[Albion] The Football Yips

[Weststander]

Story of a large number of games over many years but this year tops the frustration charts by a country mile

I see things with clarity. But it cheeses Swanny off to dare mention the following:

Imho Maupay, Welbeck, Connolly and Trossard don’t cut the mustard as reliable forwards able to tuck away chances and half chances, nor supply assists on a plate.

It’s nothing personal, they might improve.

So my frustration is with Bloom, Ashworth and Winstanley in not giving Potter the tools he needed to make us the finished article. Yes I know Bloom is already pumping in £10m’s of personal cash every season, the best owner we could have. But since that incredible Easter 2017, the club have failed in sorting out our goal scorers.

 

[Simster]

What more extraordinary record can we grab this season?

Best team to ever be relegated. By quite some distance.

 

[Icy Gull]

I see things with clarity. But it cheeses Swanny off to dare mention the following:

Imho Maupay, Welbeck, Connolly and Trossard don’t cut the mustard as reliable forwards able to tuck away chances and half chances, nor supply assists on a plate.

It’s nothing personal, they might improve.

So my frustration is with Bloom, Ashworth and Winstanley in not giving Potter the tools he needed to make us the finished article. Yes I know Bloom is already pumping in £10m’s of personal cash every season, the best owner we could have. But since that incredible Easter 2017, the club have failed in sorting out our goal scorers.

It does feel like we are spoiling the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar, given the amount already spent, but TB is a fan as well as the owner and much as it infuriates I am not going to moan about it. Onwards and upwards

 

[Questions]

I’m not starting a separate thread but I will never set foot in the Amex again if Potter is sacked for footballing matters. I love watching this compared to Hughtons team although he was brilliant for us ....... There is only ONE question which needs addressing and if Bloom wants this football style then this now comes down to the obvious

 

[Weststander]

I’m not starting a separate thread but I will never set foot in the Amex again if Potter is sacked for footballing matters. I love watching this compared to Hughtons team although he was brilliant for us ....... There is only ONE question which needs addressing and if Bloom wants this football style then this now comes down to the obvious

I’ve a similar ‘rule’ but in reverse. If the club ever appointed Pulis or Allardyce, I simply wouldn’t go to any Albion games until they’d departed.

Can’t stand them (the personalities, as well as the brand of football, aireal tennis, running the clock down, the thing about height and muscle).

 

[golddene]

It does feel like we are spoiling the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar, given the amount already spent, but TB is a fan as well as the owner and much as it infuriates I am not going to moan about it. Onwards and upwards

Really don't consider or believe the lack of lashing out fortunes on a striker can possibly be laid at Mr Blooms door, he invested hugely on the likes of Locadia, Andone, Maupay, Jakanbach (sp) etc and cannot be expected to be throwing good money after bad with only one of those really being anywhere close to being value. We have to look at those responsible who recommended the investment in those players with the exception of Neil Maupay who may still come good but is obviously struggling for form in front of goal at the moment.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

It's not football yips, it's the fact that we play in a SHIT kit.

Bin it off, replace with proper stripes, goals will flow. It's that simple.

It's the sodding collar that does it for me. And yet I saw another team with the same model last week and it looked fine. But it was a dark collar not a sodding white choir boy collar. You can't play football with confidence if you know you look like a prick. Fact.



Above, Wellbad realising he'll never get another contract or even score a goal again.

 

[Not Andy Naylor]

It's the sodding collar that does it for me. And yet I saw another team with the same model last week and it looked fine. But it was a dark collar not a sodding white choir boy collar. You can't play football with confidence if you know you look like a prick. Fact.

View attachment 134365

Above, Wellbad realising he'll never get another contract or even score a goal again.

I agree completely. And surely one of the few advantages of pinstripes is that numbers are easily readable on top of them. So why is there a blank blue patch on the back? The whole thing is a total mess. Perfectly okay for the #twats or Peterborough or Colchester, but we deserve better.

 

[zeemeeuw]

Our season was determined during the Utd home match. An 8-1 win turned 2-3 defeat. The players have never recovered their confidence or composure in front of goal.

An insidious, unrelenting and highly transmissible disease struck our dressing room that day. It ripped through the entire squad effecting the likes of Dunk, Webster & Burn. It has spread through our midfield with players like Groß, Bissouma, March & Mac Allister falling foul. It has decimated our forward line with folk such as Maupay, Trossard, Welbeck & Connolly being victims of the severe cases.

Our squad has been decimated by the football yips. It’s a collective contamination. Only Veltman appears to be immune. No one can score anymore, it has spread to officials who will do their utmost to stop us scoring too.

I think any Striker we purchased in the summer would have gone down with this.

We’re ****ed unless we get the vaccine.

The vaccine is goals, and lots of them.

We’re going to be relegated if the team don’t recover as our only current chance of points is 0-0 draws.

If we have a game that yields some good luck with say, a deflected goal, a VAR that goes our way, a keeper who doesn’t have his best game this season, an own goal maybe? If we have a game like this and score a hatful, I think we’ll be cured of the football yips. The only other option would be to sack the entire squad (Veltman & Sanchez aside). Until then, we’re headed for very very dark times my friends.

The Football Yips is contributing to the following EPL ‘firsts’ or ‘records’.

- Woodwork hit 3 times by one player in an EPL match.

- Woodwork hit 5 times in an EPL match.

- A goal conceded after the final whistle.

- Two missed penalties hitting the woodwork in one EPL match.

- A goal being ruled out after the ref has blown the whistle to begin play again for the first time in the EPL.

What more extraordinary record can we grab this season? Most EPL draws could be in reach but Fulham are proving a good rival for this title.

First team to miss 2 Penalties in a match, hitting the woodwork with both.

Goal disallowed, then allowed, then disallowed again ... has that happened before?

According the 2001 Census there were more Jedi in Brighton then anywhere else in the UK, there are definitely dark forces at work here.

 

[twickers]

I see things with clarity. But it cheeses Swanny off to dare mention the following:

Imho Maupay, Welbeck, Connolly and Trossard don’t cut the mustard as reliable forwards able to tuck away chances and half chances, nor supply assists on a plate.

It’s nothing personal, they might improve.

So my frustration is with Bloom, Ashworth and Winstanley in not giving Potter the tools he needed to make us the finished article. Yes I know Bloom is already pumping in £10m’s of personal cash every season, the best owner we could have. But since that incredible Easter 2017, the club have failed in sorting out our goal scorers.

It's not your humble opinion, their career goals stats tell you that..there waa always a risk that if Maupay didn't find more goals than last season or worse he struggled to find form or was injured we had no plan B. Wellbeck was a gamble. Connolly I can only think the policy of playing the youth early vs loan out just got it wrong...noble, but really unfair on him given the stakes. Trossard I must have missed when his brief was scoring goals.

So what we don't know is the balance of Bloom, Ashworth and Potter and financial and other principles that got us here. Promote young players yes, push midfield/wingers to try shots yes, don't spend silly money on a proven striker...okay....so it's within the margins of this they've had to make decisions and that's where the 'ifs' come into play...

...if Wellbeck returned to the form he had a few years back - why did we think that could be the case? If you knew Wellbeck was capable of that form everyone would have been after him...so a gamble there. Who knows, might yet pay off.
...if Mac and Lallana can increase the odds - to be fair I think both have delivered better quality chances into the box, just nobody has converted them.
...if Connolly becomes a handful for the opposition - again to be fair he was until diving was no longer a trick he could pull off or players would fall for, creating chances not the problem qe have to solve, it's putting them in...the 'if' for Connolly is if he found composure. Not sure what the plan was there.
...if the others (Tau, Zequiri etc.) - no idea if they were even part of this season's plan A, suspect they were only on the plan to inculcate them into the club, culture etc. with a view to future options, so no ifs there.

I hate to see Maupay like this. We've had so many strikers do everything else so well, yet stall at the level they were asked to perform then slide into nowhere e.g. CMS

So do you stick with convention playing the current roles as best you can with good tactics and a bit of luck or change tack and play a different way, different roles...I suspect the answer is more the former with some adjustment to playing style.