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General Football & Sports / Blatter

« on: November 16, 2011, 07:29:25 PM »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15757165.stm

I agree with Blatter to an extent, they surely are all big enough to cope with being called names. I mean school kids deal with the same sort of thing daily and dont go crying to mommy.

Obviously there are incidents where it is blatant racism and that shouldnt be tolerated, but just calling someone a black bla or a white bla i really dont think is that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Talk about deluded

« on: November 05, 2011, 06:23:50 PM »

Sound-bite from Roy Hodgson’s post-match press conference: “Arsenal deserved the win. We put in a hell of a shift and I can’t fault the players for effort. But we met an Arsenal team in good form with their tails up. Conceding the second goal just before half-time was a big blow. But we kept at it. Overall, we restricted their chances to a minimum. Unfortunately, we didn’t attack as well as I would’ve have liked. I’m not sure our penalty appeal in the first half was a penalty, but I thought it was every bit as much a penalty as the one given against us last week.”

cant fault the players for effort!? just what is Hodgson taking.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / "West Brom's display pleases Roy"

« on: October 02, 2011, 10:07:37 AM »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15139102.stm

Is it just me, or is that not very very worrying.

We looked a decent side for 20 minutes, conceded 2 then wouldnt have looked out of place in a pub league.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Scared to attack

« on: September 18, 2011, 11:53:04 PM »

I am feeling very disheartened abut this season so far, we have not turned in a good attacking performance in any of the 5 games. Instead we look scared to attack in fear that we may concede, which is undoubtedly Hodgsons reaction to the amount of goals we conceded last season.

I dont get what this ethos is Hodgson is rallying into us to be scared to go forward. I may be on my own here, but i couldnt care less about a clean sheet record as long as we are creating chances and scoring goals, thats what the game is all about. And if we are soleley concentrating on defending and then we go and concede 3 goals against Swansea, we HAVE to be asking questions of ourselves and more specifically of Hodgson..

Roy got it completely wrong against Swansea, we showed them far too much respect. I dont know why any team in their right mind would play 2 defensive midfielders in a 4 man midfield against a side that hasnt scored yet this season, we should have gone there and not cared about them, and handled our own business, we know we can score goals, we did it all last season. Most of the time on saturday we were playing more or less 8 at the back with 2 strikers, id understand if we were playing United, but when we are playing Swansea, its caution to the degree of pure madness.

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General Football & Sports / Borja Valero

« on: August 24, 2011, 02:52:35 PM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Hu0wldvCJLM

Fair play

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Right Back

« on: August 15, 2011, 03:50:28 PM »

For me Jara should be ahead of Reid for our right back berth.

Now in no way am i saying Reid is a bad player, but you can tell the guy is a midfielder. He stands off way too much, i understand him not wanting to get done by the winger (ala Brunt) but you have to put in a challenge at some point. Reid waits far too long and allows the winger to either get a cross off, get into the box or get a pass off. As a right back the last thing he should be doing is allowing a cross into our box.

Pretty much every chance United had yesterday was through Young, and granted he is a good player, but i think part of this was due to Reid's backing off, he can get away with this in midfield as you dont want to go flying into challenges there, but it is not what a full back should be doing.

Jara, despite his poor positioning at times, knows when to put in a challenge, and i think he would have dealt with Young far better yesterday. I personally said he should have been brought on at about 60mins to play RM and provide some cover, because you could see Young was going to score at some point.

We cant afford to put square pegs in round holes, and while Reid is a good player, we are in dire need of a proper right back and i think we should buy one. If we dont purchase one, for me Jara should be in front of Reid in the pecking order.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Goalkeeper

« on: May 10, 2011, 01:30:02 PM »

I know Carson has been discussed to death, but i havnt seen a poll on it and i just wanted to gauge general opinion on him.

I am by no means a Carson "hater" however for me he is probably the weakest link in our team.  Now he is well known to have a mistake or two in him, but lets face it alot of even the top keepers do, so my qualm is not with that.

My worry is that the defense quite obviously have absolutely no faith in the guy whatsoever, at wolves on sunday there were multiple (im talking >5) occasions when any defender would have taken the easy option and passed it back to the keeper, however every one of the back four at some point in the game didnt choose the safe option of passing it back and instead decided to either give away a throw or hoof it down the line.

Its all well and good saying he is a good shot stopper (which is a point i feel is not necessarily proven of late) but if the whole defense has no faith in him we are headed for trouble. Obviously we have other squad issues that need addressing for next season but GK is the first position i would be looking to correct if i were Hodgson.  Is that the general consensus?