v Sunderland (h) - 26/12/2024

[DaveyB]

4 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

Gueye is very popular with the fans. He’s not been ‘written off’ and he’s been ‘given time’.

If someone on here does want to write him off then that’s up to them.

I lost count of the number of times the ball was played up to Ohashi in the first half, only for him to allow the defender to step in front of him and beat him to it - but not a peep out of anyone around me in the JW. 
Gueye came on and in his first few minutes on the pitch had one ball fired miles over his head and another one launched towards him which he managed to jump for and knock down only for there to be no Rovers player within 20 yards of him - and a couple of guys behind me started with the ’bloody useless him’ and never been a footballer’ crap. I don’t get it. Is it just because he looks ungainly or something? I know Yuki scored yesterday, but just on performance, I thought Gueye offered more (that said I don’t think either are the answer long-term and a striker really needs to be a priority in the window)

4 hours ago, arbitro said:

I thought the pace and intensity of the game really took its toll on Cantwell and he was found wanting in the second half. He should be more suited to the game on Sunday when the game won't be as frenetic. In fairness we had a few tired looking players late on but to their credit they squeezed every ounce of energy out for the cause.

Cantwell, and Dolan, looked good in the first 30 minutes of the game when we were playing with intensity and looking to get the ball into their feet and play off them - with Brittain, Ohashi and Hedges making runs in behind. 
However, as the game went on (until the last 10 minutes anyway) we got deeper and deeper and started to play longer and longer balls and Cantwell just wasn’t in the game - mainly because we were bypassing him and launching it over his head and chasing balls into the final third just isn’t his game. 

[RevidgeBlue]

4 minutes ago, Neal said:

Just watched the extended highlights. I was sat in the Jack Walker so didn't have a good view but... Didn't Gueye have a low shot late on that was going in that a Sunderland player threw himself in front of? Keeper didn't look like he was moving. 

It was difficult to tell if it was going in from the sideways angle on Sky but he didn't half leather it goal wards and it was unfortunately blocked by the defender.

First time I've seen him connect with a shot properly. Lol.

[roverandout]

19 minutes ago, den said:

Hope you’re dogs okay roversndout.

Yes thanks den. He was struggling to stand up. He had shaky legs and no balance.  Also he was sick. But he seems to be OK now. He's quite old. I think the long walk he had hurt is legs. But he seems to be fine. I'm taking him to vets on Monday.  Thanks for asking

[Mattyblue]

It’s almost new year and our number 9 has one goal, of course he’ll get mutterings. But he also gets cheered to the rafters, he bloody wouldn’t at a lot of clubs, great fans here.

Edited 20 hours ago by Mattyblue

[DaveyB]

On the inverted winger debate - variety is the key. The really top players can go both ways, no matter what side they are playing on - I remember Duff cutting in and scoring goals with his right when playing on the left for us and Giggs used to turn defenders inside out because they never knew which way he was going to go. 

Their goals yesterday were both from getting to the byline and getting a ball across the area, but the reason they were able to do so was because Beck was concentrating on not allowing Roberts to cut inside onto his favoured foot - if he had been playing on the ‘right’ side I imagine he would have found it harder because the fullback would have been covering the cross first and foremost. 

That said it’s all down to how a manager wants to play and what striker you’re playing etc really. If you’ve got Shearer and Sutton in the middle there’s no point playing inverted wingers because you need to get crosses into your forwards. But if you’ve got Adam Armstrong in the middle there’s probably no point throwing loads of crosses in and so you might go for inverted wingers instead (which incidentally opens up space for your fullbacks to overlap and cut balls back from the byeline)

Edited 20 hours ago by DaveyB

[Mattyblue]

Thing is many of today’s managers are so rigid they still would play inverted wingers even if Shearer was standing there.

[Forever Blue]

I don’t blame Gueye for not being able to kick it straight, I blame whoever decided to pay £1.5m for him. 
 

He’s a decent impact sub when we’re behind, but £1.5m is a huge amount for us to splash out at the moment. 

 

[RevidgeBlue]

10 minutes ago, DaveyB said:

I lost count of the number of times the ball was played up to Ohashi in the first half, only for him to allow the defender to step in front of him and beat him to it - but not a peep out of anyone around me in the JW. 
Gueye came on and in his first few minutes on the pitch had one ball fired miles over his head and another one launched towards him which he managed to jump for and knock down only for there to be no Rovers player within 20 yards of him - and a couple of guys behind me started with the ’bloody useless him’ and never been a footballer’ crap. I don’t get it. Is it just because he looks ungainly or something? I know Yuki scored yesterday, but just on performance, I thought Gueye offered more (that said I don’t think either are the answer long-term and a striker really needs to be a priority in the window)

I too thought that, although he worked hard, apart from being in the right place at the right time for the goal, Ohashi was completely ineffective. Now I've always said that if a striker scores, he's done his job and it doesn't really matter what the rest of his game is like and I'll stick by that but it's the games where he doesn't score that are the problem - and he hasn't scores for months prior to yesterday.

It's a real conundrum how to get a worthwhile  tune out of Gueye/Ohashi. It would be nice to think Leonard might provide part of the solution.

[islander200]

2 minutes ago, Forever Blue said:

I don’t blame Gueye for not being able to kick it straight, I blame whoever decided to pay £1.5m for him. 
 

He’s a decent impact sub when we’re behind, but £1.5m is a huge amount for us to splash out at the moment. 

 

Was it that much?

I saw £600k as the fee

[den]

10 minutes ago, roverandout said:

Yes thanks den. He was struggling to stand up. He had shaky legs and no balance.  Also he was sick. But he seems to be OK now. He's quite old. I think the long walk he had hurt is legs. But he seems to be fine. I'm taking him to vets on Monday.  Thanks for asking

Great that he’s improving. Good luck at the vets, hope they sort him out properly.

[BankEnd Rover]

5 minutes ago, islander200 said:

Was it that much?

I saw £600k as the fee

Yeah it was roughly £800k...add ons include up to 1.5m.

Gueye gets way too much stick for my liking...I even saw one comment on twatter that we should Loan him out?

Edited 19 hours ago by BankEnd Rover

[Forever Blue]

8 minutes ago, islander200 said:

Was it that much?

I saw £600k as the fee

7 figures according to the LT when we signed him,  remember seeing £1.5m  at the time. 

edit: just looked it up and Jackson said £1m, not the £1.5m I thought. 

Edited 19 hours ago by Forever Blue

[RevidgeBlue]

3 minutes ago, DaveyB said:

On the inverted winger debate - variety is the key. The really top players can go both ways, no matter what side they are playing on - I remember Duff cutting in and scoring goals with his right when playing on the left for us and Giggs used to turn defenders inside out because they never knew which way he was going to go. 

Their goals yesterday were both from getting to the byline and getting a ball across the area, but the reason they were able to do so was because Beck was concentrating on not allowing Roberts to cut inside onto his favoured foot - if he had been playing on the ‘right’ side I imagine he would have found it harder because the fullback would have been covered the cross first and foremost. 

That said it’s all down to how a manager wants to play and what striker you’re playing etc really. If you’ve got Shearer and Sutton in the middle there’s no point playing inverted wingers because you need to get crosses into your forwards. But if you’ve got Adam Armstrong in the middle there’s probably no point throwing loads of crosses in and so you might go for inverted wingers instead (which incidentally opens up space for your fullbacks to overlap and cut balls back from the byeline)

That's the most sensible analysis on the point I've seen. Wasn't it Sir Alf who said that if you had a system you had to pick the players to suit the system and not the other way round.

On the contrary as far as we go, we don't have the luxury of picking from the best players in the Country to fit into a certain system so you'd have thought we'd have to adapt our tactics to whoever is on the pitch. On balance you'd have thought that Gueye would benefit from us getting down the outside of the opposition and putting crosses in. Maybe Leonard too if he's sniffing around looking for knockdowns. Ohashi wouldn't.

[Wheelton Blue]

The only time I've heard him get stick in person was the other week when he couldn't be arsed to chase a ball down the bye line.

Other than that, he gets nothing but encouragement, as they all do, and certainly at Ewood.

[Mattyblue]

Look at BBD, terrible for years and was still given loads of encouragement and he was a 7 million man. No chance he’d have been  given such patience at most other clubs.

Edited 19 hours ago by Mattyblue

[arbitro]

36 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

Whose fault is that?

You say that  like it's acceptable for him only to be fit enough to play one half.

I honestly don't know how you came to that conclusion. My point was that he isn't robust enough to play a full match after the intensity we started off playing. He was noticeably the first player to tire and didn't get involved in play like we needed him to.

[Forever Blue]

2 minutes ago, arbitro said:

I honestly don't know how you came to that conclusion. My point was that he isn't robust enough to play a full match after the intensity we started off playing. He was noticeably the first player to tire and didn't get involved in play like we needed him to.

S’land had a young, athletic team. This is the area we lack, especially with Trav out. They overran us 2nd half because the likes of Baker, Cantwell and Hedges were knackered after putting so much into the first half. 

[arbitro]

33 minutes ago, DaveyB said:

I lost count of the number of times the ball was played up to Ohashi in the first half, only for him to allow the defender to step in front of him and beat him to it - but not a peep out of anyone around me in the JW. 
Gueye came on and in his first few minutes on the pitch had one ball fired miles over his head and another one launched towards him which he managed to jump for and knock down only for there to be no Rovers player within 20 yards of him - and a couple of guys behind me started with the ’bloody useless him’ and never been a footballer’ crap. I don’t get it. Is it just because he looks ungainly or something? I know Yuki scored yesterday, but just on performance, I thought Gueye offered more (that said I don’t think either are the answer long-term and a striker really needs to be a priority in the window)

Cantwell, and Dolan, looked good in the first 30 minutes of the game when we were playing with intensity and looking to get the ball into their feet and play off them - with Brittain, Ohashi and Hedges making runs in behind. 
However, as the game went on (until the last 10 minutes anyway) we got deeper and deeper and started to play longer and longer balls and Cantwell just wasn’t in the game - mainly because we were bypassing him and launching it over his head and chasing balls into the final third just isn’t his game. 

Sunderland played a really high line in the first half and several times we played the ball in behind. We used the long diagonal pass to good effect too I thought. In the second half I thought the Sunderland defence dropped off more so we couldn't get in behind. Similarly we dominated the midfield in the first half and they did in the second. Both managers were tactically astute yesterday which certainly added to the quality of the game.

[RevidgeBlue]

6 minutes ago, arbitro said:

I honestly don't know how you came to that conclusion. My point was that he isn't robust enough to play a full match after the intensity we started off playing. He was noticeably the first player to tire and didn't get involved in play like we needed him to.

Needs to get properly fit then doesn't he?

[den]

41 minutes ago, DaveyB said:

On the inverted winger debate - variety is the key. The really top players can go both ways, no matter what side they are playing on - I remember Duff cutting in and scoring goals with his right when playing on the left for us and Giggs used to turn defenders inside out because they never knew which way he was going to go. 

Their goals yesterday were both from getting to the byline and getting a ball across the area, but the reason they were able to do so was because Beck was concentrating on not allowing Roberts to cut inside onto his favoured foot - if he had been playing on the ‘right’ side I imagine he would have found it harder because the fullback would have been covering the cross first and foremost. 

That said it’s all down to how a manager wants to play and what striker you’re playing etc really. If you’ve got Shearer and Sutton in the middle there’s no point playing inverted wingers because you need to get crosses into your forwards. But if you’ve got Adam Armstrong in the middle there’s probably no point throwing loads of crosses in and so you might go for inverted wingers instead (which incidentally opens up space for your fullbacks to overlap and cut balls back from the byeline)

That’s all fair enough. I would just add that the idea of playing inverted wingers is to have, for instance, the left footed right winger the option of going inside onto his stronger foot or playing the overlapping right full back in on his stronger foot.

That gives a team all the options that other formations don’t.

Edited 19 hours ago by den

[arbitro]

3 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

Needs to get properly fit then doesn't he?

What do you recommend? An extra beasting for him after training or coming in on his days off?

[Neal]

52 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

It was difficult to tell if it was going in from the sideways angle on Sky but he didn't half leather it goal wards and it was unfortunately blocked by the defender.

First time I've seen him connect with a shot properly. Lol.

Looked on target. Typically they show Jobe Bellingham smash one well over the bar because of his 2nd name but leave our a much more threatening goal scoring effort. 

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

26 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

That's the most sensible analysis on the point I've seen. Wasn't it Sir Alf who said that if you had a system you had to pick the players to suit the system and not the other way round.

On the contrary as far as we go, we don't have the luxury of picking from the best players in the Country to fit into a certain system so you'd have thought we'd have to adapt our tactics to whoever is on the pitch. On balance you'd have thought that Gueye would benefit from us getting down the outside of the opposition and putting crosses in. Maybe Leonard too if he's sniffing around looking for knockdowns. Ohashi wouldn't.

Not every cross has to be a high one. A low hard cross into the “ area of uncertainty “ can be just as dangerous. Brittain is good at those. How many times do you see a defender stick out a foot and score an own goal ?  Hyam, I’m thinking of you.

[Norbert Rassragr]

In my youth, Frank Sinclair was a master of that kind of own goal. Hilarious for Chelsea's opponents.

[RevidgeBlue]

5 minutes ago, arbitro said:

What do you recommend? An extra beasting for him after training or coming in on his days off?

Not sure why you are being sarcastic or condoning his fairly obvious lack of fitness.