WTF has gone wrong..?

As it turns out... Losing wasn’t the worst thing tonight... shipping 4 goals was...

We could have lost that 0-1 and still moved out the bottom 3 (pending Chelsea doing WHU by a few)...

Conceding 4 was criminal in so many ways tonight
 
JIMNNINA said:
Complacency from the finish to last season, the management team has hit the wall and run out of motivation of the players.
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This .
Everyone convincing themselves that this is our “ best ever squad “
Yet we’ve played poorly from the second half of last season and all of this , barring a handful of matches .
Every week “ just one of those games , we’ll be alright “ on and on .....
Something has gone seriously awry on and off the pitch ....
 
This has been on the cards for 18 months now, and the seeds sown long before that.

How many players have we signed that barely made the squad and/or are no longer with us? A criminal waste of money and development time has bought us to this point.

Brad Smith, Ibe, Solanke, even Rhoys f***ing Wiggins to name but a few - a waste of money or just indicating a lack of ideas. We sat on out promotion squad for too long and didn't start the long evolution process quickly enough adding quality every now and then to gradually improve - instead we stagnated and in the main recruited backup or squad players.

Lack of quality, depth and competition means we're now over the tipping point.
 
It’s very easy slate things by picking the poor signings out when you ignore the good signings...

Don’t get me wrong, we have made some bad signings but doesn’t everyone??

We’ve also made some very good signings that very soon will help us out of a possible financial meltdown...

I’m not defending the current state of affairs as we are a shambles on the field... but we have some very good players out there that for some reason are underperforming in a big way...

Ake, Lerma, Brooks Wilson and King, if I’m not mistaken were signed collectively for around £50-55m... Ake will potentially make most of that back on his own, and the other ‘good signings’ could easily make us another £40-60m... So not all bad signings...

Then there is Kelly, Mepham, Stacey, Danjuma, Billing etc.

Somewhere, something just isn’t working and has resulted in the turgid sh*te we are now witnessing...
 
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King was signed 5 years ago, Wilson 6 - bit of a stretch of we're needing to go back that far to pick out decent signings

Whos pushing them on now? Surridge? Solanke? Ibe? Defoe? Afobe? Mousset?.... Rantie? Tomlin? Lets get Grabban back (again) and try another go.

We have Ake solid in defence, but whos pushing Cook (signed 2012) for a place? Who can play left/right back or replace Smith who spends half a season injured? I don't even know what our first choice back line is at the moment but I expect it'll still feature Francis and/or Daniels when fit.

We've signed several defenders recently that barely play... Kelly, Stacey, Mepham, Rico not to mention others that have come and gone like Mings, B.Smith and the cornerstone of any top flight defence, Marc Wilson.

I don't expect every signing to be an Ake or a Brooks, but I don't expect the chunk of our signings to barely feature and not challenge the starting 11 from the outset either...
 
The biggest error hasn’t been the players we’ve brought in, it’s who we have failed to move on. Especially when those players values were at the top of the market.

In particular I’m thinking of King, Wilson and Fraser. All should have gone 12 months or more ago. Wilson certainly should never have been given that huge contract.

Being forced to pick players who are going through the motions doesn’t just mean you have passengers on the pitch, it drags the rest of the group down, brings dressing disharmony and means we didn’t have the funds to bring fresh blood in when truly needed.
 
AFCBade said:
Everton and Man City did the same as us, haven’t done badly in the restart have they?
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Our players surely came back fit enough physically ( we track all stats in training ), the problem seems to be that mentally many of them are still in holiday....sorry...LOCKDOWN mode ! To me that seems obvious.
 
thegazzyb said:
Our players surely came back fit enough physically ( we track all stats in training ), the problem seems to be that mentally many of them are still in holiday....sorry...LOCKDOWN mode ! To me that seems obvious.
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I think mentally they look shot, too frightened to attack and not playing with the feeedom that, for example, Newcastle had. There’s a few in the team that lack that stomach for a relegation scrap so hard to overcame those barriers. Time to pick fighters and not on ability on paper.
 
AFCBade said:
I think mentally they look shot, too frightened to attack and not playing with the feeedom that, for example, Newcastle had. There’s a few in the team that lack that stomach for a relegation scrap so hard to overcame those barriers. Time to pick fighters and not on ability on paper.
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Sometimes I think the players look overcoached. It’s as if there are certain phases of play when some players are allowed to attack and some where they aren’t. Since it’s against their natural instincts, by the time they have processed what they are and aren’t allowed to do in each situation, all momentum is lost and the correct decision is irrelevant.
 
It is so very disappointing. I was unbelievably eager for June 20th ......... all the anticipation of our games and scoreboard watching the rest of the bottom six for the next 5 weeks. I must confess to having a tear in the corner of my eye when I saw the boys back on the pitched before Palace.

It has crashed and burned exceptionally quickly, hasn't it. I have read most of the posts on here and elsewhere hoping to find the definitive answer. But all I come back to is that, in November 2018, we were 20 points for 10 matches and just missed taking something from Man United. Since then ......... pfffft. So maybe "exceptionally quickly" is incorrect.

I look at the math with six games remaining and say it's still there to be had. But not sure I can make myself believe it.
 
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