So just what is WRONG?

[Colossal Squid]

Yea yea yea we've been very unlucky with injuries and the team is missing some big players BUT the starting line up yesterday still included four players with Premier League experience, two players with Champions League experience, a former England international, a MILLION POUND player and three players who've won promotion at this level.

What did Yeovil have? Shit all.

I just don't think we can blame everything purely on injuries and not having a goalscorer. We're simply not playing well at all. Under Gus we were often very goal shy, especially before Ulloa came along, but we still seemed to play football.

This season we're not scoring and we're not playing decent football either.

I don't want to start turning on the manager but I would like to know what he's going to do about things. We were very close to reaching the Premier League last season but this time round we look more likely to exit the Championship in the other direction.

So, aside from injuries, what's the problem? Why are so many players that we know can perform failing us so badly? And what needs to change to bring back winning ways?

 

[bhawoddy]

players are not good enough..... IMO

whilst we do miss our better players there doesn't seem to be too much quality shown from the rest.

 

[TSB]

Last year, our team was very good but the squad was very thin.
The majority of players had either played for Gus for a few years and knew their roles, or had signed from clubs with a similar style (like Swansea)
We relied on Buckley, Kaz and Orlandi for pretty much all our attacking. CMS was the main striker to finish any chances we created.
As of today, only one of those four are available.

At midway through last season, (around the time we lost to Watford), things were looking a little bleak. We captured Leo and used him as the pinnacle of our attacks. His hold-up play is some of the best that I've seen from an Albion player. We then became, along with Watford and Cardiff, the form teams of the second half of the season.
We haven't won a game this season without Leo playing in it...

Oscar's got new tactics and new ideas and they will take time. Had he been able to utilise our star players fully, we'd be a lot higher up the league. Even without them, if someone could take a chance presented to them, it'd help us out a lot!
We should have won comfortably yesterday, but barely troubled the keeper with our attempts.
Spanish Dave & Ash are shadows of the players last season. Buckley isn't playing to his potential.
It's very dissapointing, but hope is there whilst chances are still being created.

Oh and we had Wayne Bridge.

And I haven't even mentioned how badly we miss our player of the year, two seasons running.

 

[Soulman]

Last year, our team was very good but the squad was very thin.
The majority of players had either played for Gus for a few years and knew their roles, or had signed from clubs with a similar style (like Swansea)
We relied on Buckley, Kaz and Orlandi for pretty much all our attacking. CMS was the main striker to finish any chances we created.
As of today, only one of those four are available.

At midway through last season, (around the time we lost to Watford), things were looking a little bleak. We captured Leo and used him as the pinnacle of our attacks. His hold-up play is some of the best that I've seen from an Albion player. We then became, along with Watford and Cardiff, the form teams of the second half of the season.
We haven't won a game this season without Leo playing in it...

Oscar's got new tactics and new ideas and they will take time. Had he been able to utilise our star players fully, we'd be a lot higher up the league. Even without them, if someone could take a chance presented to them, it'd help us out a lot!
We should have won comfortably yesterday, but barely troubled the keeper with our attempts.
Spanish Dave & Ash are shadows of the players last season. Buckley isn't playing to his potential.
It's very dissapointing, but hope is there whilst chances are still being created.

Oh and we had Wayne Bridge.

And I haven't even mentioned how badly we miss our player of the year, two seasons running.

Yep.

 

[HawkTheSeagull]

Last year, our team was very good but the squad was very thin.
The majority of players had either played for Gus for a few years and knew their roles, or had signed from clubs with a similar style (like Swansea)
We relied on Buckley, Kaz and Orlandi for pretty much all our attacking. CMS was the main striker to finish any chances we created.
As of today, only one of those four are available.

At midway through last season, (around the time we lost to Watford), things were looking a little bleak. We captured Leo and used him as the pinnacle of our attacks. His hold-up play is some of the best that I've seen from an Albion player. We then became, along with Watford and Cardiff, the form teams of the second half of the season.
We haven't won a game this season without Leo playing in it...

Oscar's got new tactics and new ideas and they will take time. Had he been able to utilise our star players fully, we'd be a lot higher up the league. Even without them, if someone could take a chance presented to them, it'd help us out a lot!
We should have won comfortably yesterday, but barely troubled the keeper with our attempts.
Spanish Dave & Ash are shadows of the players last season. Buckley isn't playing to his potential.
It's very dissapointing, but hope is there whilst chances are still being created.

Oh and we had Wayne Bridge.

And I haven't even mentioned how badly we miss our player of the year, two seasons running.

Cant really disagree with any of that !!

 

[Canonman]

Yea yea yea we've been very unlucky with injuries and the team is missing some big players BUT the starting line up yesterday still included four players with Premier League experience, two players with Champions League experience, a former England international, a MILLION POUND player and three players who've won promotion at this level.

What did Yeovil have? Shit all.

I just don't think we can blame everything purely on injuries and not having a goalscorer. We're simply not playing well at all. Under Gus we were often very goal shy, especially before Ulloa came along, but we still seemed to play football.

This season we're not scoring and we're not playing decent football either.

I don't want to start turning on the manager but I would like to know what he's going to do about things. We were very close to reaching the Premier League last season but this time round we look more likely to exit the Championship in the other direction.

So, aside from injuries, what's the problem? Why are so many players that we know can perform failing us so badly? And what needs to change to bring back winning ways?

Players with quality I think, look at Southampton now, we were once above saints, best bar none academy bringing through some good quality players, until we can do that its a waiting game. I feel sorry for Oscar there is no money for him to bring in the quality to get us to the Prem and a training complex that is possibly five or six years away before we can even begin to start bringing our own youngsters through. I just hope he is given the chance for a few years to fulfil his vision. Hopefully our injured players will soon be fit to help this along

 

[Colossal Squid]

I think you're forgetting Spanish Dave's influence on proceedings in the latter half of last season. I'd argue he was more important than Kaz or Buckley. But for some reason he's now utter toilet

 

[Soulman]

Players with quality I think, look at Southampton now, we were once above saints, best bar none academy bringing through some good quality players, until we can do that its a waiting game. I feel sorry for Oscar there is no money for him to bring in the quality to get us to the Prem and a training complex that is possibly five or six years away before we can even begin to start bringing our own youngsters through. I just hope he is given the chance for a few years to fulfil his vision. Hopefully our injured players will soon be fit to help this along

Good shout on the Academy. The youngster Harrison Reed who was on the bench for Southampton this season, is a good example. He was a pupil at Durrington and is the kind of player that hopefully Brighton will produce when the academy is up and running.

 

[yxee]

Good shout on the Academy. The youngster Harrison Reed who was on the bench for Southampton this season, is a good example. He was a pupil at Durrington and is the kind of player that hopefully Brighton will produce when the academy is up and running.

That's all true but it does worry me that the short-termism of Poyet has been carried over to this season. We had a youngster score a wondergoal against Norwich pre-season and the next thing you know we've signed this late-20s loan player for three months in the exact same position. What does that say to the youth players now and in the future? "you'll get a chance in the pre-season but no matter how well you do, we might just replace you with someone who has no stake in the club".

The board are all too happy to continuously cite FPP as the reason the ticket prices went up, but they need to apply the same principles to the whole club. You will make a whole lot more profit nurturing and selling a good academy player (or who knows, maybe even keeping him so that we don't have to spend millions on someone else) than antagonising fans by squeezing every last penny from them with endless price hikes and hidden costs.

 

[Billy the Fish]

At midway through last season, (around the time we lost to Watford), things were looking a little bleak. We captured Leo and used him as the pinnacle of our attacks. His hold-up play is some of the best that I've seen from an Albion player. We then became, along with Watford and Cardiff, the form teams of the second half of the season.
We haven't won a game this season without Leo playing in it...

Very good post from TSB but this bit is really important.

Because of our league position and a strong finish it's easy to forget our season nearly went the other way. If we hadn't signed Leo we probably would've been about where we are now.

8 months on and we haven't got Leo again or 4 of our best players from that period. Add that to a new manager who is still learning the division and it's not much of a surprise that we're not pissing the league. Nothing we can do but hope he gets it right in the end and sets us up for next season, nothing good can come from getting on the manager's back at this point.

 

[nwgull]

All this ^^^^

Whilst it's never good to be reliant on a single player, we're without a striker that we turned down a 5m bid for, and that leaves a huge hole on its own. Add to that that we're also missing last year's player of the season amongst other 1st choice players, then it's understandable that it's going to be a struggle for the next 5-6 games.

 

[Canonman]

Very good post from TSB but this bit is really important.

Because of our league position and a strong finish it's easy to forget our season nearly went the other way. If we hadn't signed Leo we probably would've been about where we are now.

8 months on and we haven't got Leo again or 4 of our best players from that period. Add that to a new manager who is still learning the division and it's not much of a surprise that we're not pissing the league. Nothing we can do but hope he gets it right in the end and sets us up for next season, nothing good can come from getting on the manager's back at this point.

You are right, we have just got to roll with what we've got at the moment. We will get there I'm absolutely certain of it but at the moment we have got to look at the big picture. Tony Bloom has invested money that will get us to The Prem. It's going to be ups and downs I'm afraid until we do and it could be five to ten years before it happens. So we will just have to keep moaning at this player or that missing sitters, one day we will get the better quality that puts them away.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

I do have a nagging feeling that getting the injured players back won't improve us much, but we'll have to wait and see, and hope I'm wrong.

 

[Blackadder]

Last year, our team was very good but the squad was very thin.
The majority of players had either played for Gus for a few years and knew their roles, or had signed from clubs with a similar style (like Swansea)
We relied on Buckley, Kaz and Orlandi for pretty much all our attacking. CMS was the main striker to finish any chances we created.
As of today, only one of those four are available.

At midway through last season, (around the time we lost to Watford), things were looking a little bleak. We captured Leo and used him as the pinnacle of our attacks. His hold-up play is some of the best that I've seen from an Albion player. We then became, along with Watford and Cardiff, the form teams of the second half of the season.
We haven't won a game this season without Leo playing in it...

Oscar's got new tactics and new ideas and they will take time. Had he been able to utilise our star players fully, we'd be a lot higher up the league. Even without them, if someone could take a chance presented to them, it'd help us out a lot!
We should have won comfortably yesterday, but barely troubled the keeper with our attempts.
Spanish Dave & Ash are shadows of the players last season. Buckley isn't playing to his potential.
It's very dissapointing, but hope is there whilst chances are still being created.

Oh and we had Wayne Bridge.

And I haven't even mentioned how badly we miss our player of the year, two seasons running.

Good post. Sums it up well for me.

 

[nwgull]

I do have a nagging feeling that getting the injured players back won't improve us much, but we'll have to wait and see, and hope I'm wrong.

2 of the most coveted players in the championship to return at around the same time? You've got to expect a positive impact on the team surely!

 

[Working class pride]

Garcia inherited a side who needed 6 chances to score one. Now the best players are injured. When they get back to fitness then we will be an OK side but if the players coming in are as bad in front of goals as CMS and Barnes then the problem will still be there.

 

[brightonmark1234]

lopez has be rubbish and awful so far this and buckley has one good game and then he goes unnoticed and we need someone who will the goals away and we need to have more shots on target and i feel we are so easy and predictable to play against at moment

 

[brightonmark1234]

Garcia inherited a side who needed 6 chances to score one. Now the best players are injured. When they get back to fitness then we will be an OK side but if the players coming in are as bad in front of goals as CMS and Barnes then the problem will still be there.

might be too late by the time they come back

 

[yxee]

The only place I can see goals coming from is Lualua crossing and Barnes AND Lita playing together up front.

 

[beorhthelm]

players are not good enough..... IMO

but they are, aside from some of the best players being injured, those playing are established Championship pedigee. the conclusion is that its players not knowing there roles, the tactics or both.