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How on earth is scoring 27 goals in 29 games not low scoring?
How on earth is scoring the least amount of goals in all 4 professional English leagues not low scoring?Steve Bruce’s teams may well have been even lower scoring but I didn’t find the football as poor & it tended to even itself out with better figures in the won, lost, against & goal difference columns
TyldesleyYou know full well what Martinez is trying to achieve on the pitch, and you know full well that to what extend he has achieved is another matter. I, however, like the fact that somebody has attempted to bring a more patient, European style of football to Wigan as that is the type of football I like. Again, I’ll reiterate before the ‘it’s sh7te football’ brigade comment, it is what he is trying to achieve.
Also, as stated above, he has introduced a system whereby the club buy young players and develop them. The Reserves squad bears testimony to this, and they are playing good short-passing football to boot.
That is what I like about Martinez. You asked for my
reasons – and there they are.I can in part see where you’re coming from Standish. Bobby’s “way of playing the game” is not the style of football I like – in fact I detest it. I find it dull, boring & more like watching a game of chess than a game of football. Many people rave on about Spain being the best international side to watch in the world. I saw all their games in the world cup & was bored rigid.
But its a world of opinions & I aint stupid enough or naive enough to think that everybody should think the same thing.However, & this is probably more where I have the problem than it was in actually knowing what he is trying to achieve – he isn’t very good at putting his ideas into actions. I could be offered the manager’s job & promise to get the team playing the most beautiful football ever seen but if after nearly 2 seasons that team was still producing boring, mistake riddled, low scoring drivel then I would not be delivering on my promise & I’d expect to be given the boot.
There’s a world of difference between saying what you want to achieve & actually being able to deliver it – & I’ve seen no evidence yet that Bobby is capable of doing that no matter how much time you give him.
I also appreciate your point you made to someone else that he “may” have been given other tasks as well as avoiding relegation such as slashing wage bills but if he is having to be more prudent with the cash than previous managers under Whelan then I’m sorry but he’s not even doing that job very well either. He may well have got the wage bill right down & be concentrating on bringing young players through but if this is his brief then you would expect him to be ultra-cautious with what little money he does get especially when he’s been able to keep hold of his “big money stars” unlike previous managers – but he’s wasted large chunks of it on dross like Di Santo, Scotland, Boselli & is now having to play a bloke up front on his own who Bobby himself admitted last season doesn’t have the attributes to play there. It should also be pointed out that he doesn’t have the attributes to play on the left wing where Bobby tried to get him to play for a season & a bit but that one has been quietly droppedTo put it another way he simply isn’t up to the job & I don’t see what “giving him more time” (as some say) will achieve. Somebody on this thread (may have been you) has said that Whelan has said he will never sack martinez so we should just get on with it & get behind him. Why?
For starters Whelan is renowned for stating things & then contradicting himself with his actions (foreign manager anyone??) so I take everything he says with a skip full of salt & secondly if someone who is manager of the club you support is clearly not up to the job it should be the fans (as supporters & customers) to demand change (IMO)As opposed to the wonderful football on show under Bruce…..I actually fell asleep at one game. And I hadn’t had one drink.hence why I said “its only my opinion” – other’s such as yourself & Griff think differently
Whilst admitting there was some dross football served up under Bruce, in my opinion the vast majority of football under Bruce was of a higher standard & was far more entertaining than the majority of football served up under Bobby
This kind of contradicts my last post but we have, or have had, good players but they aren’t used properly or made to play in a system that is alien to them
Either way it doesn’t change the fact that Bobby can talk about being unlucky until he $h!ts gold nuggets out of his @r$e but a combination of poor management, poor tactics, poor decision making (from management & players) & poor players is why Latics are bottom
Its all ifs buts & maybes, but I doubt that if Whelan had allowed Bruce to keep hold of Palacios & Heskey until the end of the season & had made public statements that we’d never had a team as good & that we’d keep it together till the summer at least & aim for Europe as opposed to selling those players against the manager’s wishes (that must have been a real kick in the teeth after the public comments Bruce had made), slating your manager’s comments in public, announcing that all our players were up for sale for the right price & that as Latics were now pretty safe, their job for the year had been done, then I doubt that the team would have dropped like a stone as it did
Its a similar situation to under Jewell in the 1st season up when all he banged on about, even when it was obvious we were staying up, was getting to the 40 point mark.
As soon as we hit that mark results tailed off & the desire levels seemed to drop slightly as it was a case of job done
How could Bruce be expected to motivate his players when he himself had had the stuffing knocked out of him & his players had all heard & read the club’s owners telling them that they’d achieved all he wanted em to??Oh & its only my opinion like but the vast majority of football served up under Martinez is awful to watch!!! ;)
It will be good to know that we have a manager capable of changing things around if his preferred option of playing isn’t having much joy & I’m hoping Saturday was an indication that Bobby is coming round to that
With any luck he’ll also start to see that it possibly needs to be done slightly earlier than the 82nd minute
Not sure if 3-5-2 would work. When I’ve seen it played it invariably leads to having 3 centre halves playing too narrowly & teams able to exploit the gaps on the wings or (especially if its played with 2 full backs on the wings) becomes too defensive & offers little going forward – if I recall rightly Bobby tried it against Newcastle & pardew responded by chucking a winger on as latics were leaving huge amounts of space down either flank. If Newcastle hadn’t been almost as bad as Latics that day I think we’d have got slaughtered
The only clear cut chance for one of our strikers fell to them when they were playing 4-4-2 & as it came from 2 strikers linking up & playing off each other it would not have come along if they’d still been playing 4-5-1
BUT
I’d agree that the team had had more than enough chances playing 4-5-1 to get somet out of the game.I’ve said before that I don’t think any formation is inherently better than any other. But that a manager needs to play the system most suited to the players he has at his disposal & needs to be adaptable if things aren’t working out and/or the team needs to get back into the game.
I’m hoping that Bobby’s late switch to 4-4-2 is an indication that he’s finally come to realise that there’s more than 1 way to skin a cat & that we’ll see a bit more of this adaptability. The only problem with when Bobby went 4-4-2 is that he switched N’Zogbia over to the left & it killed his influence on the game.
The other problem was of course that they still didn’t scoreI’d agree that performances have been getting better. What’s cost us in recent matches has been poor decision making from individual players be it stupid penalties against Villa, failing to track players against WBA, poor clearances & failing to challenge against Liverpool, schoolboy defending 4 times against United or Al Habsi’s c0ck up on Saturday.
Poor teams & poor players make & keeping making those types of mistakes not unlucky ones – Team’s often don’t have to work hard to score against latics & along with a failure to score in over a third of our matches (again that comes from poor players not unlucky ones) is the team’s downfall
So your telling me we didn’t deserve AT LEAST a point from man city?
even the most bias martinez hater surely couldn’t come out with thaT!I’ve actually posted on another thread that I thought the team played well on Saturday & deserved at least a point so maybe I should have expanded on my previous statement a little
A team may well have odd games where they don’t get the positive result that their performance deserves but its very much swings & roundabouts & evens itself out in games where they get points that their performance didn’t deserve – For every game like Saturday’s where they came away empty handed there are games like Spurs away where they got 3 points despite being outplayed for most of the game
So if I may alter my statement slightly – in football, over the course of a season, a team gets exactly what they deserve. After 29 games the stats show that Latics are the worst team in the division. If after 38 games Latics lie in 15th place that will be because they were the 15th best team in the division. Likewise if they’re still bottom it’ll be coz they were the worst.
Latics won’t get relegated because they were unlucky
As for “It is just a matter of time before it clicks into place and we get the results our performances deserve” – I’ve been hearing him say the same thing for nearly 2 seasons now & I’m still waiting
I’d disagree somewhat with Bobby. In football you get exactly what you deserve
That’s why after 29 league games Latics are 4 points from safetyIt was also very interesting to see that they started to cause more problems for the City defence when he brought Sammon on & played 4-4-2. Whether Colonel Roberto Gadaffi took that on board remains to be seen
Took it on board? Surely it was his idea :? ;)
I think there’s a difference between playijg 442 for the last 8 minutes of a game we awere arguablty already on top of and playing that way from the start. I’m not sure our midfield is strong enough to keep out teams for 90 minutes with just 4 in there.
But, as I’ve said many times before, I’d like to see us give it a go, just to see.[/quote]
Ya sarcy git Griff!!!!
My point being that Bobby has tried it once before to the best of my knowledge in a home game against Spurs last season.
Latics had been struggling & with about 25 minutes to go he changed it to 4-4-2, Latics got on top & just when they looked threatening Bobby made another change, switched it back to 4-5-1, they lost momentum & Spurs scored twice late on. That was the last we saw of 4-4-2
He didn’t seem to take on board the positive impact it had then so i aint sure if he’ll do it againQuite how Latics surrendered the moment City took the lead when City didn’t have a single effort worthy of the name in the second half whilst latics created several, hit the bar & missed a sitter in the last minute is beyond me!!
That said, he makes a valid point in “‘How that kid (Rodallega) is expected to keep them in the Premier League, isolated alone up front and without any assistance is beyond me'”
As did Chris Waddle when he said during the commentary that Latics play some nice stuff but it doesn’t attempt to get behind the opposition defence often enough & you’ll get nowhere playing in front of the opposition all the time
Granqvist was given his chance under Hutchings & like most of the other players looked okay to start with but gradually got worse & worse & more than played his part in that long run the team went on of straight defeats
What signed his death warrant at Latics was a truly shocking performance away at Bolton when we got stuffed 4-1 in Bruce’s 2nd game in charge. Bruce made several important decisions after that game – one of which was that Paul Scharner was not a premier league quality midfielder & needed to play centre half & another was that Granqvist was too slow.
Admittedly that was the best part of 3 years ago & he could have improved markedly since then but he was pretty cr@p back then
I made the exact same colonel gadaffi comparison to a mate of mine on Saturday afternoon – prompted after reading his last couple of press statements whereby he said on Friday that whether we went down or stayed up we would do it in “style” followed by comments in Saturday’s Daily Mirror that City would want several of our players
I can understand the bit about Latics being out of their depth financially in this division
I can understand the bit about Latics current financial situation not being allowed to go on indefinitely
I can even understand the bits about how you (& others) mighty enjoy things a bit more in the Championship
BUT
quite how any of that equates to Bobby doing a good job is beyond me. Reading between the lines you seem to be saying that you think Bobby was appointed with the brief of taking us down & he’s doing this in such spectacular fashion that that is the reason why he is doing a good job
I find that truly bizarreFootball in the 80 was what I was referring too, ITV sports coverage of live games was terrible, the violence in the game was shocking and the general conditions of watching the game were awful. Maybe just my perspective, but the change to the modern game has improved pretty much every aspect of the game. The quality of the players is better, and at least now the people who play the game make most of the money, not the chairmen who sat on the takings.Not much of what you said relates to the football though does it? Or to the effect TV has had on it
TV had no effect on the violence at games. If you were at the game of a team you supported ITV’s live coverage didn’t really matter much. Nor has TV had any effect on the general conditions of watching a game – The Taylor Report was responsible for thatAbout the only way that I can see how TV has improved the game is that the vast amount of money SKY have given the premier league & to a lesser extent the lower divisions has enabled some clubs to bring some of the best players in the world to the premier league
On the other hand its also allowed some very very mediocre players (foreign & domestic) to earn money way & above the level their talents would dictate.
The Sky TV money has also done a hell of alot to increase the gap between the haves & the have nots in football. Never before has the top flight been so polarised & never before have so many clubs in it been content to merely tread water
