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Guglielmo Vicario

Difficult to write this, because I want to support our players as much as possible, but the keeper issue is now impossible to ignore. I was at the Lane for the first time this season against West Ham and Dortmund this week, and felt really sad to see that Vic has stopped greeting supporters after coming our for the second half - in the North Stand where I was sitting. Not even clapping to those of us behind the goal to say hello, I feel that's an extremely bad sign - a lack of confidence and a lack of perceived support, by him, which feed into each other. I'm not sure if he interacts with the supporters in the South Stand during the warm-up, could not see that, but my guess is that the vibe is very different to, say, a year ago. The booing when he was on the ball looking for a pass did not help of course.

Not getting to the ball for the West Ham corner in injury time was not unexpected, it is just that opposition teams have not singled him out as much for physical pressure in the last four months or so - or that our defenders have done better to protect him. But it continues to eat away at him, and at our defence. And then he keeps trying to compensate for this by shouting and gesturing wildly throughout the game. In short, I feel that the goalkeeper does not provide enough support for the defenders (much more than the other way around). A good PL goalkeeper would have come for the ball today, for the first Burnley goal, in the six-yard box. And because VDV and Romero know he will not come for these balls, they are forced to defend too close to our goal, which is not playing to their strengths.

Much of this is old news, and it was long compensated for by excellent shot stopping. Bilbao was emblematic of this: flapping to force VDV to save on the line acrobatically, before bailing us out by getting to the Shaw header in injury time. But how many points has he won for us this season? I really struggle to think of games where he did. Monaco away comes to mind - and that may well be an important point on Wednesday. Perhaps there are more, but I cannot remember them. I believe that Kinsky can become pretty good, and maybe he deserves a chance now, but I think it's unlikely that Frank or his successor will gamble on him long-term. So this summer, getting a more commanding goalkeeper, with a more commanding presence in the box, would be at the very top of my list. I think that might solve many of our defensive problems.
 
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Hotspur75 said:
Difficult to write this, because I want to support our players as much as possible, but the keeper issue is now impossible to ignore. I was at the Lane for the first time this season against West Ham and Dortmund this week, and felt really sad to see that Vic has stopped greeting supporters after coming our for the second half - in the North Stand where I was sitting. Not even clapping to those of us behind the goal to say hello, I feel that's an extremely bad sign - a lack of confidence and a lack of perceived support, by him, which feed into each other. I'm not sure if he interacts with the supporters in the South Stand during the warm-up, could not see that, but my guess is that the vibe is very different to, say, a year ago. The booing when he was on the ball looking for a pass did not help of course.

Not getting to the ball for the West Ham corner in injury time was not unexpected, it is just that opposition teams have not singled him out as much for physical pressure in the last four months or so - or that our defenders have done better to protect him. But it continues to eat away at him, and at our defence. And then he keeps trying to compensate for this by shouting and gesturing wildly throughout the game. In short, I feel that the goalkeeper does not provide enough support for the defenders (much more than the other way around). A good PL goalkeeper would have come for the ball today, for the first Burnley goal, in the six-yard box. And because VDV and Romero know he will not come for these balls, they are forced to defend too close to our goal, which is not playing to their strengths.

Much of this is old news, and it was long compensated for by excellent shot stopping. Bilbao was emblematic of this: flapping to force VDV to save on the line acrobatically, before bailing us out by getting to the Shaw header in injury time. But how many points has he won for us this season? I really struggle to think of games where he did. Monaco away comes to mind - and that may well be an important point on Wednesday. Perhaps there are more, but I cannot remember them. I believe that Kinsky can become pretty good, and maybe he deserves a chance now, but I think it's unlikely that Frank or his successor will gamble on him long-term. So this summer, getting a more commanding goalkeeper, with a more commanding presence in the box, would be at the very top of my list. I think that might solve many of our defensive problems.
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You need to have a calming influence behind you and a very strong communicator who is giving your great advice in the moment. I have a feeling this might be another big flaw with Vic unfortunately. It's not about being shouty either. Hugo had a perfect balance with this area and you can see why he became the clubs real leader.

I don't know whether we find this, and the big things you talk about obviously. We need to though.
 
I've never seen him diffuse a situation

A mistake will happen, instead of calming everyone down, getting us in position and regrouped, he's marching off somewhere shouting and waving at someone.
 
Hotspur75 said:
Difficult to write this, because I want to support our players as much as possible, but the keeper issue is now impossible to ignore. I was at the Lane for the first time this season against West Ham and Dortmund this week, and felt really sad to see that Vic has stopped greeting supporters after coming our for the second half - in the North Stand where I was sitting. Not even clapping to those of us behind the goal to say hello, I feel that's an extremely bad sign - a lack of confidence and a lack of perceived support, by him, which feed into each other. I'm not sure if he interacts with the supporters in the South Stand during the warm-up, could not see that, but my guess is that the vibe is very different to, say, a year ago. The booing when he was on the ball looking for a pass did not help of course.

Not getting to the ball for the West Ham corner in injury time was not unexpected, it is just that opposition teams have not singled him out as much for physical pressure in the last four months or so - or that our defenders have done better to protect him. But it continues to eat away at him, and at our defence. And then he keeps trying to compensate for this by shouting and gesturing wildly throughout the game. In short, I feel that the goalkeeper does not provide enough support for the defenders (much more than the other way around). A good PL goalkeeper would have come for the ball today, for the first Burnley goal, in the six-yard box. And because VDV and Romero know he will not come for these balls, they are forced to defend too close to our goal, which is not playing to their strengths.

Much of this is old news, and it was long compensated for by excellent shot stopping. Bilbao was emblematic of this: flapping to force VDV to save on the line acrobatically, before bailing us out by getting to the Shaw header in injury time. But how many points has he won for us this season? I really struggle to think of games where he did. Monaco away comes to mind - and that may well be an important point on Wednesday. Perhaps there are more, but I cannot remember them. I believe that Kinsky can become pretty good, and maybe he deserves a chance now, but I think it's unlikely that Frank or his successor will gamble on him long-term. So this summer, getting a more commanding goalkeeper, with a more commanding presence in the box, would be at the very top of my list. I think that might solve many of our defensive problems.
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I'm not his biggest fan and I agree with much of what you say, but the EL final I don't think that was a flap, Bentancur "fouls" him. I find it difficult to blame Vic for that one.
 
Can but dream that Vicario had anywhere near this level of ball control, let alone being able to pass the ball like Neuer.

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thfcsteff said:
How poor is our recruitment that the guy we brought in is now not considered good enough to step up.
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Who’d have thought that years of speculating on cheap(ish) youngsters from lesser leagues (in the vain hope that one of them is eventually going to develop into a Modric level superstar) instead of using that new stadium revenue to splash out on PL proven players (who’d immediately improve the first team) would put us into a negative spiral that spans across multiple managers!
 
I am/was in the minority in thinking Big Vic wasn't a big problem, and he was just out of form and playing behind an ever changing defence. Unfortunately we need to try and upgrade on him as players look like they have lost confidence in him, and the uncertainty he creates permeates through the whole team. His shot stopping no longer makes up for his other deficiencies, and his reputation (unfair or not) at being weak at set-pieces makes him an easy target at corners for the opponents, and for refs to not make a decision in his favour.

Henderson at Palace would be my choice
 
glorygloryeze said:
How did he play vs Burnley on Saturday? I assume worse than normal given the thread bump??
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Rooted to his line for the first goal (a ball delivered to edge of 6 yard area, where Vic's starting position as the ball was crossed was about half the distance compared to Burnley's scorer. For their second goal he did his standard thing of pushing the ball back out towards the centre of the penalty area thus making it likely that they would have a decent chance from the rebound.
 
His inability to get the ball out wide from a save or block is school levels. Its like the first thing you teach, for me his movements in those save are overly dramatic to the point he doesn't have stability to do the fundementals.

Always manages to clear it down the pipe of an attacker
 
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