Wigan v Swans

Yankee_Jack

Yankee_Jack

Key Player
We won. But, I have never felt a sense of despondence and emptiness after a win ever.

It’s such a foreign situation. The dire lack of quality, tempo and shape, especially toward the end, should not be lost under the spell of a victory. Not a Pyrrhic victory, but if this persists I’ll be throwing shit through the tv.
 
KVetch

KVetch

Key Player
CroJack said:
MLS is better than this dross.
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LoL the playoff final is next Sunday 10-11. It looks like they're playing with a cement ball. They're competing with China to be the best retirement league in the world. I like Ibrahimovic, it's funny watching past their prime guys like him and David Villa run circles around the rest of the league. They desperately want to be taken seriously but they need promotion and relegation to start. The best thing they have going for them is the massive Mexican support in the USA.
 
ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Rumour has it that we have been asked to change our team colours to horizontal black and white stripes, black masks and we have to carry a sack marked with 'Swag' on it. What a travesty of a result! Over the 90+ minutes Wigan was easily the better team and deserved at least a draw. But I'm not going to complain because we are far more often on the wrong end of such games wondering how the hell we've lost points. Bit of balance for once.

But let's not put any gloss on this win. We were pants all over the pitch and yet again it was our midfield, perhaps Grimes excepted, that stuttered and totally lost its early grip on the game. When it gets competitive in there they habitually seem to disappear and Cooper has to work on this and find a combination that will up its game when the going gets tough. Right now our midfield collapses like a pricked ballon as soon as a strong challenge is presented. Passing becomes unacceptably sloppy, proper movement vanishes and with it any semblance of fluency and tempo. Right now, THEY ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH for us to mount a sustained challenge at the top. If Cooper and whomever can't see this then they had better reconsider their careers in football because it would show that they don't know shit. Much work is needed and I hope that that is recognised.

On another note, if Borja is going to be eased out (seems to be out of favour right now) then we could do far worse than try to sign Kieffer Moore. He's tall, strong, great in the air and a good target man but, for a big guy, he's also pretty mobile with decent control. Good player.
 
ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Some stats from the game:

POSSESSION: 37-63 SHOTS: 14-6 OT: 2-2 CORNERS: 11-3 FOULS: 19-8 GOALS: 1-2

First observation is that Wigan had twice as many shots as us despite having almost only half as much possession. Seems that we are not creating anything like as much as we should from the ball we enjoy, so the obvious lesson is that we must be more incisive when we do have the ball. On the plus side we had 100% success with goals to on target shots. But when you consider that we only had 2 shots on target it doesn't seem as impressive. Now had we had 10 out of 10....... Wigan were dreadful in that they only got 2 of 14 shots on target, which might account for their position in the table. Mind you, overall they were better than us today but they did put the boot in racking up over twice as many fouls as we did. Probably accounts for why our milky midfield failed to compete in the second half. My summary is that this was a bad performance from us but we got away with it.
 
Yankee_Jack

Yankee_Jack

Key Player
Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good; today we lived that dream. I haven’t seen Cooper’s post mortem, but I hope he’s humble and recognizes that his was terrible football.

Cooper clearly instructed Routs and Dyer to play way inside and not out on the wing. So, although he kept the same team, the shape and approach was not the same and our “wingers” were just a label.
 
CroJack

CroJack

Key Player
ivoralljack said:
We were pants all over the pitch and yet again it was our midfield, perhaps Grimes excepted, that stuttered and totally lost its early grip on the game. When it gets competitive in there they habitually seem to disappear and Cooper has to work on this and find a combination that will up its game when the going gets tough.
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The combo of Grimes-Byers-Celina was good last season under Potter. This season Byers and Celina are simply not consistent enough. If Cooper chooses Fulton instead of Byers we tend to be too defensive and we don't create much, though we get more physicality in the midfield. Who can play 10 instead of Celina? Cooper has tried all combinations and nothing has worked so far. He played Celina on the left flank and we complained. Now he plays Celina in nr. 10 role and it doesn't work either. Celina can't hit the target. We wanted Routledge and Dyer to play on the flanks, and they underperformed today. In almost every game we play, there are three or four players who underperform and spoil it for the others. Today it was Hoorn, Byers, Dyer and Routs. Celina was also disappointing, though he had an assist. Bidwell and Naughton let every f****** cross in today. So, I'm asking you what is Cooper supposed to do? I really don't know why you are so harsh on Cooper. He's got what he's got. A bunch of players who are not consistent enough.

Yes, Cooper makes mistakes, so did Potter last season. We lost two best players in summer and with all respect to Borja and Surridge neither of them are Oli. With all respect to our wingers none of them have speed of Dan James. Last season we waited until December to see us playing some free flowing, attacking football. Why don't we give Cooper some time and judge him in February?
 

IanABS94

Guest
Byers needs to be benched next match for me. Way way too many giveaways in bad area's. He did it a few times against Cardiff and also more than a few times today vs Wigan and if not for a Wilmott saving tackle we would've been 2-1 down. I get that's he's trying to make things happen but some of them aren't even close.

I can understand that Fulton makes us a little more defensive per se but he's a calm player under pressure, something that we could've used during the Wigan onslaught of the second half.

Credit to Wigan though, I can see why they've got a good home record and given top teams some serious problems at the DW. They play with lots of width and their LB has an excellent left foot for crosses.
 
ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
CroJack said:
Why don't we give Cooper some time and judge him in February?
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More than happy to, CJ, but I won't pretend that, for the most part, I'm NOT happy with the football I'm seeing.

CroJack said:
So, I'm asking you what is Cooper supposed to do? I really don't know why you are so harsh on Cooper. He's got what he's got. A bunch of players who are not consistent enough.
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I don't think I'm harsh on Cooper. I badly want him to succeed if only because I once knew his dad. I suppose that's a daft reason isn't it? But if players are under-performing just who do you turn to in order to get them playing better? Of course much of the responsibility lies with the players themselves but it has to be part of a manager's (and his coaching staff) remit to teach them to perform better.

I see so many basics being done badly. Where is the support for the man on the ball? Where is the CONSISTENT movement to give him options to keep the move flowing? Why are so many of our players looking incapable of CONSISTENTLY making short passes that should be bread and butter for professional players? I believe through long experience as a player (granted at a lower level) that these things can and should be sorted out on the training field. I have been coached by and coached with a number of good ex league pros who'd have gone cosmic at some of the things we've been seeing and all I'm saying is that it is Cooper's job to try and sort it. If, for whatever reason, the players don't respond then perhaps it's time for them to find another club. And ultimately, after he's been given a fair chance, no progress has been made then maybe we should be taking a hard look at the manager. It's how football works.
 
CroJack

CroJack

Key Player
ivoralljack said:
...but I won't pretend that, for the most part, I'm NOT happy with the football I'm seeing
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Neither am I.

ivoralljack said:
But if players are under-performing just who do you turn to in order to get them playing better? Of course much of the responsibility lies with the players themselves but it has to be part of a manager's (and his coaching staff) remit to teach them to perform better.
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Manager and his coaching staff should prepare players physically, tactically and mentally for games. Players do a lot of basic stuff in training like passing drills, set-pieces, triangles, attacking patterns etc. But how do you teach players not to be sloppy at passing? How do you teach an experienced centre-back not to give a stupid penalty away? How do you teach Grimes to make a professional tackle when needed, and you know that he already knows that? Is it necessary for a manager to tell his players not to give the ball away in dangerous areas? They f****** know that.

Allowing players to make costly mistakes is a part of a developing process, and that's what Cooper should continue to be doing. That's what Potter was doing last season, and we gave him quite a long leash. The trouble is that we all have short memory, and we only remember good football we played under Potter, whilst at the same time we forget some really crap performances under him. Do you remember how shot-shy we were under Potter during the first half of the season? We used to pass from the back and we mostly played in our own half. Now we play more in opposition half, we shoot more and we create more chances. Can't we give some credit to Cooper for improving our number of shots and shots on target compared to Potter? Actually, double as many shots on target. Under Potter we played more counter-attacking football then we do now, but we had James and his incredible pace. Under Potter we leaked goals from set-pieces, under Cooper we conceded one goal from set-pieces in 15 games. Under Potter we earned 33 points from the first 25 games, under Cooper we already have 28 points from 15 games. When Potter took over we spent €7,15 m on new players, Cooper spent €550.000 on Peterson.

Potter had James (4 goals, 7 assists), McBurnie (22 goals, 4 assists), Fer (25 appearances, 1 goal, 2 assists), Montero (3 assists), Olsson (17 appearances, 1 assist), Bony (played a couple of games,1 goal), CBR (3 goals), CCV, Celina (5 goals, 6 assists), and then Hoorn, Rodon, Roberts, Naughton, Carroll, Dyer, Routledge, McKay, Byers, Fulton, Asoro, Narsingh, John, Dhanda.

The question is do we really have a better squad now? I doubt it. I don't think any of our strikers will score 22 goals this season. Do we have Montero's trickery and James pace in our squad? Not yet. Let's see what Peterson and Kalulu can offer. Peterson didn't have a proper pre-season with us, and Kalulu has been injured since August. Also, the Championship is more competitive this season than it was last season.

We have to remember that we don't have the best strikers in the league, we don't have the best wingers in the league, we don't have the best midfielders in the league, and we don't have the best back four in the league. Ask yourself which Swansea player would walk in the Leeds, WBA and Fulham squads? And yet, we have 5 points more than Fulham, 7 points more than Cardiff, 12 points more than Huddersfield, and 20 points more than Stoke - all of them were among favourites for play-off places in the beginning of the season.

Cooper is neither Marcelo Bielsa nor Slaven Bilic, but for a rookie manager, who manages an average Championship squad, he is doing well.
 
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KVetch

KVetch

Key Player
James made everyone better around him too. I want to believe Garrick has that potential. Kalulu has speed but needs work on passing. All of these guys have years to advance and get better outside of Routledge and Dyer.
 
CroJack

CroJack

Key Player
KVetch said:
One positive is that Dyer goal. Nice run of play there. Team effort passing like it was drawn up that way. The surridge goal wasn't as technical but Roberts y did cross it well. Seemed like he was targeting Ayew.
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That was a beautiful move for that Dyer goal. I wish we do that more often in future. I remember Borja scored a similar goal. And Surridge movement for the second goal was excellent. Instead of waiting for the cross he attacked it.
 
Yankee_Jack

Yankee_Jack

Key Player
KVetch said:
One positive is that Dyer goal. Nice run of play there. Team effort passing like it was drawn up that way. The surridge goal wasn't as technical but Roberts y did cross it well. Seemed like he was targeting Ayew.
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Watching the video, Ayew was inches away from denying us that goal. There was nothing he could do with ball if he had made contact other than deflect it away from Surridge.
 
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