Mikey10
Jimmy Neighbour
This is my worry, I think that every time there has been a dip in form before, we’ve always bounced back. But I also feel like Poch has always been in control - like we dip a little bit pre Christmas usually, and in the second half of the season we are usually firing. I feel like he is prepared for that.
But this is really bad and I don’t think Poch is in control or has any obvious answers. I think the problem is we are coming to the end of a cycle with a lot of players at this club and they know it. It takes a lot of concentration to play under Poch, and to be a top consistent player generally, and too many players are switching off at crucial moments. It’s the players whos’ futures must be most up in the air that are making the mistakes in the League for me. Rose is on the way down. Trippier and Aurier. Aldeweireld getting beaten at Burnley. Admittedly Sanchez against Arsenal doesn’t fall into this category but it was still a stupid mistake then too.
I just don’t know what the answer is. And I struggle to think of a team whose form dipped at a crucial point in the season and still recovered in time. And I think the whole ‘no one goes, no one comes in’ thing at the start of the season, we reaped the benefits of that clarity for a bit. We got better versions of Toby and Rose than we had before, and it served to reinvigorate a bit. But now I think a lot of these players know they might not be around, and there is some weird complacency creeping into the squad. The mission just doesn’t matter anymore.
The only thing I could think that Poch could do is to play the players he knows are gonna be here next season. So that means giving KWP a run. That means Davies in the team. That means Son, not a Moura that has been hit or miss. I think he was kind of doing that today with the selection, and it looked like it was working. But I think sometimes the system and the coaching makes it too easy for the players, and they fail to hold up their end of the bargain which is to execute on it. Sloppy, complacent, stupid mistakes.
Very, very good post. Agree with almost all of it.