Bolton 0-2 Brighton

Wanderlust, just answer me this, how is it not the managers fault that he changed the defence that had kept clean sheets in recent weeks? why in fact try to accomodate Hutton at the expense of one of our own? there was absolutely no need to change anything defensively, but Freedman felt he needed to.

doffcocker wrote:

wanderlust wrote:It's starting to sound like nobody is prepared to accept that we have a poor squad just to have a moan about the manager.
The same posters seem to be jumping on to one anti-manager bandwagon after another.
First it was the "we were pre-season favourites to go up" i.e. the squad is quality so the manager must be crap. The squad is not quality and if it were, then you can't then argue that the players brought into the team are not good enough. If the squad was quality then there shouldn't be any complaints about "tinkering".
Then it was the system - play 442 and all our problems will be solved. Yesterday showed that quality teams can easily play around it.

Whatever system he plays it's up to the players to deliver and very few have done consistently this season - in fact I can think of one who has performed well every game and that includes Juke, Danns and Mason.

Sooner or later it will be recognised that we have an average squad at best and that is by far and away the main reason we are where we are - not the manager.

Bring on the summer.

I don't know about any of that.

My anti-Freedman argument in it's most condensed form is that we could have picked up in August where we left off in May, but Dougie in his innate stubbornness wanted things doing differently.

Some people seem to think he's had to build this team on a shoestring. Do you think the average Championship club can attract players of Beckford's, Spearing's, Baptiste's, Medo's calibre? Liam Trotter's a highly respected player at this level (for whatever reason), I can't imagine that signing costing us a pittance. West Ham wanted Rob Hall to stay, yet we persuaded him to drop down a division and sign a three year contract. Even the money we've spent on loan signings may be collectively more than a lot of clubs could afford.
There's a number of managers under the same transfer market constraints as Dougie that have managed to put together a well-balanced team.

If they're such good players why complain about using them when the manager calls upon them to do a job for us - and call it "tinkering"? I believe Dougie fully intended to pick up where we left off but the performances were simply not good enough. The core of the team was pretty much the same, but quite a few who'd done OK last season like Eagles, Lee and Cavies just haven't hacked it this year. I'd include Spearing in that list - his passing has been atrocious and every time he misplaces a pass we turn over possession and initiative. 
Reputations mean nothing when the game gets underway and these players have done little to preserve their reputations when playing for us this season.
Unless there's a dramatic improvement in performance and consistency there are only a few that I'd be bothered about losing in the summer.

Wanderlust, Liam Trotter is bereft of confidence at the moment, he is hiding on the field and has lost it completely. He was trundling around the field achieving absolutely nothing, as had been the case in all his appearances for us so far. Everybody around me in the North Stand could see it and was calling for him to be subbed from about 20 mins in. When Duggie finally hooked him after 50 mins there was a loud cheer and a massive sigh of relief from everyone around me.
Danns has been excellent lately,especially in the 3 consecutive victories before the Derby match. Even if he has an off day you at least know he's going to put a massive shift in,he always works his socks off.
The last thing I am saying is we have a great squad, we don't, but given the team and Dann's performances in that brilliant little spell we had what possible justification is there for dropping Danns, changing a winning team and playing a shell shocked Trotter. All people are saying is they are fed up of his consistent tinkering when things seem to be going well for once.

Lusty as much as I generally respect your posts (even the ones I disagree with) I feel here you're baying at the moon pal.

wanderlust wrote:It's starting to sound like nobody is prepared to accept that we have a poor squad just to have a moan about the manager.

We do have a poor squad, so when you stumble upon a winning team you fucking well stick to it.

Hip Priest wrote:Wanderlust, Liam Trotter is bereft of confidence at the moment, he is hiding on the field and has lost it completely. He was trundling around the field achieving absolutely nothing, as had been the case in all his appearances for us so far. Everybody around me in the North Stand could see it and was calling for him to be subbed from about 20 mins in. When Duggie finally hooked him after 50 mins there was a loud cheer and a massive sigh of relief from everyone around me.
Danns has been excellent lately,especially in the 3 consecutive victories before the Derby match. Even if he has an off day you at least know he's going to put a massive shift in,he always works his socks off.
The last thing I am saying is we have a great squad, we don't, but given the team and Dann's performances in that brilliant little spell we had what possible justification is there for dropping Danns, changing a winning team and playing a shell shocked Trotter. All people are saying is they are fed up of his consistent tinkering when things seem to be going well for once.

i agree with this 100%  

I agree that if you have a winning team and everyone is fit and training well you shouldn't change it, but..
The change to the back four worked - our defence was about the only part of the team that played well.
Mavies being injured was unfortunate, so change was necessary and whoever comes in should be capable of doing a job.
And I don't know why Danns didn't start. Either he had a slight knock so Dougie didn't want to risk him from the off, Trotter was brilliant in training and earned a place that ultimately he didn't justify, or some other reason that is yet to come to light.
Whatever the reason, every team needs to be able to give fringe players hope of a shot so they stay motivated, the manager should be able to depend upon them and it can't be automatically assumed that it was tinkering for the sake of it as we just don't know what was behind it.
Point I'm making is that there are already threads upon threads based entirely on an assumption that is based on zero information.