Pretty sure it went around the wall, but the space Pope gave it was ridiculous. Mak was OK, yes, crazy to take him off... and agree on Bergdych at LB but think he was told to stay that far back as he looked seriously pissed off about it. Kashi played the best two balls of the match out to the right wing in the first half, and was tackling all over the show.
I'm a Powell fan, but Huddersfield were no better than us tonight, they created very little, it was just our sloppy defending and keeping. Says a lot that we've got this far without mentioning the incompetent officials.
A few weeks ago a deluded minority were proclaiming Luzon as a tactical genius, but last night exposed him as another muddled Bob Peeters. Why was the awful Sarr in for our MOM against Rotherham, Diarra? Why is he trying to convert Cousins into Calum Harriott out wide. in summary last night - Poor tactics Poor team selection Bad goalkeeping Weak defending Disjointed, uncreative midfield Powder puff attack. Apart from that, it wasn't too bad. I don't want to say I told you so, but I said after the pre season friendlies that Duchatelet had landed us with another crop of average, overseas cack. Bauer apart, this was correct. Ba is awful. Karshi has faded. Bergdich is a lightweight squad player at best. Cebellos will do nothing on muddy Championship pitches all winter. Makienok - first touch of a hod carrier, drags the team down as a result. In short, lessons not learned and another season of struggle imminent. Most worrying of all are the Valley attendances, I doubt there was 10,000 there last night. Solutions for Saturday - get Jackson and Cousins in central midfield to stiffen things up. Drop Sarr for Diarra. And start Bergdich in place of the hapless fly half Fox. Fiddling while Rome burns in truth. We are heading for the rocks.
Reading the reports was a bit of a horror movie, with the recurring evil that we thought had been banished forever. When Luzón started, one of his greatest gifts was simply playing the players in their best position. It ain't rocket science, but it defied previous managers. Last night, and on the back of two games without a win, and Cousins is banished to the left wing. !!!???!!! Powell, Peeters both tried it. Over and over again. We had a transfer window to address the position. The loan window opens and we got in a striker. Sorry, but that is an immediate problem that needed to be fixed. If our best available team is that, something is wrong. Either that or the curse of the Valley bench is coming back over the horizon.
Over the summer we were assured that Duchatelet & Meire had learned from their previous transfer mistakes, and that the Premier League was their ambition. both statements turned out to be untrue.
There was a 90 stone man behind me, and some of his statements were: "You're slow, f***** useless" "You can't kick a f****** ball for s*** you useless c***" "You decided just to go for a f****** walk?" "Learn how to kick a f****** ball, you sloppy mug!" I guess he's never heard of irony?
OK, Ted, what do you think the problem is that Pope has with shots along the ground? He seems to have overcome his nerves, and he's very assured when the ball is in the air, but there seems to be some technical issue he has with shots which skitter along the ground. What do you make of it?
My random thoughts about last night. Same old Charlton we can't play against teams that defend, we haven't the flair to break them down. Pope was awful, first goal he should have saved, but Fox should have won the tackle, Solly was given the run around by their left winger. We were beaten in the centre of midfield. Cousins is not a left midfielder. Watt frustrates the hell out of me tries to do too much and loses the ball. Fox was terrible. I thought Sarr did ok against a physical opponent in Miller. Makienok won some balls in the air. Bergdich looks no better than the Harriotts. Vetokeles body language when he came on was awful, he didn't seem interested. The Everton man did ok at least he tried to get a shot off. All in all a poor showing against a very ordinary Huddersfield team.
I saw today in the paper they had a few quotes from Luzon on the performance, which I'm sure you lot have already seen. Diarra is a key player and in this season with more than 46 games, we need to rotate the team. Pope has been great in the last seven games and he played very well against Rotherham. He is a good goalkeeper and there is no problem with his confidence. Whilst he could have done better to save the first goal, it's a team sport, and given our performance collectively our defence should have done better, similarly with the Rotherham goal on Saturday. Looks like we have a massive problem defending set pieces.
And yet when we got a fee-kick in perfect JBG position, Kashi runs up and blasts it straight at the wall!
SSN are showing our fans sofa every hour - it's just so cringe. Getting abused for it in the office every time it comes on. Feedback as bad as it sounded. Seen Bunns goal a few times and it was so poor from Pope. If he got his body fully behind it, it wouldn't have gone over him. How did the new guy look when he came on?
About as good as the rest of the team. Showed some initiative but seemed to have a very weak shot, always off target. I'm taking it he hadn't played much before coming to us?
If we lose our next 3 games Luzon will be gone we can debate the tactical clownery and the goalie errors all we want, but it's a bit like complaining about the wonky air conditioning in a car with no engine and no wheels. In short, the structure and basics at the Club are all wrong. Players are not recruited on merit, and the same with managers. The owner is not interested in the long term well being of the club, and his front woman has a strange relationship with the truth. Until the basics change, we are p1ssing in the wind. I relish the day it all blows up in RDs face and he loses all of his money when he crap model leads to relegation.
I don't see Luzon as the problem. He's had a squad overhaul out of his control, most of which didn't arrive till mid-late July. I think he only had Bauer (of the new signings) for the first week of training. He will have to put his hands up in regards to playing cousins on the left, but early impressions are Bergdich doesn't look the part, and as our squad is paper thin he is forced to playing professionals who aren't fully fit. This rests on the people upstairs.
Luzon was the problem last night. Even someone who knows absolutely f@@k all about football (hi Reams) knows that Cousins is hopeless out wide. Why was Diarra rotated in Luzon's words, when he has been our best defender to date?
There's a bit of talk on CL about issues between Watt and JBG, which they are taking on to the pitch. Know anything about this?