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Match Day - Birmingham City V PNE - 25/09/21 - KO:15:00 - Championship

3 of the last 4 have been away as well and the home game was vs the stand out side of the league. Pick up wins in the home games vs teams like Peterborough and Swansea and we’ll be reyt.
 
Who are these big powerful players in this unit. In Lindsay and Storey we must have two of the most undersized centre halves in the division, Ledson, Whiteman and DJ are hardly giants in the centre and Maguire and Riis are not exactly Andy Carrol and Duncan Ferguson. Usual bollocks from Bowyer, trying to imply if they get beat it's because we are thuggish lot of long ball players.
Exactly - and don't forget Ledson is only 5'7"
 
the unit is coming together without conceding points, in fact gathering, hunters and collectors........pabulum.
 
West Brom absolutely should've put 3 past us, the one they scored, Hugill's 1-1 and the other Phillips strike that whistled just past the post. If I recall correctly, Bristol had a 1-1 that another day Iverson gets it wrong or doesn't get there in time and it's a pen or 1-0 and you can't rule out long shots just because they're from outside the box, they had 3 or 4 of those and they certainly looked more than capable of landing them on a different day, think even Matt Phillips almost scored a beauty from outside the box against us too. I'm not saying that every single team should be hammering us, I'm more saying that we're giving up a lot space and opportunities that frankly so far I think we've done well to escape being punished.

Yes on a different day. On a different day Maguire scores the one that hit the bar. On a different day Riis scores against West Brom and we are 2-0 up. On a different day West Brom don’t score because we have a competent ref. You are talking about ifs, buts and maybes. To say we could easily have been 3 or 4 nil down against these sides beggars belief because we could have easily been 2 or3 up.

I don’t look at what ‘might’ have happened. I think it’s a very weird way of thinking. I look at what did happen and we got four decent draws against 4 very competitive sides - three of them away. Maybe you like to look for what might have happened in things but I don’t. We drew these games. Looking at what could have happened is just pathetic in my eyes because it didn’t.
 
When did we play Fulham/Bournemouth at home?
My other concern and you touch on it slightly here is that we've literally played 1 of the current top 6 in WBA.

Think this week's two tests will give us some indication as to where we are at before a tricky run in October. Coventry are absolutely flying and got over 20k on the ground Friday night when they walloped Peterborough.

If we don't win at least one of the two games, two wins from the opening eleven league games simply isn't good enough for any manager/head coach at Championship level. Got to turn these draws into wins.

By the way, since smashing us off the park opening day, Hull have scored 1 goal and gained just 2 points from the 8 games since. Completely fallen off the rails, or was that an opportunity missed?
 
My other concern and you touch on it slightly here is that we've literally played 1 of the current top 6 in WBA.

Think this week's two tests will give us some indication as to where we are at before a tricky run in October. Coventry are absolutely flying and got over 20k on the ground Friday night when they walloped Peterborough.

If we don't win at least one of the two games, two wins from the opening eleven league games simply isn't good enough for any manager/head coach at Championship level. Got to turn these draws into wins.

By the way, since smashing us off the park opening day, Hull have scored 1 goal and gained just 2 points from the 8 games since. Completely fallen off the rails, or was that an opportunity missed?
Exactly. We’re doing alright but those first 3 games were a massively missed opportunity. I still think 21st will be a good achievement this season given our lack of goals. Gonna be a long season either way.
 
My other concern and you touch on it slightly here is that we've literally played 1 of the current top 6 in WBA.

Think this week's two tests will give us some indication as to where we are at before a tricky run in October. Coventry are absolutely flying and got over 20k on the ground Friday night when they walloped Peterborough.

If we don't win at least one of the two games, two wins from the opening eleven league games simply isn't good enough for any manager/head coach at Championship level. Got to turn these draws into wins.

By the way, since smashing us off the park opening day, Hull have scored 1 goal and gained just 2 points from the 8 games since. Completely fallen off the rails, or was that an opportunity missed?

Looking at it another way though we’ve actually played 6 sides in the top half and only 3 sides in the bottom half. In fact we’ve only played 2 of the bottom six.

So yes we’ve still got a lot of the better sides to come but we also have to play a lot of the weaker sides in the division too. We’ve spent a lot of time playing the mid table sides which we usually lose to
In the past.
 
Looking at it another way though we’ve actually played 6 sides in the top half and only 3 sides in the bottom half. In fact we’ve only played 2 of the bottom six.
I get that to a degree, but of those 6 sides in the top half we've played - we haven't won any of those games.

These next five games before we play Liverpool are crucial in my eyes. Simply got to start winning games against league opposition as currently it feels we've got away with it somewhat by beating three sides in lower divisions in a cup competition.
 
Wins will be at a premium with the current strike force !!
Barky the only one with a real change of pace has fallen off the planet it would appear !!!!
 
I get that to a degree, but of those 6 sides in the top half we've played - we haven't won any of those games.

These next five games before we play Liverpool are crucial in my eyes. Simply got to start winning games against league opposition as currently it feels we've got away with it somewhat by beating three sides in lower divisions in a cup competition.
for me Liverpool is a distraction we dont need right now, good for cash coming in , but imho nothing else
 
for me Liverpool is a distraction we dont need right now, good for cash coming in , but imho nothing else
Frankie should just tell the players that compared to our league fixtures it’s a nothing game and when it does come we’ll be playing their u23 team.
 
for me Liverpool is a distraction we dont need right now, good for cash coming in , but imho nothing else
Don't understand this attitude at all.

Football is about entertainment and winning things. We are in the last 16 of a cup competition, with a small hope of getting into a quarter final for the first time in most fans entire lives. This is a positive thing. Something that matters.

Statistically too this "distraction" you speak about with cup ties versus big Prem teams makes very little sense.

In 2019/20 leading up to the Man City game we W6 D2 L2 and after the 3-0 cup defeat we W4 D3 L1. No distraction before or after.

In 2014/15 we played Sheff Utd in the cup replay. Our form leading into that game was W0 D4 L3. But we beat Sheff Utd, pulled Man Utd in the next round and our league form was W12 D6 L1. No distraction whatsoever.

Football shouldn't be about chugging through League fixtures, hitting long balls playing the percentages, hoping to amass enough points to stay up. Whilst fielding weak teams in the cups so you go out as fast as possible.

All that is the actual distraction from what I suggested football should be about. Entertainment and winning things.
 
My other concern and you touch on it slightly here is that we've literally played 1 of the current top 6 in WBA.

Think this week's two tests will give us some indication as to where we are at before a tricky run in October. Coventry are absolutely flying and got over 20k on the ground Friday night when they walloped Peterborough.

If we don't win at least one of the two games, two wins from the opening eleven league games simply isn't good enough for any manager/head coach at Championship level. Got to turn these draws into wins.

By the way, since smashing us off the park opening day, Hull have scored 1 goal and gained just 2 points from the 8 games since. Completely fallen off the rails, or was that an opportunity missed?

I think you’ve done us a slight injustice there. Taking the league table into account after 9 games isn’t really a good indicator IMO because one win can take you up about 5 places.
Sheffield United for example on the league table are 12th but we all know the quality they have so a draw there was a good point.

Two wins in 11 admittidedly wouldn’t be great but hasn’t happened yet. It also includes the first 3 games where we were starting Rudd, Barky, Lindsay, Cunningham, Browne, Potts and Evans who right now don’t look like first team starters. Fulham in 17/18 only won 3 of their first 11 and went on to get promoted, likewise Barnsley last season took 7 games to get their first win but slowly worked their way into form with a solid structure and made the play offs.

The team has evolved considerably and Frankie has made mistakes but he is hopefully learning from them on the job. Since the change in personnel and system IMO with the wing backs bombing forward we’ve been quite good to watch. I personally feel a reason to be encouraged that we can have a good season!
 
In our 9 games (810 mins of football) so far we've been in the lead for a combined 127 minutes, been behind 118 mins and in a draw position for 565 mins.

We are generally good at keeping things tight. To be fair we were under AN too. Games largely hung on the fact who ever scored first, probably wouldn't lose.

That said, our away form of 3 points from 5 games certainly needs to improve. We seem far too content to aim to draw every away game.

And we've spent 0 minutes in the lead of those five away games.
 
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