Billing’s Performance

bournemouthsufc said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1762614560802902212

Still remains a frustratingly talented unique player who unfortunately I cannot see reaching his true potential.

His interview sounded like his playing style. The feeling I got from that was he was not that fussed about being out of the cup and enjoyed chilling whilst suspended.
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Not the best from Phil.


We don't really care about the FA Cup, if we had won we would have been in the Quarter Finals...or something.

We need to focus on the PL so our wages don't get cut, and we can live this ridiculously privileged life.

Our focus is now on the PL.

Off you go Billing, you've already said you don't challenge for headers, as was evident at last night's game.

If you don't give 100 per cent every game, you may as well fck up off the road to Portsmouth.

I was behind Billing last night, but not after that interview.

Foley rewarded him with a new contract, Billing rewarded us with complacency.
 
It’s not difficult to have the best passing accuracy stats when you only play simple passes and want to get rid of the ball.

His performance felt like that. But not in a Surman keeping the ball ticking kind of way.

This is where the stats don’t paint the best picture. I’m sure there will be a distance covered metric and he’d be right up there. But sprints at speed in comparison to the others who are trying to press? I can’t imagine he’s up there.

It’s not surprising that Scott is also being moaned about for his performance, he was playing alongside Billing and with a disjointed press it makes things very difficult for those around you.
 
He abdicated taking responsibility for taking that extra time direct free kick, perfectly positioned edge of the box, allowing Cook to inevitably put it over the bar. That's not acceptable considering his talent and Cook's inability to score.
 
Why does a defeat mean that we need to pick the bones for perceived faults in our favourite scapegoats?
 
bournemouthsufc said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1762614560802902212

Still remains a frustratingly talented unique player who unfortunately I cannot see reaching his true potential.

His interview sounded like his playing style. The feeling I got from that was he was not that fussed about being out of the cup and enjoyed chilling whilst suspended.
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I don't normally pay much attention to interviews but coming out after your three game suspension and saying it was nice to chill out and not think about football and that it's not the end of the world that we just got knocked out by a lower league team with 11 changes? Jesus. The guy wants out. Does he actually like football?
 
NWCherries98 said:
Can see that Billing is getting pelters across all forms of social media, on the forum, and as usual, in the ground. I thought he played really well, and was wondering if any of the stats or metrics would support this. So according to Whoscored, Billing:

- Had the highest overall match rating out of any of our players, with 7.64. Including Leicester, he was the 5th best player on the pitch going by this “score”.
- Won the most aerial duels (4), tied with Kerkez.
- Had the 4th highest pass accuracy (82%), which if you remove players that went off or came on earlier and played less minutes, is actually the second highest.
- Made the most tackles with 7.
- 4th most touches (so clearly not hiding, then).

Take or leave the statistics if you want to, but ignoring them doesn’t make them bullshit. It’s just the numbers of what went in in the game; it’s the truth. I don’t know what other sites there are to get some more detailed stats (@Matt Stevenson might know?), but I wouldn’t be surprised if he covered the most ground, too.

There was some bad crosses, a lack of effective shooting, and the press wasn’t quite as effective as it has been without him. He can do a lot better in terms of creating chances and goalscoring opportunities, on this side he was below par tonight. The whole team was pretty abject in this regard.

Having said that, considering it was 3 games without playing, and that he played the full 120 minutes, I thought he put a really good shift in. He’s not the reason we lost, and other than because he has a miserable face and it’s easy to do so, I have no idea why everyone’s focusing on his performance.

All of the usual suspects statistics (hiding, not winning headers, not putting effort in, not putting a tackle in) are objectively untrue. So other than being wasteful, which everyone was, what did he actually do wrong?
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I thought he played well too and his only issue was that he got into good positions but seems to have lost the confidence to have a shot.
 
I'm not a Billing hater at all, in fact I really rate him and think he gets a lot of unfair critics due to his 'style' similar to Pitman back in the day.

However,

Last night was a golden opportunity for him to take his chance and show why he should be in the first 11, especially as his last chance he was given resulted in a 3 game ban and he didn't take it.

It's not that he didn't try but playing that role for us means you have to deliver - whether that be by creating chances, having chances or creating space for others (something Kluivert is so good at) and it simply didn't happen last night.

Scott also didn't have the greatest game but he's young.

Compare both their performances to Lewis Cook who was fantastic again and you can see why we didn't create many clear cut chances despite dominating for large periods.
 
All the talk of him being a scapegoat misses the point. It was a team performance desperately lacking quality in and around the opposition box. Phil was the #10 creative fulcrum (and at times basically up front). Of course a lot of responsibility for the team's quality of end product is going to fall on him, along with post match spot light - that comes with playing that job.

You're not going to debrief a match in which we created dozens of decent openings without scoring and then question the goalkeeper or full back.
 
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I agree that it was surprising that he wasn't subbed. I thought Kleivert would come on for him in normal time as it looked like we needed a player like that in his position. But I think it's harsh to complain about his pressing, he just doesn't have the physique to cover 10 or 20 yards as quickly as someone like Cook or Klievert. He's a greyhound not a terrier.
 
Johnny Comelately said:
I agree that it was surprising that he wasn't subbed. I thought Kleivert would come on for him in normal time as it looked like we needed a player like that in his position. But I think it's harsh to complain about his pressing, he just doesn't have the physique to cover 10 or 20 yards as quickly as someone like Cook or Klievert. He's a greyhound not a terrier.
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I heard him called a 'bambi' a few times.
 
Not the best interview no, but as was the case with Smithy in the week, I would rather the players give us a true understanding of how they feel. Be honest and not cliched...

He did 'ok' in a game where he should have done a lot better, but you cannot single him out for being the reason we lost... He had 5 or 6 others around him that contributed to that fact just as much...

It was a disjointed, frantic, nervy at times performance... We're clearly lacking in some confidence and with a typical Cup game crowd, where 'maybe' there is an element of less patience and more assumption we should win, the atmosphere died off at a time when the fans should have got more behind them... BUT, that is a two-way thing, I get it...

Billing was clearly knackered towards the end, and you can't blame him for that... He put in a decent shift for the first 50 ish mins, then he drifted out the game... Sadly, that is what everyone remembers though
 
Billing played as well as most of our team last night.

There are certain players who are targets for a minority of our fans and going back the Big Man was one.

If as some have commented that comments were made during the game, now we know what Smith meant by not always enjoying playing football due to the abuse players get.
 
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Neil Dawson said:
Anyone watching that game and thinking Billing was the worst player on the pitch doesn’t understand football. Dango, Tavs, Kluivert, Scott and Faivre were all worse.

Some people feel the need to scapegoat players. Billing and Smith always have to be twice as good as the others to escape a battering.
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Billing's finishing and decision making in the final third was awful. Apparently he doesn't need to be twice as good as the others at that to avoid your lists of terrible can't-hit-a-barn-door signings in your multiple agenda posts that say the same thing though does he?
 
HamJDW said:
He abdicated taking responsibility for taking that extra time direct free kick, perfectly positioned edge of the box, allowing Cook to inevitably put it over the bar. That's not acceptable considering his talent and Cook's inability to score.
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The thing that annoyed me about that was that Kerkez had moved over to the “Keiffer Moore spot” and was unmarked, but nobody thought to recreate that Forest goal
 
If I'm allowed to say, I felt Dango (you always seem to know that he'll screw up the final touch, he'll surprise me one day I know) and Scott were poor (Scott did do a lot of recovery work at the back but could have done better with a chance he had in the first half).
Tavernier as we know is struggling at the moment. I can't for the life of me see what Faivre brings to the team.
Phil Bill, I realise that people think he doesn't try or care but I think he's a class player. A lot to ask him to play for 120 minutes after missing 3 matches.
 
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