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Agreed Rev. It's gone on for to long. The players are showing no guts though and no appetite to roll their sleeves up, epitomised by Lansbury IMO. New contract and he seems to have downed tools. We aren't going to be anywhere near the relegation zone though. A win at Rochdale could be just the tonic.

Relegation is a possibility if they continue as they are doing. They cannot defend. If you cannot defend you have to stick a shed load of goals in at the other end. We're not doing that. Big trouble. Not melodramatic, not alarmist just plain and simple truth. There is no organisation, no good passing or team movement to open up defences. Pearce the manager does not have the abilities to get the best from this group of players. I think the players do need to look at themselves and up their game but Pearce does too. At the moment all he does is talk a good game.

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I think you talk sense Mani. I don't actually think we are that far off where we should be. Probably only 2-3 wins off where I think we should be looking at realistically. We are not as good as derby, Ipswich, Bournemouth, Watford etc because we are at least a season behin them.

People say we are massively under performing but that's only if our expectations were of autos. I never felt that was realistic this season.

If we sack another manager it just tells he players that if they stop performing than it's the manager who goes not them. That's not the right message. Keep
SP on for 2 seasons and let him get rid of whoever he thinks are not giving their all!

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Rev.
A win at Rochdale would be a small step which hopefully will put us on the right road. To be fair you called the current run quite early and the dip in form has been alarming, I seem to remember way back before the Norwich game you were expressing you're concerns. The championship is a tough league, we don't have any right to be in the the top two or top six, we have to earn it. Crying out for a central midfielder in the mould of McKenna or guedioura (see he scored two today).
At least Pearce seems to know where the problems are, how many managers have we had who don't see it how it is. Pearce needs to address the problematic areas he's identified. I said ages ago that I'd play Osborn at left back (he's played there a fair bit for various academy age groups). He can tackle and has got a great engine as well as a good sense of position. One dominant centre back (Hobbs) two good holding midfielders (Vaughn and Lansbury) and I think we'd be much more solid which in turn should allow the forward thinking players to have more confidence to express themselves.

I don't think we will get in a relegation fight though Rev. I we did then maybe we have to think about a change.

As for where the improvement comes from I don't think is that difficult to see. We are never that far off in games. Maybe the boro game was the exception. I actually thought we did ok today without lookkh great. Obviously we defended badly for the two goals. We were also unlucky at times. Been the same most of the season. But that's where we are at, consistency only ever comes with stability.

Interestingly Birmingham stick with the same team today despite losing 4-0 to Derby. I would like to see some consistency in team selection, just to give people a run.

Pearce on the football league show, when a team wins 1-3 on foreign soil......now that's confused.


Thought you played well, little gonads on show though.

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There are many things wrong at the moment but sacking Pearce is not the solution. Yes he needs to decide what formation we want to play and what his best starting line up is, but we also need some stability and consistency at the club and changing manager every 5 minutes will not do this.
We can't expect instant success and this is something we need to learn. Yes we should expect better than what we're getting at the moment but half the problem is the weight of expectation that fans put on our players. Our fans are fantastic away from home but have a tendency to jump on the players backs at home. At times they look scared to make a mistake and this kills their confidence. The sooner we lower our expectations and get fully behind everyone the better.
I know people wil argue that they earn an incredible amount of money and so this is part and parcel but it doesn't happen in the same manner at other clubs. Teams play on this when they come here and I know that from talking to an ex player.

I suppose the real decider for SP is whether is a plan ie out of FFP quagmire by X and youth structure up to a defined level by Y for examples. It doesn't need to be shared with everyone and can between him and Fawaz but as long as there is a yardstick in place. Can't be the next result , the club needs more structure. If this team went up as is by some luck and string of good results, it would really be in danger of breaking our record, and believe me you don't want that!

comment by Eraserblazer (U6541)
posted 36 minutes ago

'The sooner we lower our expectations and get fully behind everyone the better.'
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Trust me, rarely have my expectations been lower
Feeling we are really in trouble. Present form suggests a relegation battle; it also suggests we are far from equipped to deal with this 😬

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It also may be that ultimately you do need to change, one nan can't be everything. I would have loved Nigel to still be at the helm but I can see that his talent was for the sleeves up sewer cleaning where as McClaren is more suited where we are now. Need to decide what progress is for the end of the season and work towards it, it will probably not be the product that lots expect to see. It has taken 5 years from relegation shambles to real contenders for Derby, and still we (I) moan!

Quite a good analysis of the team and I agree with all of it except what you said about Fryatt. He's been excellent this season, tireless, and has scored and created goals. He would easily score 15-20 goals in a promotion chasing side. He should have had a hattrick the other day if it wasn't for the lino. He's far far better than Cox.

Completely agree about the centre mids though. I would revert to the two holding players with Vaughan ali gside either Lansbury or Tesche. That allows Antonio, Fyatt and Burke to play behind Britt.

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That is a good comparison with McClaren's efforts at the CG. He tried to install a zonal marking system into the defence that was nothing short of disastrous. These players are in Div 2 for a reason and the need to keep it simple is never more apparent.

Currently, for example, Antonio is not a wing back. He needs to concentrate on getting at the opposition not nervously looking over his shoulder to see if Fox is going to lose the ball unchallenged again.

I don't agree that managers should always carry the can but unfortunately it's always easier to get rid of one rather than the under performing, uncaring several who are the real cause of the problems. Some of those players should be thoroughly ashamed of their efforts recently.