DMAA

I mentioned this guy a few weeks back

Let’s be honest, Dyche is not in the “Dear Lord no” category. There are plenty that are. Whatever you think of him he is clearly a competent manager.

Knutsen just now

A change now, that would have allowed a new manager to use the World Cup break, is looking increasingly unlikely with every passing day. And by the way, Knutsen clinched Bodo Glimt’s 4th successive top two finish on Sunday, finishing 4 clear of Rosenberg. That’s their season finished, so the timing is good.

From day one, his interviews have been a cure for insomnia.

As a fan, I can express frustration when I am increasingly frustrated. What I can’t do as a fan is “contribute” in any way to where we go from here.

This has been an absolute farce. Despite his achievement last season in Europe, major questions remained over Gio's ability domestically. A 3-0 thrashing away to Celtic should not be easily forgotten, nor the loss at Ibrox in April and generally poor style of football. The 4-0 humiliation should have been the end of the road. It was clear at that stage he wasn't good enough. All the wins against the dross in the league only serve to pull the wool over people's eyes. It's a disgrace that we are here 7 points and a humiliating European campaign later and he is still in place. We play an awful style of football, and having made the finance excuse in Europe we are now repeatedly struggling against teams with a small fraction of our finance. Some of us have been saying it for months but it does genuinely seem like the board want to wait until there is nothing left to play for before making a change

Another one is the Maccabi Haifa manager. Don’t know much about him but has a strong CV.

That’s what I was going to say. Shots on target is the first stat I check with us and it’s always very revealing. We are terrible are turning possession into shots.

Smart move

Not a very strong team if we’re honest. An opportunity for Morelos, Wright and Kamara, hopefully we’ll see some hunger and desire today.

One game closer to the break!

We should be playing 2 strikers, one way or another. It is so frustrating to see us playing Sands instead of Morelos in a game like this. It’s just not necessary. 4-3-3 requires goal scoring wide forwards and we don’t have them.

So much of our play goes through Kent and he’s rubbish. Nowhere near the required standard.

Hoping to see some hunger from Matondo tonight. He needs to be taking opportunities like these.

At this stage, I’d say that’s questionable to say the least. It’s impossible to tell if he will make it with us and he hasn’t made a good start.

People are defensive of King because of his age, but the fact is that there has been a massive drop in quality in that position and it has had a big impact. Unfortunate for King but that injury has cost us.

Of course it’s about ability. Celtic are better than us in almost every position right now. And some of our players have been very overrated.

Yeh he’s out of the picture now.

To give Kent a little bit of credit (which I’m not very good at), I think he has been a bit better at getting the ball in the box at times. His crosses for goals at Livingston and Hearts were very good, and we haven’t seen many assists like that from him in previous seasons.

And yeh, this for me. Stats aren’t the problem, it’s just about understanding what they are based on and I’m not sure how a chance is defined here. A high quality chance stat would be far more useful, as well as making it “per 90”. It also just doesn’t make any sense at all that Jota is not in the table. He was on the same number of assists as Kent on Friday and for me, he creates higher quality chances consistently.

Celtic have their wingers wide but they run from very wide positions towards the centre when there is a cross about to come from the other side, and it leads to them being in loads of space every time. I think it was their second goal yesterday that was a textbook example of this. Abada has done it to us a few times too. It’s so simple but it’s an effective tactic that has been drilled into them, compare and contrast to our wide forwards.

These teams are levels above us in terms of fitness. I know some people think fitness should be a leveller of sorts but it isn’t always the case, better teams can afford to recruit a high calibre of athlete (like Ajax recruiting Bassey from us).

Matondo way too late coming on. A goal contribution within 2 minutes of coming on. The jury is very much out but he should be getting more opportunities given the competition he has.

Sakala has been great at one on ones tonight. End product needs to improve but he’s at least showing something.