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.