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Andre Villas-Boas - Head Coach

AVB has done a very good job so far IMO. We are yet to properly click (don't think this would have happened yet even without injuries). But of course different injuries have different importances. Kaboul, Dembele and Adebayor have missed a lot of games and they are the spine of our team. Yet we have still managed to win a fair amount of games and if we hadn't collapsed late on so many times might well be up their with the Manchester clubs again. This isn't solely due to a lack of mentality, if we had our top players every game we would have had more 2 goal leads instead of 1 goal leads that have slipped away time and time again.

I expect us to hit a purple patch for a few games between now and the end of the year. As long as we don't also hit a patch of awful form I think we will definitely come 4th. AVB isn't a fool like Harry, he will/has been rotating so hopefully we wont run out of steam. EDIT: Before someone slates me, that isn't to say Harry was a fool, just that it was incredibly foolish to refuse to rotate the squad.
 
There's absolutley no excuse to be outplayed by Norwich, Wigan, WBA and to some extent Liverpool at home. With the group of players we have in the squad we shouldn't be letting that happen (Modric or no Modric).

Those 4 games we looked utter turd water (minus about the first 35 mins vs WBA where we looked ok). Against QPR, West Sham and Villa we looked ok for one half, against chelski it was ok in patches, and against swansea we looked good. That's what i hope we improve on.
 
Pandy said:
AVB has done a very good job so far IMO. We are yet to properly click (don't think this would have happened yet even without injuries). But of course different injuries have different importances. Kaboul, Dembele and Adebayor have missed a lot of games and they are the spine of our team. Yet we have still managed to win a fair amount of games and if we hadn't collapsed late on so many times might well be up their with the Manchester clubs again. This isn't solely due to a lack of mentality, if we had our top players every game we would have had more 2 goal leads instead of 1 goal leads that have slipped away time and time again.

I expect us to hit a purple patch for a few games between now and the end of the year. As long as we don't also hit a patch of awful form I think we will definitely come 4th. AVB isn't a fool like Harry, he will/has been rotating so hopefully we wont run out of steam. EDIT: Before someone slates me, that isn't to say Harry was a fool, just that it was incredibly foolish to refuse to rotate the squad.
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I don't get the bit about rotation tbh. Well i get it regarding Parker for maybe sandro but who else could he have possibly rotated that would have made a difference?
 
Kingdawson said:
There's absolutley no excuse to be outplayed by Norwich, Wigan, WBA and to some extent Liverpool at home. With the group of players we have in the squad we shouldn't be letting that happen (Modric or no Modric).

Those 4 games we looked utter turd water (minus about the first 35 mins vs WBA where we looked ok). Against QPR, West Sham and Villa we looked ok for one half, against chelski it was ok in patches, and against swansea we looked good. That's what i hope we improve on.
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tickle my balls with a feather. The same rules applied for the previous manager and he got deserved stick when we lost to Norwich last season.
 
Jurgen the German said:
tickle my balls with a feather. The same rules applied for the previous manager and he got deserved stick when we lost to Norwich last season.
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But AVB hasn't got the tools Redknapp had. Surely anybody can see that missing Modric, Parker, VDV and King is going to impact any team. Not to mention that we've missed other key players this season for long periods through injury. AVB hasn't had the chance to field his strongest XI once. Redknapp had that luxury and inherited a team that were familiar with each other whereas this is a team that is clearly in transition with a new manager. Yet we are still 4th. I'd say we are exceeding expectations right now by some way, there were people on here even talking about 8th place before the season started. Give AVB 2 seasons and by that time you can make a proper judgement.....
 
harr1984 said:
But AVB hasn't got the tools Redknapp had. Surely anybody can see that missing Modric, Parker, VDV and King is going to impact any team. Not to mention that we've missed other key players this season for long periods through injury. AVB hasn't had the chance to field his strongest XI once. Redknapp had that luxury and inherited a team that were familiar with each other whereas this is a team that is clearly in transition with a new manager. Yet we are still 4th. I'd say we are exceeding expectations right now by some way, there were people on here even talking about 8th place before the season started. Give AVB 2 seasons and by that time you can make a proper judgement.....
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I hear you, we've lost players, but are you saying that means we still aren't good enough to be beating Norwich, WBA and Wigan at home? We were outplayed for large parts of each game. Even with all the players we've lost, were a top 4 contender and a top 6 side at worst, were not some struggling midtable team. As for giving him two seasons, I agree, but that doesn't mean we should just brush it off when we get outplayed at home by inferior teams.
 
One more thing, I am not saying for one minute that I'm unhappy with our league position, I'm very pleased. And I accept fully that AVB needs time to mould his own team. It's not necessarily a bad thing to win when you play badly, but my biggest worry is that we can't sustain this for an entire season as I think Arsenal will almost certainly pick up the pace in the second half of the season.
 
harr1984 said:
But AVB hasn't got the tools Redknapp had. Surely anybody can see that missing Modric, Parker, VDV and King is going to impact any team. Not to mention that we've missed other key players this season for long periods through injury. AVB hasn't had the chance to field his strongest XI once. Redknapp had that luxury and inherited a team that were familiar with each other whereas this is a team that is clearly in transition with a new manager. Yet we are still 4th. I'd say we are exceeding expectations right now by some way, there were people on here even talking about 8th place before the season started. Give AVB 2 seasons and by that time you can make a proper judgement.....
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Forget Harry for a minute as it's detracting from the overall point.

The group of players that we currently have has enough quality to produce far better performances then it's currently done at home. We have superior players than most the opposition i have listed so there's no excuse to produce turd water performances and get tactically outsmarted.
 
Home performances are improving with every game so I think it's easy enough to just put it down to a team and a new manager getting used to eachother. Whether your team has better individuals or not, if they're not a team then you're going to struggle.
 
All fair comments. But anyone can beat anyone in this league,there's no easy games and either all of the other top sides have struggled against these teams hence why we're around the top of the league still or we have been doing a hell of a lot better against the better teams so either way....does it really matter who we've lost or been outplayed for large parts by? If this is the worst we have to complain about then I think we're doing well. Even though I wanted AVB I still feared we would be doing a lot worse than we have been....
 
Kingdawson said:
Forget Harry for a minute as it's detracting from the overall point.

The group of players that we currently have has enough quality to produce far better performances then it's currently done at home. We have superior players than most the opposition i have listed so there's no excuse to produce turd water performances and get tactically outsmarted.
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Not when you're trying to integrate a new playing style/system. It takes time I'm afraid, if you haven't got the patience to give the team such time then fair enough....
 
Kingdawson said:
Forget Harry for a minute as it's detracting from the overall point.

The group of players that we currently have has enough quality to produce far better performances then it's currently done at home. We have superior players than most the opposition i have listed so there's no excuse to produce turd water performances and get tactically outsmarted.
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Not when you're trying to integrate a new playing style/system. It takes time I'm afraid, if you haven't got the patience to give the team such time then fair enough....
 
harr1984 said:
All fair comments. But anyone can beat anyone in this league,there's no easy games and either all of the other top sides have struggled against these teams hence why we're around the top of the league still or we have been doing a hell of a lot better against the better teams so either way....does it really matter who we've lost or been outplayed for large parts by? If this is the worst we have to complain about then I think we're doing well. Even though I wanted AVB I still feared we would be doing a lot worse than we have been....
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Yes mate it matters..of course it matters. it's a problem when you play 9 home games (8 against lesser teams) and you perform strongly in 1 of them (and patches in a few other ones) and it's also a problem that we can't play well for the whole match and instead perform for one half. once or twice you can put it down to an off day but more then there's issues there.
 
Kingdawson said:
Yes mate it matters..of course it matters. it's a problem when you play 9 home games (8 against lesser teams) and you perform strongly in 1 of them (and patches in a few other ones) and it's also a problem that we can't play well for the whole match and instead perform for one half. once or twice you can put it down to an off day but more then there's issues there.
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it's almost as though we have had an inconsistent line up with many changes form the side we were so used to playing with the past couple of seasons :-k
 
harr1984 said:
Not when you're trying to integrate a new playing style/system. It takes time I'm afraid, if you haven't got the patience to give the team such time then fair enough....
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Liverpool have a new manager, they have had to adjust to a new system, but they have still played well in most games this season. I'm not saying I would swap our results for theirs, but while granted a new manager deserves time, I don't think it's asking a great deal for the performances to be improved.
 
harr1984 said:
Not when you're trying to integrate a new playing style/system. It takes time I'm afraid, if you haven't got the patience to give the team such time then fair enough....
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The formation is fundamentally the same as last season.

Anyway that's an excuse imo as the opposition we played against that outplayed us are also doing the same damn thing.

WBA = New manager and new system.
Norwich = New manager and new system.
Liverpool = new manager and new system.
Wigan = Same manager but didn't deploy that 3 at the back tactic they used for large parts of last season.


If you can't see that it's something more than that then that's your choice.
 
Kingdawson said:
Yes mate it matters..of course it matters. it's a problem when you play 9 home games (8 against lesser teams) and you perform strongly in 1 of them (and patches in a few other ones) and it's also a problem that we can't play well for the whole match and instead perform for one half. once or twice you can put it down to an off day but more then there's issues there.
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If this is the case this time next season when AVB has had sufficient time and opportunity to get in his own players, and have clearly stamped his own style of play which we have seen in patches this season then I will agree with you. But it's pointless debating about, you obviously have a different tolerance level to me so I'm just going to remain content that I'm see small improvements in general week by week. Oh, and we're fourth level on points with Chelsea (yes, they have a game in hand but still). It's not all bad....
 
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