Premier League season, 2021 / 2022

City due to play pre-season friendlies against Celtic & Hibs on 23rd & 24th July (away) ready for 2022/23 season - hope we will have some decent new signings by then.

 

I thought this was also interesting - is it more evidence of how we are not good at gamesmanship? (See the very interesting table a third of the way down)

EDIT: this https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/61342349 (Sorry, useless post until then)

 

I Was interested in the comments about the 'sin bin' for a yellow card to stop cynical fouling. It's really bad and seems to be getting worse. It stops the flow of the game so much, many matches are frustrating because of it.

 

To me, it sounds a sensible experiment to try out a sin bin. Many people talk about our 'lack of physicality' as one of our recurring problems in the PL, but I don't think it's necessarily about not having brick ****houses in the team, and especially in midfield. It's about not having players who are streetwise about fouling, knowing when and how to foul so as to break up the flow of the game when the other team is in the ascendancy without picking up a mass of yellow cards. The Villa game was a perfect example of this - there was a period in the second half when we were getting on top and I swear Villa fouled about once a minute for a run of ten minutes simply to break up our flow. If I remember correctly, not a single card dished out.

 

A stat pointed out on MOTD this morning - read it and
Brentford, in their fist season in the PL, have the same
number of points as Norwich & Watford combined.

 

Teams foul on rotation to break up games, no one player is committing a bunch of fouls in a short space of time, so it's hard to book someone for it, but equally it's desperately cynical and breaks up the game.

An alternative to a sin bin would just be to warn the team captain, then book him if the behaviour of the team continues. And if he's already booked then he gets sent off.

 

That’s exactly it - in rugby, repeated infringements are a team matter, so the ref tells the captain one more of those and the next player is in the bin, doesn’t matter who does it.

 

I think it’s unfair to sack him, but equally he’s been a combination of poor and unlucky, especially with injuries (like our season…)

It would have been so much better if we had kept Farke until February/March, then brought in Smith.

 

We were dreadful under Farke for most of the season as well. This whole season is one to write off

 

I think it was probably the wrong time to sack Farke in terms of the good of the club, but I'm glad for his sake that he got sacked. All the flak that is now being directed at Webber would have been aimed at him, and he deserves better considering what he has given us during his stay.

We can never know but I think we would have roughly the same number of points under Farke that we have now under Smith, but that wouldn't have protected him because it would have been seen as primarily his failure.

At least this way Webber has to take most responsibility for this woeful season.

 

I agree, though firstly I don’t think the fans would have been too bad with Farke even up to February. He wasn’t Hughton - he had enough credit in the bank. We all admitted at the beginning of the season it was going to be a huge ask, both with the obvious failures of our Summer recruitment and the catastrophe which was pre-season.

I also think if Webber had waited and then appointed Smith, it would have been a much easier thing to justify to the fans “Farke deserved half a season”, “we didn’t have any money for January anyway, so no point changing manager”, “timing was to try to get a new manager bounce for late season momentum”.

It all would have added up way more and been consistent with accepting that the relative quality of our squad meant any manager was going to struggle. Far better the manager who had actually assembled the squad and set the style of there was no real chance for major changes.

 

I would have been ok with Farke now, even with a couple fewer points on the board. Nothng against Smith I just thought that Farke was a proper gent, old school. Sort of Anti-Boris. ( as in opposite)

 

Farke deserved better and I would have been more than happy to see him to have seen out all of this season and next.

If we had given Farke longer, Smith wouldn't have been available, someone else would have jumped at the chance to sign him.

Still can't decide if Farke's sacking had more to do with Smith's availability than a burning desire to shaft Farke.

 

Could this be a hint about Hanley's future by any chance?

I also note that Smith has gone out of his way to say how well Williams trained on Monday. Guess which full back won't be playing at Leicester.

 

Who else would have signed Smith?

 

King's Lynn probably

 

Looks like the first post-mortum interview in the can, although I think Webber is the one we need to hear from, ideally with an external interviewer.

 

I don't know but possible would include Cardiff, Middlesbrough, Sheffield Utd, Watford, Leeds, Burnley, Sunderland who knows. There may well be some clubs that haven't sacked their manager who would have if they could get Smith. Smith doesn't strike me as the type of person that would want to be out of work for long.