My lad, who does remember Ainsworth , said to me" Dad, it doesn't matter what style of play you play at the moment, cos those players are just **** , and are incapable of passing the ball fluidly and creating chances. You've let in 6, but can you imagine how many it would be if you were playing out from the back ?". All I could do was nod in agreement and boot the tele. The quality of player we have on the pitch is dictating what style we're playing, with such dross available, hoof ball is really the only option. It's probably been implemented to keep the ball as far away from our defence as possible. Like others have said, it's all about getting enough points this season to be safe, regardless of how we get them. I will judge Ainsworth on next season, hopefully in this division. Until then let's hope he can get some sort of performances out of the shower of ****e he inherited !
Into 7, which is also the number of points above relegation. I see Swans are a good bet at 40/1, except that they have a slightly better draw than us in the last 9 games.
Fair go Beth. He can't help it. He loves his clock and he should be loud and proud about it! Besides, there's nought much else in NZ .... apart from sheep. Ah, yes. Sheep and clock. What else can a man ask for? please log in to view this image please log in to view this image . (That is $99,990 worth of clock!)
Blackpool showed more run in attack and defence. They had players all over the place in our box and we couldn't man up to their waves of attack. They got some lucky bounces land their way, but that's because they had 5-6 players there. And it seemed our defenders were reticent to go after their attack in our box, possibly due to the early penalty and the ref's obsession to castigate our every move in that area. At the other end, on several occasions, Dykes centred balls from the wing but we had NO targets in their box. They had defenders in numbers, whereas we had 2 or 3 in attack, but nowhere near the ball. We stretched Watford out on Sat. and that created more chances and tired them out. This was not the case on Tues. What I'm saying is, we didn't have any structure in both attack and defence. One goal is enough if we defend as we did on Saturday. But we need someone who can find the net before we can park the bus. The other thing I noticed was their players going down easily on regular bases, leading to stoppages in play by the referee. At one point we were about to receive a corner, but a Pool player went down in the middle of their box and the ref. halted play. On resumption, their keeper had the ball in his hands to restart proceedings. Even the commentators were perplexed. Okay, steam let off. Rant over. Normal transmission resumed.
I don't disagree with you, I said well before this run started that the players just weren't good enough. 2 or 3 are but the rest are either always injured or just simply don't have the ability. I also don't care how we get points to stay up. I really want it work for Ainsworth but I reckon this may be as good as it gets for us from now on. We literally need to get rid of a full team of players, rip it up and start again. Will take more than a season to do, maybe 3 or 4 if truth be told. What my lad is saying rings true though, 3 of 4 games have been the worst he has seen from a footballing perspective. If we can't pass a ball progressively then it all comes back to player recruitment and coaching.
It's Les that needs to go before any more managerial changes. 8 years of taking a million a year, to slowly make us an utter shambles.
I think you will find that, with no budget to bring in quality players, Gareth will be on the lookout for good players with the right mentality who are out of contract. He will then instil a winning, never give up, attitude where they all give 110% for each other To be honest, there are too many teams passing the ball around and keeping possession but not creating enough chances to score. Anybody can do that; you don't even have to be good Some people confuse hoofball with the long ball. The long ball to the right place at the right time is the best and quickest way to open up chances when breaking down the opposition (the ball can move a lot faster than any player can). These tip tap players aren't so hot when they aren't given any time and space. Defend in numbers and break fast in numbers, without leaving the midfield to the opposition Hopefully, some of your wasters are out of contract soon and can be got shot of. Meanwhile all Gareth can do is get the best out of what he has got and try to stay up. Maybe he could get a few freebies in but the trouble is that would only add to the wage bill. Come summer, get rid of highly paid wasters and replace by lower paid freebies who are good enough but with the right attitude Longer term, not sure what can be done with the financial status as it is. The one plus is that Gareth is good at operating on a shoestring
Nice post Ron and welcome to the insanity that is QPR. You make some good points and I'm hoping, amongst others here, that Gareth can operate "on a shoestring". But you'll probably find that our "shoestring" has been worn threadbare, so good luck to him! Let's hope we can, as you say, get rid of highly paid wasters, but what then, replace them with lowly paid wasters? This may not be the Prem., but the Championship has many good players, who can slot in nicely to most of the Premiership teams. Our chances of finding some good player/s, up and comers or an aged ex-Prem. player, would be very slim. And these players would be, respectively, snapped up by the likes of Man.U/C or Liverpool or Arsenal or uurrgh, excuse me while I puke, Chelscum, where they'll languish for years without first team action, only because these teams want to keep a stranglehold on their position in the Prem. (IMHO), like alpha lions who get first dibs on the prey's carcass to ensure their authority and well-being, OR they would be in it for a final "payday". In saying that, I sincerely hope you are right about Gareth and many of your sentiments are validated.