Chuckie Cheese wrote:
I don“t know what people expected; after bringing in a couple of players from the football hotbeds of the championship, Belgium and Argentina that we suddenly would start playing like Barcelona?

We play two matches in two days against strong opposition, BFS is clear he sees them as a fitness exercise, half of both teams are unproven kids (anybody remember Forest in the cup?) and social media goes into overdrive about how terrible and boring we are and BFS should be sacked. Yepp, the best fans in England for sure.

CC - I agree if we either hadn't bought the players we had, and/or the 'play more expansive football' hadn't reared its ugly head.

Friendlies isn't about results at all, the 85/86 side lost every single game pre season and lost the first league game too and fans were in uproar with Lyall, but it came good due to Goddards injury and the McAvennie/Cotte partnership suddenly clicking.

Issue is, he's bought some quality flair players but instead of tinkering with there system and honing it he's just played a rabble of younger players and first teamers and adopted the exact same system as last year. Result is .. well same result - no support for the front man and just hoping to scrape a draw and nick the odd goal.

I could be wrong but I'm afraid we are going to get stuffed against Spurs largely due to the appalling pre season - not results but the fact he hasn't integrated the new players into a slightly more adventurous formation. I'm sure most fans are not looking for a hung ho 8 players in the box tactic, but just closing further up the field, giving the defenders a breather and allowing more support for the front man makes sense. There are two shapes to a team, the defensive shape which generally for us is excellent, and the offensive shape where players have to move out of position to present an option, buy have players rotating if they get caught up field, its not rocket science.