wants to be ... another shadow of last season. He doesn’t seem to be physically at the same level of fitness ... that can be pinned on Cooped and his team, but Roberts can take charge of that himself.
 

CroJack

Key Player
I'm watching Danish Superliga now and I can tell you that top four clubs from Denmark would walk through the Championship this season. I am puzzled that we don't scout and buy players in Scandinavia. £500.000 is a huge money for many clubs here.
 

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Good teams, such as WBA, are PROACTIVE, on the FRONT foot and looking to anticipate the next move be it in attack or defending. Cooper has us playing as a REACTIVE team, playing on the BACK foot and waiting to see what the other team is doing. This means we are always second best, second to the ball and being dictated to by the other lot. No doubt that is not his intention but that is how it's playing out on match days.

Despite our iffy form our players DO have ability and talent. So obviously it's a coaching issue where Cooper has demonstrably FAILED to harness his players into any sort of cohesive game plan. We are failing to do the basics properly. We do not pass and move; we do not retain possession as we should; we do not mark opposing players properly, invariably allowing them to run off us and we ALWAYS allow the opposing playmaker an armchair ride to damage us. I mean, the whole world and his dog knew that Pereira was the danger man today - everyone except Cooper and our players by the evidence. No one took reponsibility to sit on him and close him down, give him a fcuking painful dig if necessary and KEEP doing it until he got the message that it wasn't going to be his day. It was pathetic and amateurish from us and something that no self-respecting manager would allow.

Cooper's early success, as many of us have noted, was obviously down to the legacy he inherited from Graham Potter. Even then our form was patchy and we scraped some results that we never should have, to put us near the top of the table. But, as time has passed, the Potter influence has become diluted as Cooper instilled his own thoughts and ideas. As a consequence, our results and performances, save the odd good game, have headed due south at an alarming rate of knots. THE MAN IS JUST NOT UP TO THE JOB!!!! The evidence is clearly there for all to see. We can see it, so the vinegar question is, why can't Leon, Curt and Trevor Birch see it????????? If they can, why don't they do something about it? And one unpalatable answer is that they can't because of financial restrictions. Perhaps they are unable to pay Cooper off and then afford the cost of someone decent.

If this is the case then we are back to the usual accusations that the owners don't give a toss and are intent only on stripping the club of any meaningful assets before selling the caracass of what remains for what they can get. Such lovely people aren't they? And now I'd love to see them prove me wrong by, for the first time ever, putting their own money into the club to give us the boost we need.

One final thought. It might be a biased observation but how on earth could they ever have qualified as fit and proper people to run a football club given their on-going conduct? It is one of a number of questions I want the Trust to ask when hopefully this comes to court.
 

Yankee_Jack

Key Player
Does the Trust still exist. I thought the lights went out over there a while back. I have heard nothing from them. Who is supposed to be in charge
 

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Does the Trust still exist. I thought the lights went out over there a while back. I have heard nothing from them. Who is supposed to be in charge
Their website should give you all the info you need. But I believe that litigation has been entered into.
 

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
The stark fact is that, with most of the squad from Potter's tenure, the players are performing far worse under Cooper. WHY? Okay, I accept that we lost Dan and Oli but I don't accept the fact that should make the others play as badly as they do. They have all gone backwards! WHY? Quite obviously there is something seriously wrong with our squad and I believe that is a lot to do with Cooper's coaching and training.

There are so many examples that we all see. Grimes, for instance, was a key player for us under Potter and was a force in midfield spraying passes for fun. In fact he also often played at LB and rarely let us down there. Now he can barely make a 10 yard pass with accuracy or without having it intercepted. Byers, Roberts and others have been no better for us under Cooper. They have ALL regressed. Again I ask, WHY?

It has to be down to coaching. This covers a multitude of things so I won't bother trying to analyse it. I don't know what goes on in training anyway but I DO know that it isn't working in games and we can all see it. Unless you are prepared to suspend disbelief and accept that the entire squad have become useless players almost overnight, the fault has to lie in the preparation of the players and the coaching input given to them.

I notice from @Yankee_Jack 's post that the blame game has started. For me that is the beginning of the end. I don't think the players respect Cooper as a coach and his comment about them being naive will only serve to widen the cracks of discontent. The time to act is now whilst we still have a chance of top 6. Leave it any later, that prospect will disappear entirely and, even worse, we could be struggling to stay in the division because right now we are showing relegation form.
 

Yankee_Jack

Key Player
Cooper's statements have to hit nerves. It's a dangerous game to play. In the Monk/Williams era that would not have gone over at all well and there'd have been a mutiny -- they'd have been in HJ's office bleating first thing Monday morning.

There are players that can easily see from within what we're seeing from the outside; and it can't look any better. Borja was nowhere today ... being rested for Wed ... or being "rested" because of his mouth. He could still have been on the bench if being rested for Wed.

Regarding money, we don't have to buy players in January. Much better to deep six Cooper and hire a new coach .... it'd be like getting a brand new team since the new coach would have an impact on every player.
 

Yankee_Jack

Key Player
Looking at the 4th and 5th goals again, players had stopped playing, errors were made and players were not working to cover. Even Woody was not making any effort to keep the ball out of the net.
 
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