Some stats if you want them.......
POSSESSION: 49-51 SHOTS: 16-8 OT: 7-4 CORNERS: 3-2 FOULS: 7-16 GOALS: 2-3
Still trying to take this result in. It's the same old isn't it? When we play really well, we then contrive to give the game, and the points, away by making mistakes that wouldn't be acceptable to any coach in the LOW let alone the Championship. By our standards these are very highly paid professional footballers who seem incapable of consistently getting the basics right. And it's all very well Cooper moaning about giving the game away on a plate to the opposition but this is becoming a well worn record.
Question is, wtf is he DOING about it? Precious little it seems because we seem to be hearing the same thing every week. "We played well but......." Thing is Mr Cooper, it's YOUR job to sort out the 'buts' only it doesn't seem to be happening. If you can't coach/train/motivate the players to play to an acceptable standard for 90+ minutes then patently you are NOT doing your job properly.
Then there is team selection, which leaves a lot to be desired. Loan players have to EARN their place in the team and not be played just because of some stupid agreement with their parent club. If the loan player is not up to it, all we are doing is giving experience to some other club's player AT THE EXPENSE OF OUR OWN RESULTS!! And what happens then is that we fall away in the table, so far down that in the future other clubs will be reluctant to lend us anyone remotely decent anyway.
Which brings me to the next point. When we fail to win promotion this season we can expect the likes of Ayew, Rodon and a couple of others to be leaving the club. Losing them and the best of the loan players will leave us exactly where? Right down the crapper is where! The owners will gobble up the transfer fees and leave us with fcuk all funds to replace them. We'll be left with a misfit outfit of other teams' castaways supplemented by a few youngsters from the Unders team. Bye bye Premier League forever as we even struggle to survive in the Championship will be the reality.
Apart from disinterested, greedy grasping owners, what are the reasons for this situation? Four of them to be precise, in the form of Trevor Birch, Leon, Curt and their 'inspired' choice of manager, Steve Cooper. What on earth possessed seemingly football intelligent people to think that a totally inexperienced manager at league level, could possibly succeed in the cut throat jungle of arguably the toughest league in the world that is the Championship!!! In my opinion, we dumped on a far better manager in Cameron Toshack who helped produce and nurture some excellent young players for us: and he did this in a league environment, something that Cooper has NEVER experienced and is struggling to get to grips with.
Make no mistake, this a watershed time for our club. We know the owners, for any number of reasons, aren't up to it. Problem is, it seems that neither are the Three Musketeers and their D'Artagnan, Steve Cooper. So, you four, prove me wrong PLEASE but, so far, you're making a pigs' guts of it.