Rodgers - Success? Failure? How long?

[Hoop Blah]

Look back at the games we've had and you can see we should have picked up more against Forest, Swansea, Peterborough and Cardiff at least, arguably Sheff U could be added to that. I'm not saying you will always pick up points when you should or that we should expect that. But in 4 of our 8 games we should and could have got a better result without a great deal of difficulty. That would double our points, not even considering we should actually have beaten not drawn against P'boro and maybe even Cardiff rather than losing.

When you say we should have done better than we did in those games , are you talking about "on paper" or how we actually played in the games? If its the latter then surely it suggests the performances were better than the results we got.

Neither of those are quite what I mean over all 4/5 games.

Forest:- Passed them off the pitch and restricted them to very few decent chances. It's hard to score from inside your own half though. Which is where we were far too happy to spend most of our time on the ball.
Swansea:- This one is more on paper. They've scored 3 goals this season ffs. I didn't see the game, but it certainly sounded (from reports on here and the radio) that we were poor against a pretty mediocre team.
Peterborough:- This one is obvious. 2-0 up at half time against a team yet to win, having been the better team. We threw it away completely. Yet the result was thoroughly deserved based on the performance.
Cardiff:- Again, wasn't there but from here and the radio commentary we sounded the team more in control and should have scored several. Instead we let them catch us out against the run of play. I'm not sure you could say we deserved to win, or draw, but we shouldn't have lost.
Sheffield Utd:- Not there again, but the accounts sound like we were very good in the first half but let them back into it once they sussed our rather one dimensional system and had no counter to their play.Although give the comparative form it's hard to argue that we should have got something out of this one.

Wasn’t that Visions point Ian, that you’ve been slagging off the manager and the teams performance but at the same time highlighting the fact that we’ve nearly been a lot more successful and could/should’ve got more out of a number of games.

Nearly obviously isn’t quite good enough, but it does show that we’re not as far off being a reasonable side as many on here seem to think.

[russyb]

i have to agree, you have to think back to the amount of saves donnie and cardiff keepers had to make, good saves too. Donnie sat the team back for the whole game which made it difficult, but against cardiff we were the better team and it could have been different. its slim margins and we are almost there.

[Ian Royal]

I thought the point was that either I was saying:
on paper we should be winning or gettign better results which is completely worthless as football isn't played on paper.
Or that
our performances warranted better results which shows that we are likely to start picking them up .

My actual point is slightly different and more subtle than that.
Our performances did not warrant better results, but showed that we are capable of performances that should warrant better results. And that a significant part of the problem in reaching those performances that would get us better results is Rodgers' management.

Oh and I'd dispute slagging off. My criticism has largely been focused on what is being done wrong and what could be done to improve it.

[Hoop Blah]

That might be right if we don't actually get the ball forwards quite quickly at times, albeit with more passes than a route 1 punt up the pitch.

When teams come and defend deep and in numbers you also have to have the ability to keep the ball and pass it around a bit to draw a team out of their shape and create a space to attack into.

Agreed, so far we haven't quite mastered the art of creating and exploiting that space and we probably haven' made the most of the likes of Sigurdsson and Matejovsky who are more adept at doing so, but that doesn't mean it's not a necessary development of our play.

We did the exact opposite under Coppell since Christmas and suffered from the same problem but did so with better players.

Don't forget that at the moment we also don't have anyone who is consistently able to take his man on, beat him, and deliver a half decent ball into the box. Any team in any formation needs someone who can take an opposition out of the game to create the space.

[Terminal Boardom]

Just watch the number of times, and the effort expended, in finding space by players in front of the ball carrier. Have a look and see how many options exist for the player in possession IN THE OPPONENTS HALF to find a team mate with a pass - either forward or sideways. Also look and see how quickly and accurately we move the ball and thus move our opponents around to create that half yard which can lead to an effort on goal.

I hope that tomorrow is not a long wait.

[SouthDownsRoyal]

OUT NOW - Never wanted him, wrong man.