DMAA

Kent really needs to up his game. 

Looks like the signing of Juninho Bacuna from Huddersfield is imminent. Low fee with appearance based add-ons according to Alan Nixon. A bit of a puzzling one given the number of midfielders we already have, surely someone is leaving.

A few players have given the manager something to think about and that’s exactly what we want. 

33 minutes ago, ranger_syntax said:

Nothing snide about it.

 

I admit I really don't know why you would be baffled given the fact that he is slow and that he needs to manage an injury.

Well I obviously see a bigger difference between the two players than you do. I have always said I feel uneasy when Balogun plays, but especially in Europe and I wasn’t surprised at all to see him exposed last night. 

4 minutes ago, craig said:

We’ll need to agree to disagree on us being powderpuff in the first 40 minutes.  Malmo could barely get out of their own half the whole time and they made a number of defensive mistakes.  We actually got in behind a few times and but for a slack final ball could have been 2 or 3 up.

 

Hagi does look sharper than most but the only person he’s have replaced is Wright - and in fairness to Wright he has started the season well and in the first leg against Malmo did very well when he came on.  Wright deserves his chance IMHO.

 

I wouldn’t have changed anything at half time - I don’t think the manager got that wrong.  Aside from a 5 minute spell in the first half we absolutely dominated them.  They then go down to 10 men so why change anything ?  Also better to see how they change formation and tactics first before making your own because you know they’re going to change something.  Unfortunately they scored two very poorly defended goals fairly quickly in the second half which changed the complexion of the game.

I don’t think we disagree, I just meant that for a period of dominance and great pressure we didn’t actually come close to scoring much, I don’t think we had an effort on target aside from the goal. You would normally expect the keeper to be very busy during a spell like that. 

5 minutes ago, craig said:

Helander WAS available as he was on the bench.

 

Said to my kid that I was surprised he wasn’t starting as he is the one defender who stabilizes the whole back 4.  As much as I like Balogun he doesn’t instill defensive confidence the same way Helander does.  He also doesn’t read the game as well as Helander.

 

Goldson has much more confidence when Helander is beside him.

 

Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

Yeh he was available, but he has said he has been playing with painkillers for 8 years and his ongoing problems do often cause him to be rested when we are playing twice a week. It’s possible he had some discomfort that was enough for the management to rest him but not enough to put him out of the squad. 

23 minutes ago, craig said:

As said already, the formation wasn’t the issue.  We dominated them for the first 40 minutes and, in fairness, we could have been out of sight by half time

Even in that time we were still powderpuff in the final third really though weren’t we?
 

It’s difficult to say what should have been done, I think Hagi deserved a start though as he looks sharper than most.

There was an argument to play Itten at home alongside Morelos so that we had more goal-scorers in the team but you can understand why that wasn’t done from the start, however I think it should have been done at half time when we were a man up. I think they’d have been very uncomfortable with a man on top of both of their center backs. Wright and Kent don’t have any presence. 

25 minutes ago, ranger_syntax said:

Yeah, but Helander is very slow.

 

Are you still baffled by the decision?

You’re being a bit snide as usual but yes if Helander was available it’s a baffling decision and it cost us last night with two moments of very poor defending. 

8 hours ago, ranger_syntax said:

The Malmo forwards are fast.

 

I might have mentioned this before but Helander is very slow.

He is a much better defender than Balogun though and you don’t see him giving away goals like Balogun did last night. The stats show that Helander is our best traditional defender too, we always look vulnerable without IMO. 

1 minute ago, PoohBear said:

We were absolutely blessed with that CL qualifying route too. Really disappointing.

Malmö and Ludogorets and we’d have made the CL group stage. It’s a massive failure and a painful one. 

1 minute ago, alexscottislegend said:

Walter had some awful European nights with arguably better players; AEK Athens for one.

Kaunus surely the best example. Off the back of a great season and humiliated at the first hurdle. 

21 minutes ago, ian1964 said:

The goals we lost at Malmo were just as bad, Helander was playing then!.

He wasn’t directly at fault like Balogun was tonight. 

Baffled by the decision to drop Helander for Balogun. Absolutely schoolboy defending from Balogun has cost us tonight and Gerrard has to take the blame for dropping our best man marker. 
 

There were loads of other failures out there tonight but those goals were sucker punches and should never have happened. 
 

This is now a very worrying start to the season and those who have brushed off the red flags to date will have woken up now. Hard work ahead and big decisions to be made in the transfer market. 

Bunch of cheats, constantly diving and play acting on the ground to waste time

This is shockingly poor, no chance are we scoring 2 

6 minutes ago, MacK1950 said:

Intended target or not he should still have been tracked IMO.

Of course he should have been tracked. We needn’t go overboard with criticism but Lundstram takes a chunk of the blame for the goal.  

28 minutes ago, Rousseau said:

I assumed his attitude issue last season was because he wanted to leave and was refused that; he was just playing out his final year. 

 

I think it's too early to draw conclusion about fitness. 

 

Edit: I've just seen that there are some stories about us struggling with Covid cases during pre-season, so not everyone is up to speed. 

Yeh of course it’s too early to draw conclusions, I’m just theorising because I very rarely buy that “attitude” is the cause of poor performance, and fitness is one of the most likely explanations for what could be perceived by fans as laziness, what he did yesterday certainly reminded me of myself at 5s many a time. He may be like Arfield and have seasons of energy in his season. 

1 minute ago, Rousseau said:

I actually thought Lundstram would be that link player between defence and attack, breaking the lines, getting into the box.

 

Maybe he's just taking time to get settled? 

He’s supposed to be, his stats at SU showed that he was very weak defensively but pretty good going forward. To me he looks very unfit and I don’t really know what his excuse is, and I find it a bit concerning that SU fans complained at how lazy he was all of last season, some players do lose a bit of their fitness/energy earlier in their career than others, I hope that isn’t happening with Lundstram. 

13 minutes ago, RANGERRAB said:

Both Kent and Aribo were poor today and we relied on them a lot last season.

Hmm. I just finished watching Sportscene there, Aribo was involved in absolutely everything decent we did but he can’t do it all by himself. Kent had literally one involvement in our attacks in the highlights and it was just a cross, he really needs to improve and fast. Kent’s other involvement was giving the ball away badly before their goal. 

There’s no denying that it has been a bit of a worrying start to the season tbh. Preseason was badly disrupted and we are already having bad luck with our players (Roofe, Hagi, Jack). 
 

Scott Wright very unlucky not to start, or get on sooner. For Malmö I think he should come in for Lundstram with Aribo moving back one. 

Hopefully it was at least a very valuable workout for a few players. We had some players out there who were simply not match fit. It should also serve to underline the need not to be complacent or take qualification for granted. I fully trust Gerrard to make sure the job gets done. 

It could even be a means of motivation that Olympiacos drew at home in their fixture. There is a chance we could get to the groups via Malmö and Ludogorets. 

Annoyingly I was only able to catch bits of the game tonight despite having bought it. From the bits I saw though I thought Lundstram looked dead on his feet? Seemed we were really missing the legs of Jack and Kamara. 

Wow! Massive goal. My internet just died die the last ten minutes so I missed it. 

3 hours ago, Bluedell said:

I'm not saying he isn't a very good player, but he just isn't who I'd say was the "best" player at the club. There's a few I'd have in front of him, but that's no disrespect to him. He may change my mind this season.

Yeh I prefer to avoid “best player” conversations because I think we had a different best player most months (if not weeks) last season.