BFT ???????????????????????????????????????????

[WoodleyRoyal]

I thought Barrett was pretty poor - didn't link up with Richards or Puscas at all and looked out of his depth. Puscas was totally isolated and looks like he's regretting being here but he did show some fight - there was a decent chase of a lost cause which he won towards the end of the first half.

Swift's 2nd booking very harsh for me and we were destined to lose from then on. Not sure where all the Meite plaudits are coming from - totally anonymous and isn't a winger.

What an unbelievably good player Harry Arter is.

Oh you went to the game? Assume you’ll be doing the write up then on the tilehurst end!

[Hound]

I keep thinking we are living the same season year on year, managers change but performances don`t, just short of 50% losing record for the last 28 games at home with only 9 wins in that time, not easy being a fan of this lot is it?

Since McDermott took us up we've won less than 10 home games every season bar one.

Exclude that and our record is:
P139, W42, D46, L51, F168, A175, GD -7, ppg 1.24, w% 30, D% 33, L% 37

It's been a God awful best part of a decade.

It’s amazing anybody turns up given those stats. For many years under Pards, SC and Brian. The Mad stad was bit of a fortress. Now it’s just a great day out for away fans and we only charge them 20 quid for the pleasure of rubbing our noses in it. For the last four seasons I am going to games expecting to lose once we go a goal down I just sit there unable to raise any enthusiasm and except the inevitable defeat.

Are those stats inc Stam’s season when we were strong at home?

If so, that is absolutely shocking for the rest of the seasons

[windermereROYAL]

Since McDermott took us up we've won less than 10 home games every season bar one.

Exclude that and our record is:
P139, W42, D46, L51, F168, A175, GD -7, ppg 1.24, w% 30, D% 33, L% 37

It's been a God awful best part of a decade.

It’s amazing anybody turns up given those stats. For many years under Pards, SC and Brian. The Mad stad was bit of a fortress. Now it’s just a great day out for away fans and we only charge them 20 quid for the pleasure of rubbing our noses in it. For the last four seasons I am going to games expecting to lose once we go a goal down I just sit there unable to raise any enthusiasm and except the inevitable defeat.

Are those stats inc Stam’s season when we were strong at home?

If so, that is absolutely shocking for the rest of the seasons

Don`t think so, that season excluded.

[Hound]

It’s amazing anybody turns up given those stats. For many years under Pards, SC and Brian. The Mad stad was bit of a fortress. Now it’s just a great day out for away fans and we only charge them 20 quid for the pleasure of rubbing our noses in it. For the last four seasons I am going to games expecting to lose once we go a goal down I just sit there unable to raise any enthusiasm and except the inevitable defeat.

Are those stats inc Stam’s season when we were strong at home?

If so, that is absolutely shocking for the rest of the seasons

Don`t think so, that season excluded.

ah right, yeah I get it now.

[3points]

Didn't make the game last night, but at one down and reduced to 10 men against a good side, Gomes should have settled for damage limitation imho. Take Barrett off and replace with Pele, drop Meite deeper & wide right, Ejaria to the left of midfield and leave Puscas on his own. Replace Puscas after an hour or so with Boye.

I reckon Gomes has about 4 more games. I've grown to like the guy (wasn't a fan on appointment) but the key thing for me is a lack of progress being shown (in fact the complete opposite). For me, it is that which will mean he loses his job.

Gomes track record does seem to suggest he's not known for a defensive set up of his teams, which is plain to see. The high positions of the full backs is really killing us. So many goals so far this season have come from teams exploiting the space behind the full back and the centre back not getting across quick enough. One thing Joey was very good at under Stam was filling in between the centre backs when they split wide. Neither Pele nor Rinomhota do that effectively, meaning we leave gaping holes in the centre of defence, even with the extra centre back.

I think we have the right resources to either play 4-4-2 diamond, with Swift at the point, or 4-2-3-1; both of which includes Pele & Rino for that extra defensive cover

My overarching feeling having read reports, etc from last night is I actually feel very sad about the state of affairs at the club. I just want us to have some stability in both a management and player sense, and a reasonable home record so I can look forward to going to home games.

[Westwood52]

Gomes appointment now looks like a horrible mistake.
His lack of experience concerning the Championship has been horribly exposed.
He is trying to play a slow continental game,which is being negated by the speed and high pressing tactics of the opposition.
It appears he has now lost his players belief in him and there seems little to be gained in him carrying on.
We are simply not competitive and earning the right to win games.
The next appointment needs however to be carefully thought out and considered.
The profile of the next Manager has to be someone who will not put up with anything less than 100% commitment from his players and is able to implement a much quicker applied game;which at least at home gives the opposition no respite and no easy games.
This cannot go on.
And I absolutely do not blame the Owners;as they have stumped up more than enough support to deserve at least a mid table team.

[Old Man Andrews]

Unreadable.

[LWJ]

Has anyone got any replays available for the two yellows?

[Hound]

the second one is on the SS highlights

[John Smith]

the second one is on the SS highlights

Watching it again it probably is a yellow which pains me to say. One of those where if it were the opposition you'd want them to be booked. Pretty foolish from a senior pro of Swift's calibre, and probably reiterates his calibre: pretty mediocre.

[Hound]

the second one is on the SS highlights

Watching it again it probably is a yellow which pains me to say. One of those where if it were the opposition you'd want them to be booked. Pretty foolish from a senior pro of Swift's calibre, and probably reiterates his calibre: pretty mediocre.

I don't think it was deliberate. He clearly slipped. He didn't dive in, so I don't think it was a 'decision' he made, so not sure its foolish.

For me it was neither dangerous or deliberate. The ref has to take into account the context in the game. So therefore he shouldn't have given a yellow. But I can see why did.

the first one, in real time I thought was a foul the other way. Did he even touch him? Was certainly a massive overreaction from the bench

[Stjimmy]

Gomes doesnt know his best team, style of play or how to defend, not ideal is it !
His record before he came here wasnt great and he has short stays at a few clubs on his CV. He was worth a punt i guess but right now it looks a gamble that isnt paying off. Im convinced this squad is much better than they are playing but something needs to change very very quickly.
For me 4 4 2 would be better, or 4 5 1. The latter gives us options to switch between attack and defend but leaves us with that hopefully solid back 4.
Sick of watching opposition get beyond our full backs who are invariably up by the half way line, out comes a centre back to cover leaving a huge hole in the middle.

Lets have a defence that first and foremost defends !

We havent got a decent real winger at the club so are trying to make up for that using wingbacks.

If we have to play narrow then do so.
Bring the touchlines in and do it.

Obita/Richards
Moore
Miazga
Yiadom

Rhinamota
Pele

Swift
Ejaria
Meite

Puscas/Joao

[Millsy]

The formation won't help because the entire team is fundamentally disorganised and disjointed.

You defend well by defending as a unit and squeezing the space the opposition has in your defensive third. We do none of this.

Our CBs are constantly split and miles apart because we try to play our. Our full backs are miles up the pitch leaving gaping holes on our flanks. A CB has to come across leaving a gaping hole in the middle, or if they both come an even bigger one on the far flank. Easy space for midfielders and wingers to attack.

We have one midfielder with any sort of remotely defensive brain and he has to cover the entire middle third of the pitch plus whatever enormous hole we have currently in defence.

You cannot play in the Championship with six or even seven attacking players.

We stand off because we're always outnumbered when defending. When we do have full backs in position they're double and tripled up on. If a midfielder or CB supports them they leave a huge gap.

We mark space and don't close down. Midfield runners rarely get tracked.

It's disgraceful. The defensive coaching and tactics are non-existent.

All true.

But the point with the formation isn't necessarily what the formation is but just that we have one that is consistent.

It's harder to sort all the issues you rightly mention when we keep chopping and changing formation (and starting players for that matter).

It can be a 10-0-0 for all I care as long as we have some consistency and do that 10-0-0 well.

I get the impression Gomes is looking for a magic formation rather than just sticking with whatever he feels is the best one and then ironing out the issues you mention within the context of that formation.

I get the feeling Gomes is so desperate to score goals and win games he's completely forgotten about defence.

One thing sums up Gomes this season.

"I switched Moore to the right side to help us going forward."

He moved his captain, most senior and main defender, so we could pass it out from the back slightly better.

Hey, Jose, do you not think that you ought to put a bit more thought into defending, and maybe emphasise the defenders' primary job.

Yeah, it's interesting.

What you're describing is exactly what I used to do when I started playing CM/FM. Get the best attacking players, and think purely in terms of how we can score more goals and try to find that magic formation that will beat all formations. Then I learnt it's a little more complex than that.

I'm not saying that's Gomes because to be fair to him he brought in Morrison and Miazga and Pele to sort out the defence, and I guess you do need some sort of philosophy, be it Stamball i.e. defend/bore to death or Gomesball i.e. let's pass out the back attacking all the way up the pitch. But... argh I don't know. At best I'm good at Football Manager now but am not a pro footballer or manager no matter how much I pretend to be on these forums. That's his job to sort out!

[Vicky Pollard]

the second one is on the SS highlights

Watching it again it probably is a yellow which pains me to say. One of those where if it were the opposition you'd want them to be booked. Pretty foolish from a senior pro of Swift's calibre, and probably reiterates his calibre: pretty mediocre.

I don't think it was deliberate. He clearly slipped. He didn't dive in, so I don't think it was a 'decision' he made, so not sure its foolish.

For me it was neither dangerous or deliberate. The ref has to take into account the context in the game. So therefore he shouldn't have given a yellow. But I can see why did.

the first one, in real time I thought was a foul the other way. Did he even touch him? Was certainly a massive overreaction from the bench

The Fulham players gave the referee the support he needed on both occasions to get his book out (they were very La Liga with their approach all game), but particularly with the first which was not a malicious tackle and I think harsh. The second was more worthy of a yellow. Barrett played a fairly stupid ball into Swift to put him in trouble.

[Millsy]

Terrible first half performance, still no shape, change in formation no doubt doesn't help, maybe Moore needs a rest, Gomes needs to stop pulling the youngest players off because he doesn't have the guts to pull a senior player off. We have no width in this squad.

Thought Boye looked better in the middle and would like to see Ejaria on the left be interesting to see if Olise gets a chance on Saturday, very much doubt it, expecting Gomes to put Adam in

Hate to say it Gomes has had almost 30 games now, results really haven't improved, what worries me most is the lack of formation and positioning, players don't seem to know what each other are doing.

Barrett should have been pulled off the moment Swift was sent off. Not his fault but it was never going to be his sort of game once we were down to ten.

The main issue for me though is how poorly we adapt to game situations. I hate to harp on about the past but Coppell would more often that not credit his players with the intelligence to sort things out for themselves on the pitch . The game here wasn't lost because of the sending off as such, (although playing 10 men for 70 minutes against Fulham isn't the most ideal situation), but because we didn't react to it on the field.

Surely the instant reaction to losing a man is to go ultra defensive for a bit until you can find the right shape. We just seemed to carry on as before ignoring the fact that Swift was no longer there. Maybe this is down to Gomes micromanaging so much that players aren't capable of thinking for themselves but surely it doesn't take much thought to just fall back into two banks of 4 until we can make adjustments.

I'll go against the grain here and say that "effort" really isn't the issue and the players did put in a shift particularly Ejaria and Rino in the middle of midfield although for the most part the former seems to be taking a battering on here . I also don't think we started that badly either, a very good chance early on which might have changed things. Again though once things started going pear shaped we didn't seem able to adjust to it. Add in the fact that individually all the back 4 had their worst games of the season at the same time then its a recipe for disaster.

Gomes of course takes ultimate responsibility for this and he's going to be under pressure rightly but is now really the time to sack yet another manager? I have the same feeling I had now as when the Yongge's took over. When Stam arrived all the talk was of us being Academy focused but as soon as there was a sniff of the Premier League Money Machine out came the chequebook and in came big money (for us) signings. This didn't end with the disappointment of the approach failing. Clement was given a relative fortune to spend on players over half of whom were up for sale barely 4 months later. Astonishingly too despite obstacles being put in their way , the owners still eventually found a way to spend unheard of sums once again this summer. The narrative has been that Stam, Clement and mainly Gourlay were all the villains in our decline but here we sit with Gourlay long gone , "our club back" ha! and exactly the same feeling we've had the past two season only with added financial commitments. Anyone who thought Howe was going to automatically be a more prudent, calming financial steward obviously wasn't around or conveniently forgot when Madejski was on his Malaysian tax dodge and Howe was sanctioning insane transfer fees for 3rd tier crap under Burns.

For those that want Gomes gone, it won't take much longer. It's clear these owners are intent on Premiership Football as soon as they can get it and will pull the trigger if they don't think the manager can deliver it. Ambition is a good thing in general and I'm not for one minute suggesting they're fly by night merchants (the Bearwood Development would indicate not) but we've pretty much found ourselves in the same situation at this stage of every season they've been at the helm.

At some stage you've got to question their methodology. Gomes has flaws and was a baffling appointment at the time but despite that there are positive things and sparks that I see that I haven't seen for a while. However when a manager confidently states that he prefers to work with a smaller group of younger players then within a matter of months he's working with an even more bloated squad than the one he inherited you have to wonder whether we really have any plan at all.

Apologies for the slightly off topic ramble

Good well thought out post, deserves a response.

I don't think anyone can argue with much of that.

We're probably (or I certainly am) just a little bit confused right now.

Not quite sure what's going on. He got the right players in, got them playing well, then started leaving out key players and dicking around with other formations. A bit like that perfect first date who then starts acting very strangely in subsequent dates (we've all been there I'm sure!).

I do agree the owners are clearly looking for PL football with the investments they've made and Gomes' job is far from safe. They will be just as brutal as they've proven to be thus far and are probably looking at alternatives as I type.

This ISN'T to say Gomes can't sort it. I think he has it in him. His man management, ability to get players motivated, use them better previous managers, get rid of deadwood etc have all been great. He has produced some brilliant performances. Unless they were just total luck. I'm just confused. I fear once confidence is gone and you "lose the dressingroom" then you're screwed and that time may come soon if he doesn' just knuckle down, pick a formation and go for it. He has nothing to lose. Was it Bodgers who famously 11 games in said something like "this is still preseason". No it's not. It's season. Play yoru best team and live/die by yoru decision Gomes. Any mroe uncertainty will guarantee you're a goner. One thing I'm certain of though is that if Gomes doesn't get this lot up the table, someone else will. I stick by us having a great team.

[Hound]

Good read Vision, and roughly agree

Be interesting to have seen how we fared with the squad we had in preseason

However Gomes was pretty vocal throughout the summer about needing to get more players in. He made it pretty clear the ambitions would be very limited without

Gomes was a strange appointment. He definitely brought in some positives but there is nothing in his record to suggest he can either bring success or plan for the long (or even medium) term

[Snowflake Royal]

Might have been too fixated on Harry Arter to notice. What a player he is by the way.

he's also a complete little tw@t. His reaction to get Swift sent off was disgraceful

Sounds like he had a very successful night. Premier League quality really shone through. What did we expect when playing raw, un-ready academy players and losing our heads against better players?

Bristol City have the second best form in the division. Where do our next points come from?

Raw unready Academy graduates? We had 2 in the XI and one of those is in his third senior season

[Snowflake Royal]

Good luck to any management team stupid enough to come to our club and face the Dellor clones (clowns) who expect success in well less than a season, regardless of the challenges the club faces on and off the pitch!

Those thinking Gomes will be gone if we lose at Bristol are deluded. Fortunately I don't believe our owners and people like Nigel Howe are the type to indulge in such knee jerk reactions. Furthermore, I think it likely that Gomes would walk before he was sacked. He made it clear to Dellor last night that he would resign if he reached the point where he felt he and his team couldn't turn things around.

Great comment, one of many made by Gomes last night, that those calling for the management team's heads should take note of: 'This is not a Playstation where you can just switch it off and start again'.

This would be the Howe who sacked Bullivant and Rodgers right?

Gomes can say what he likes, but there are bugger all managers who resign voluntarily these days.

Mr Gomes would do better to focus on training his team to defend than telling people it isn't a play station game that can just be reset, especially seeing as that's exactly the approach from which he got his position.

[sandman]

Gomes has a great way with words, RoyalBlue, there is no denying that. In fact if he wasn't so erudite there would be far more calling for his head than there are now. He's a lovely guy and no one relishes the prospect of him losing his job.

But there is something that speaks louder than words. He needs actions now or you may have to direct your personal brand of rage filled rants at the owners.

[tmesis]

One problem with the "we need to stick with first XI/formation ideas - we have too many players who have one or two good games, then fade away. The successful formations stop being successful because players need dropping so often. How many players do we really have now who'd look definite first-teamers? There are many who ought to be, but they just aren't performing.

I do wonder if Gomes signed the players, or someone else did. Whoever it was, we need to seriously look at recruitment, as our transfer record over that last few years has been absolutely shocking, seeming to plump for every player with a poor attitude going.