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O'Neil In, Out and Shaking it all about

Deutsch Wolf said:
Bellegarde was hit and miss yesterday but I'd still take that performance over 90% of the ones we got from the rat bastard in a gold shirt.
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Thought he took on his man well and took up some good positions, just rancid at corners and from time to time he drifted meaning Semedo had no one in front of him and had to do it himself - but if it’s a new position to him those things will happen.
 
We looked seriously good vs Rennes (who themselves are a very decent team, they still had Doku then too) so a fair bit of my frustration was we were throwing that away.

I have no idea what Lage did in pre-season 2022. We looked appalling right from the off. The stupid prick.
 
Wolvensam said:
Thought he took on his man well and took up some good positions, just rancid at corners and from time to time he drifted meaning Semedo had no one in front of him and had to do it himself - but if it’s a new position to him those things will happen.
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Think it's a "needs must" situation, really. When Neto is fit again Bellegarde's starting position will be more central, I'd expect.

Which is to say, long term I don't think he's a wide player and for now he's just a bandage at the position.
 
Deutsch Wolf said:
We looked seriously good vs Rennes (who themselves are a very decent team, they still had Doku then too) so a fair bit of my frustration was we were throwing that away.

I have no idea what Lage did in pre-season 2022. We looked appalling right from the off. The stupid prick.
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We looked good for most of the pre-season which is what baffled me more about Lop’s departure to be honest - unless it was a “imagine what this team could be if you gave me money, guys”.

The players just had zero fitness levels under Lage. Pretty sure by November we had covered the least ground in the Premier League and the team looked absolutely fucked by about 50 minutes. It was fortunate we had that World Cup break to build some fitness up.
 
As well as GO has done, and as much as Julen can go fuck himself, it's probably fair to say that the latter is still a more tactically astute man at this stage. As such, it's reasonable to assume that with Lopetegui we'd have been capable of at least this points haul.

Given that, his leaving comes off as soap opera drama between himself and Shi rather than some genuine belief he had that we were fucked. I especially think back to the Balague interview when he painted himself as "trying to tell the fans what's really going on". Get the fuck outta here with that shit.
 
boom-mind-blown.gif
You’ve got some serious mind reading abilities going on today @Alan
 
I also think Matt Hobbs deserves a fair amount of credit for how things are going at the moment. Potentially appeased Lop to stay and prepare the players, convinced him to stay when plan B came in before Jeff Shi was a thundercunt, and then - up to yet - has recruited well in GON and his coaching staff. Signings have been an improvement too and the squad has relative depth now, especially in midfield.

Hopefully this means Jeff stays the fuck away from football matters in future and we won’t be spunking £35m on wonder kid pet projects.
 
Wolvensam said:
I have a lot of bitterness as to how Lop conducted himself but he did leave us well prepared for United, and the players have top fitness levels now. Not attributing the latter totally to Lop as O’Neil has been here for nearly two months now but he did leave us in a very good way. Hobbs said as much when he departed
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Lop definitely improved our fitness levels and I think GON has improved them again, RAN pretty much survives 90 minutes now. Thinking back to how we were blowing out our arses after 55 minutes under Lage, its astounding.
 
Having watched the clip of his after match debrief(for want of a better word), I have to say that as a 40yr old he comes over as someone definitely ‘wise before his years’.
While not quite joining the ‘Gary O’Neil’s barmy army’ just yet, a few more efforts like yesterday and I’ll be onboard.
 
Read an article recently by Gordon Strachan who was his manager at one time. He reckons Gary was always questioning tactics and was a deep thinker about the game. Now that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be the next Pep, it at least shows he isn't a dinosaur and tries to bring some thought to his approach.
 
sycophantia said:
Read an article recently by Gordon Strachan who was his manager at one time. He reckons Gary was always questioning tactics and was a deep thinker about the game. Now that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be the next Pep, it at least shows he isn't a dinosaur and tries to bring some thought to his approach.
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I had to look up when Strachan was GON's boss.

I don't remember Strachan at Boro' at all. Must have happened though, Wiki says so.
 
O'Neil and his team are getting well deserved praise these times and it's hard to quibble with any of it .

Our next 8 matches ( Arsenal aside perhaps ) are huge , as a big % of them contain matches against middle table teams - a bit like ourselves .
It's probably not that difficult to raise your game against strong opposition , but against middle ranking teams it's a different story .

These 8 matches are games where we could really make strides in terms of out league position , but it's often far from straightforward against a lot of these teams .

A real plus for these times is our home form , which has really improved .
 
It's a lot more about the opposition style than raising the game imo. We are built to hit teams on the break, the bigger sides will by and large play their own game which invariably is try and dominate the ball and not worry too much about us, which suits the way we want to play. Those lower down the league will more likely sit men behind the ball and ask us to break them down particularly at Molineux. It's not massively different to how things were in the first 2 Nuno PL seasons in that respect. We've still to play a run of the mill team at home this season, although Villa did amend the way they play to try and limit us
 
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