by muirinho »
14 Jan 2017 10:13
biff Muskrat In a word - abject. No creativity, no discernible shape, no pattern to our play. Same old story, 72% possession and 1 shot on target. People on here banging on about there being no plan B, how about getting plan A sorted out first eh? You know, the most frustrating thing is that the team last night were more than capable of winning that game if we'd had a different game plan. Flat back four, Williams and Kelly in CM, McCleary and Beerens as proper wingers and Swift in the Gylfi role just behind Kermogant and we would have appeared as a different team.
But no. Stam plays some utterly ridiculous formation with Obita and Gunter as"wing backs" even though neither is suited to that role, McCleary and Beerens narrow between the midfield and attack and Williams, for reasons that can only be known to himself, wide right. It was painfully obvious that the players just didn’t know what they were supposed to be doing!
And I'm sorry but to then come out after the game and imply that he hadn't been allowed to build a team when 5 of his signings played and another was left on the bench was frankly embarrassing.
He may be using us to cut his managerial teeth but we are the ones who are suffering.
+1
I make it that the only one in the back 5 that was in a role he'd done before (at least for Reading) was Obita, playing left wing-back.
It was a back 5, but it was McCleary / Williams that was the right wing-back (they swapped during the game). Liam Moore was in the Tyler Blackett position, left of a back 3. Joey was the central defender (!!!!!!!), and Gunter was at the right.
I was amused by the criticism of Gunter for not getting forward more. He wasn't playing wingback or left back, he couldn't. And you could see the cogs turning when he had the ball - if there wasn't a pass on to McCleary, he went sideways to Kelly, because every time he passed to Williams, the ball was lost, and suddenly QPR had wide-open spaces in front of them because Joey had gone to have a natter with some invisible friend in a distant part of the pitch. Or was in the right place, but contemplating the meaning of the universe. OR something.
It might have worked if Evans had been on (for either Kelly or Swift), he'd have given a bit more solidity in the midfield.
Having said all of that - are we really suffering all that much? We are still 6 points clear of 7th. AS long as he gets most things right, I'll give Stam a pass on the times he makes mistakes. Even vastly experienced managers sometimes get the formation completely wrong. And I don't think the formation was necessarily wrong, he just didn't have the right people to do it, as Blackett and McShane are out injured. I doubt he wanted to risk Dickie, even on the bench as he won't have had much time playing with the group here, as he has been out on loan - give that a couple of weeks. I'd have preferred Evans in the central defender role instead of Joey VdB,but yeah, we all have our pet hates, and he's currently mine (supplanting Danny Williams - that is some achievement). And has Evans played there before either?