been in about 30 mins feck knows how much the weekend end cost------they will ALWAYS embarrass you its what we do CAFC.
sick of bollox excuses about new owners, wait for this wait for that-----RD your shitand your pool club idea can fuck off.
Powell something is deeply wrong and you are without doubt part of it.
As for the players coming over at the end yes some tried but im glad in many ways they couldnt hear what they were being called--basically it was spineless bottlers who should all do one ---or variations on that theme.
i couldnt believe the optimism on saturday night and sunday morning FFS wake up this is CAFC if they can give you a micro lift they sure as hell will kick you in the gonads.
staying up FFS dont make me laugh a 2 bob outfit the ONLY club that could get new owners and be an instant laughing stock
total and utter humiliation ? no that comes next Saturday
You really should not come on and make comments like this without backing it up....either piss or get off the pot! We have endured enough crap today without unfounded rumours and idle gossip which you probably would not have posted had we won and got to Wembley!
You really should not come on and make comments like this without backing it up....either piss or get off the pot! We have endured enough crap today without unfounded rumours and idle gossip which you probably would not have posted had we won and got to Wembley!
Chill out. Just speculating like many others after that tweet from one of Powell's closest friends.
Blame him for the vague tweet about 'the truth' behind the poor performance.
Whatever, I foresee dark days ahead and it would appear we will be losing our identity as well as our Championship status....might as well replace the badge with a chuffin McDonalds franchise logo!
I often wonder if I watch the same game as the rest of those on here but today I just can't believe what I've been reading.
I was horrified with some of the comments pre game about the semi-final. Some fans had, clearly, concluded that Sheffield United away was as good as a bye.
They had won eight games on the bounce. I doubt that we have won eight games all season!
They played with confidence, we played with the look of a team that knew that conceding just one goal meant no chance of a win and most likely meant a defeat.
We were, realistically, in my view, only going to get anything today if we kept a clean sheet. Our game plan, as for most of the season, was to keep tight at the back and hope to snatch a goal.
Frankly, we don't have the players to do much else. Sure if we'd kept Kermorgant we would have been stronger defending, and attacking, the balls in the air, but I think we all agree that constant long ball, without or without the Frenchman, was not working for us this season.
I think our players did as good as they could. Powell started with an attacking lineup, we played two up top, and Poyet did, in my view, a great job of dropping back to collect the ball.
We would have been mad to have gone hell for leather against a team that have beaten Fulham and Forest on a run that has coincided with us losing 3-0 at Doncaster and 2-0 at home to Birmingham.
Our best hope of a win was to keep the ball at the back, frustrate the home side, and fans, into coming out and leaving holes in their defense.
I wouldn't, necessarily, go as far as to say that I'm proud of the team today, but we played the only game we could have done under the circumstances.
Had Harriott scored it would have been different. I'm not blaming him, but with the players we have we, realistically, only get one or two chances a game to win it, and today we had our best chance at 0-0.
The squad have been decimated by lack of funds. We are bottom of the second division and they were top of the form table for the third division. Any fan that went today expecting us to win, as a certainty, deserves to be angry/disappointed/whatever.
Some on here terribly arrogant with believing that we would make the semi-final. The bookies made us outsiders to win today, and I agreed with them. Some of the comments on this thread this evening are outrageous.
It was always going to be an expensive day out to, probably, see us lose. I am 100% certain that the players wanted to play at Wembley as much as we wanted to watch them.
The behaviour of some of the Charlton fans towards the players at the final whistle was both unexpected and unlike us. To all those that have been calling for 'Our Charlton back' perhaps we should look at ourselves, as this is not what I expect from Charlton fans!
I was disappointed that the players didn't come over to clap the fans, until I head some telling them to f**k off and stay away at the final whistle.
Ultimately the players can, and will, move on. If we want to stay up we need to stop blaming and criticising them as I'm sure they are doing their best, and as we can't seem to bring in any new players (you remember, like Pardew used to do) I suggest that we get behind those that are there before we end up watching a third division side with none of them in it!
Really pissed off about today. Sums it all up when 6 hours in a car with Blackheathaddick is the highlight of the day.
Always been 100% behind CP, but think he's totally lost the dressing room now and probably a good idea for all parties to move on to new chapters. Sheffield utd looked just as we'd expect, a mid-table L1 team, yet they were up against a team that wouldn't look out of place in the conference going by todays performance.
Formation was wrong Tactics were wrong Line-up was wrong
To play sponge-foot as a lone striker was laughable. The bloke could still be at Brammal lane now and he still wouldn't manage a shot on target. If he's really the best option we've got as a striker, we are truly fucked. To continually play cousins on the right is madness.
Whenever we gained possession, it was either hoofed up to no-one, or when we brought the ball forward, our play was so slow, it was like they were trying to dribble with an egg rather than a football. I was hoping that powell would rip into them at HT and tell them standards were not being met and hopefully change the shape and hopefully take that useless welsh twat off, but instead we came out exactly the same and as soon as they scored, there was only ever going to be one outcome.
So, thanks for the memories of a fantastic playing career with us and a great 2011/12 season as our boss, but can you leave your keys at reception on the way out please.......................
Not going to say too much about the game as its all been said for me - main thing I take from it is that CP just doesn't learn & if Cousins plays one more game wide right then he can walk. (CP that is, not Cousins)
Time to turn a new leaf - new ATTACKING formations from now on & try out some of the players not yet seen. Nego is a right back , then play him there & push Wilson to wide right. Play Pete the Pole & Reza together up front - cant be any worse than Church & Tudgay and if you don't play them you'll never know.
Finally - next Sat is our cup final. Win that game & I can forgive today. Lose it without a whimper like today then CP, RD & the rest of them can f**k off.
Disappointed but not all that surprised that we went out with a Whimper. We will never know what would have happened if Harriott had taken his chance but what was more disappointing was the way we capitulated after the second goal and could have lost by 4 or 5 in the end. There are some good footballers in the team but we are so toothless up front it is difficult to see where the goals are coming from that will give us a chance of staying up. CP now has a huge job to try and lift the team to beat Huddersfield on Wednesday and get something at Millwall at the weekend. If we can do that we still have a reasonable chance of beating the drop.
Went to the donny rovers hudders game yesterday on route to sheffield.now i would think hudders are probably a better team but donny gave it 100% and attacked at every opportunity and got their reward.l was hoping we may employ the same tactic but when united sat back in the first half and we never tried to push on i feared the worst.i know we are not very good but the worst thing about the defeat was the way we crumbled .how long before we get another chance like that.
It was our right and our duty this afternoon to stamp our authority on a club from a lower division. We failed, again.
Back in pre-season, I watched us in a friendly at AFC Wimbledon a few days before our first league game, away at Bournemouth, who had just come up from the third tier. We had returned from our training camp in Spain and all our players looked lively and started on their toes. But within twenty minutes our midfield had been casually brushed aside. In the second half, Wimbledon - this team two divisions below us, remember - were marauding, passing out wide and swinging lethal balls across our box. We hung on for a 1-1 draw. Four days later, when the league season began, we lost at Bournemouth.
As a Covered-Ender of 50 years' experience, I sit in the Lower North now and revel in the way our good opponents come at our defence. Balls from midfield are spread wide, controlled in an instant, passed and moved with deft touches to knowing runners. On the edge of our box there is this gorgeous quick interplay - silently done, without fuss: the quick triangle, the four-yard pass weighted precisely, a feint and movement to open and receive.
Meanwhile, we, Charlton, are technically unable to string three passes together. Barnsley, Burnley, Donny - all those dreary teams who beat us at The Valley last season and this year again - not a single one of their players was thinking "I want a new contract, I love my manager, I am waiting for a wealthy owner." Those players - the ordinary ones at Sheffield United who beat us yesterday, for example - are rehearsed and drilled by good coaching. I look open-mouthed at our hapless performances at The Valley: they are utterly devoid of method, intelligence, intuition or design, and I wonder: What on earth goes on at Sparrows Lane?
I take you back again to our pre-season game at Wimbledon last July. They were two divisions below us. We made a bright start, but within twenty minutes we were completely outplayed. It is our right and our duty to stamp our authority on a team from a lower league. This failure of ours, again and again, is inexcusable.
I often wonder if I watch the same game as the rest of those on here but today I just can't believe what I've been reading.
I was horrified with some of the comments pre game about the semi-final. Some fans had, clearly, concluded that Sheffield United away was as good as a bye.
They had won eight games on the bounce. I doubt that we have won eight games all season!
They played with confidence, we played with the look of a team that knew that conceding just one goal meant no chance of a win and most likely meant a defeat.
We were, realistically, in my view, only going to get anything today if we kept a clean sheet. Our game plan, as for most of the season, was to keep tight at the back and hope to snatch a goal.
Frankly, we don't have the players to do much else. Sure if we'd kept Kermorgant we would have been stronger defending, and attacking, the balls in the air, but I think we all agree that constant long ball, without or without the Frenchman, was not working for us this season.
I think our players did as good as they could. Powell started with an attacking lineup, we played two up top, and Poyet did, in my view, a great job of dropping back to collect the ball.
We would have been mad to have gone hell for leather against a team that have beaten Fulham and Forest on a run that has coincided with us losing 3-0 at Doncaster and 2-0 at home to Birmingham.
Our best hope of a win was to keep the ball at the back, frustrate the home side, and fans, into coming out and leaving holes in their defense.
I wouldn't, necessarily, go as far as to say that I'm proud of the team today, but we played the only game we could have done under the circumstances.
Had Harriott scored it would have been different. I'm not blaming him, but with the players we have we, realistically, only get one or two chances a game to win it, and today we had our best chance at 0-0.
The squad have been decimated by lack of funds. We are bottom of the second division and they were top of the form table for the third division. Any fan that went today expecting us to win, as a certainty, deserves to be angry/disappointed/whatever.
Some on here terribly arrogant with believing that we would make the semi-final. The bookies made us outsiders to win today, and I agreed with them. Some of the comments on this thread this evening are outrageous.
It was always going to be an expensive day out to, probably, see us lose. I am 100% certain that the players wanted to play at Wembley as much as we wanted to watch them.
The behaviour of some of the Charlton fans towards the players at the final whistle was both unexpected and unlike us. To all those that have been calling for 'Our Charlton back' perhaps we should look at ourselves, as this is not what I expect from Charlton fans!
I was disappointed that the players didn't come over to clap the fans, until I head some telling them to f**k off and stay away at the final whistle.
Ultimately the players can, and will, move on. If we want to stay up we need to stop blaming and criticising them as I'm sure they are doing their best, and as we can't seem to bring in any new players (you remember, like Pardew used to do) I suggest that we get behind those that are there before we end up watching a third division side with none of them in it!
Rant over.
You make some valid points but lose all credibility by having a go at people who dared to dream of a Semi-Final. What is wrong with fans trying to be positive and believing that we were delt a great hand by getting a lower club in the 1/4's? If that attitude could filter through to the players then maybe we wouldn't always freeze on these big occasions. To suggest that a bit of confidence shown by some of us has any detrimental effect to the result on the pitch is pathetic. Too many Charlton fans think we continually disappoint because "that's what we do". Such a pathetic attitude. Be horrified at fans booing our own team but not at a positive attitude shown by some, but sadly lacking in the majority of everyone I have ever known connected with Charlton.
for f**ck sake powell you need to start playing polish pete NOW!!!!! i dont give to shits if he doesnt know this league or is not ready bollocks!!! hes a goal scorer 16 goals in 20 games in holland 2nd div tells you that!! anything is better than the shit that call themselfs strikers at the moment! attack is the best form of defence!!!!! plus reza had a good effort brilliantly saved he was on for 10 minutes!!! enough said we need to go for broke now! yes im still F**king angry hmm
The performance was shocking , team selection shocking already been said on here but cousins on the right why?
Big game in midweek and then the shite down the road on saturday , its not good enough , away from home we.are weak , our home form aint much better , i think CP needs to get results in these next 2 games or his job is on the line .
The players need lifting and if 5000+ fans away from home cant do it then wot the fuck can .
This group of players are nowhere near as bad as some people are making out. We played some good stuff at times against QPR and Sheff Weds. ATM they are all playing with a complete lack of confidence and don't look like they are enjoying their football at all. Tactics/team selection is far too negative and has been all season. Harriot has been our brightest forward of late, yet was left out for most of the season. In the absence of Solly, a loan full back should have been bought in which would have allowed Wilson to push forward. Poyet, Cousins and Astrit are all very decent central midfielders and should be played in that position. Poyet and Cousins were completely wasted yesterday. Reza looks like he could be good but he needs to play alongside a stronger forward, Yann would have been perfect. But if we can start playing some decent football, higher up the pitch, goals will start to come from other areas such as midfield and the wing, or from corners and free kicks. In summary, we have to start playing more attacking football at a higher tempo, if we don't we're stuffed. Over to you CP.
I've taken a few hours to reflect on that before posting. I also haven't read any of the previous posts so as not to have my opinions clouded in any way. And this will probably be rambling because I'm still so frustrated with the game. Apologies for that.
That was just an awful game of football from Charlton Athletic. Firstly the quality on display was abysmal. We didn't seem able to string any passes together and just didn't have the quickness of thought or actions to create anything positive in the game. What disturbed me was that I felt Sheffield United were very bad and were there for the taking but we just didn't have the ability or know how to take advantage of that. I thought they looked like a L1 outfit which doesn't say much for us does it.
I thought the midfield was very weak. Cousins outside just did not work. In the center of midfield we totally lacked any creativity. It's all very well blaming the attackers but without any midfield service we are just never going to score. That's why we've been starved of goals all season. Would it have helped to have Reza up there starting instead of Church or Tudgay? Who knows. All I do know is that he is being hailed as some sort of Saviour by Iran but he can't get into our team even though we haven't been able to score for toffee this season. Also, in his first two games for us he was very unlucky when he hit the bar with a chance that he alone created and very unlucky when he hit the post with a chance that came to him when he had to act very instinctively. At least why don't we persevere with him rather than with the likes of Tudgay (who is a has been) and Church (who just isn't what you would call a goal machine).
What worried me about the game was that I felt we just never really created any clear cut chances. Harriott's chance was not a created chance but something that fell to him and he was desperately unlucky. I think in any game you need to create chances and we never seem to do that and, furthermore, we never seem to actually try to do that. So, apart from that, I think it was odds on that this was going to end in a drawer from our perspective even though that was the last thing we needed. I think that was what we were playing for with the hope that some half chance would go in for us. I don't think that's the best way to approach games. Is that because we lack the quality of players? Is that because we are just coached too negatively? I just don't know but it's this that is worrying me for our chances for the rest of the season.
I am really perplexed at the moment and something isn't right in the State of Denmark.
No positives what so ever from the football yesterday, and next Saturday we have our bi annual humiliation. Can it get worse? the one bright spot in a horrible season has just ended horribly. We can't score and therefore every optimist thought I might have regarding our survival in the championship is crushed by this fact. I am not a football expert by any means, but it simply comes down to poor players and poor tactics. I love this club to bits, but yesterday that love was tested to the limit by yet another failure to turn up when it matters the most.
Every time such an event comes around we, the fans, turn up, we make the effort. Where were the team?
Driving out of Sheffield yesterday was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. Good luck to the Blades the deserved their victory and should enjoy their day in the sun, metaphorically and literally.
I would start training this week by putting the players onto the various CAFC fan forums and make them read exactly what their gutless performance means to so many people. Up to now I always thought that this group might be "limited", but at least they cared, now I am not so sure.
Still put this into prospective, I will wake up for several years to come in the middle of the night having cold sweets over something that happened yesterday. No the football was bad, but not the bad, we came within a knats cock of an 80 mph central reservation smash on the M1. A mobile phone, Range Rover, and woman driver combo nearly did for four Addicts fans.
So now we know, when you send out a mix of youngsters, people facing loss of contract/living, players tossed in from all over, not a decent striker in sight unless you look towards Bournemouth, and a lovely guy managing who thinks tactics are little white mints who himself may soon not have a contract. Somehow or other you don't get to Wembley, what a surprise.
I've been to a few games over the last 46 years and I think that yesterday's display is one of the worst I have seen from a Charlton team. It was an FA Cup quarter final and we didn't even give it a go. Sheffield United had two big, slow centre halves and we just put balls in the air all game. Meat and drink. What's wrong with playing stuff behind them or down the channels, get them to turn and run? It's not rocket science but we just didn't do it. The time has come for Chris Powell to go because he is tactically inept. Whatever we do will be too late to save us this season, we have got no chance of staying up but at least if we bring someone in, we can start working towards developing something that means we can mount a realistic challenge next season.
Ive had a sleep on it and so here my take on it…..
No passion, No Desire, No skill, No flair, No fight, No ideas, No passing, No movement, No chance.
These are basically our tactics…..wood to morrison, out to wiggins, back into wood, walks forward…clip…headed away. Repeat.
After about 5-10 minutes it was so obvious that they had two big immobile centre half's, so why keep Tudgay in the hole??? They need dragging apart. When the ball did find its way to Poyet, he had nothing. Not one option.
The whole tactics were appalling today and we matched by the performance.
Sheff Utd sat back, and we had nothing. Not a clue.
Ive had a sleep on it and so here my take on it…..
No passion, No Desire, No skill, No flair, No fight, No ideas, No passing, No movement, No chance.
These are basically our tactics…..wood to morrison, out to wiggins, back into wood, walks forward…clip…headed away. Repeat.
After about 5-10 minutes it was so obvious that they had two big immobile centre half's, so why keep Tudgay in the hole??? They need dragging apart. When the ball did find its way to Poyet, he had nothing. Not one option.
The whole tactics were appalling today and we matched by the performance.
Sheff Utd sat back, and we had nothing. Not a clue.
Awful game.
Perfect summary Gary, you are spot on. Clough took notes on all of the above, got to HT without conceding then put his plan in place to take us apart in the 2nd half which is exactly what happened.
Comments
sick of bollox excuses about new owners, wait for this wait for that-----RD your shitand your pool club idea can fuck off.
Powell something is deeply wrong and you are without doubt part of it.
As for the players coming over at the end yes some tried but im glad in many ways they couldnt hear what they were being called--basically it was spineless bottlers who should all do one ---or variations on that theme.
i couldnt believe the optimism on saturday night and sunday morning FFS wake up this is CAFC if they can give you a micro lift they sure as hell will kick you in the gonads.
staying up FFS dont make me laugh a 2 bob outfit the ONLY club that could get new owners and be an instant laughing stock
total and utter humiliation ? no that comes next Saturday
Blame him for the vague tweet about 'the truth' behind the poor performance.
I was horrified with some of the comments pre game about the semi-final. Some fans had, clearly, concluded that Sheffield United away was as good as a bye.
They had won eight games on the bounce. I doubt that we have won eight games all season!
They played with confidence, we played with the look of a team that knew that conceding just one goal meant no chance of a win and most likely meant a defeat.
We were, realistically, in my view, only going to get anything today if we kept a clean sheet. Our game plan, as for most of the season, was to keep tight at the back and hope to snatch a goal.
Frankly, we don't have the players to do much else. Sure if we'd kept Kermorgant we would have been stronger defending, and attacking, the balls in the air, but I think we all agree that constant long ball, without or without the Frenchman, was not working for us this season.
I think our players did as good as they could. Powell started with an attacking lineup, we played two up top, and Poyet did, in my view, a great job of dropping back to collect the ball.
We would have been mad to have gone hell for leather against a team that have beaten Fulham and Forest on a run that has coincided with us losing 3-0 at Doncaster and 2-0 at home to Birmingham.
Our best hope of a win was to keep the ball at the back, frustrate the home side, and fans, into coming out and leaving holes in their defense.
I wouldn't, necessarily, go as far as to say that I'm proud of the team today, but we played the only game we could have done under the circumstances.
Had Harriott scored it would have been different. I'm not blaming him, but with the players we have we, realistically, only get one or two chances a game to win it, and today we had our best chance at 0-0.
The squad have been decimated by lack of funds. We are bottom of the second division and they were top of the form table for the third division. Any fan that went today expecting us to win, as a certainty, deserves to be angry/disappointed/whatever.
Some on here terribly arrogant with believing that we would make the semi-final. The bookies made us outsiders to win today, and I agreed with them. Some of the comments on this thread this evening are outrageous.
It was always going to be an expensive day out to, probably, see us lose. I am 100% certain that the players wanted to play at Wembley as much as we wanted to watch them.
The behaviour of some of the Charlton fans towards the players at the final whistle was both unexpected and unlike us. To all those that have been calling for 'Our Charlton back' perhaps we should look at ourselves, as this is not what I expect from Charlton fans!
I was disappointed that the players didn't come over to clap the fans, until I head some telling them to f**k off and stay away at the final whistle.
Ultimately the players can, and will, move on. If we want to stay up we need to stop blaming and criticising them as I'm sure they are doing their best, and as we can't seem to bring in any new players (you remember, like Pardew used to do) I suggest that we get behind those that are there before we end up watching a third division side with none of them in it!
Rant over.
Always been 100% behind CP, but think he's totally lost the dressing room now and probably a good idea for all parties to move on to new chapters. Sheffield utd looked just as we'd expect, a mid-table L1 team, yet they were up against a team that wouldn't look out of place in the conference going by todays performance.
Formation was wrong
Tactics were wrong
Line-up was wrong
To play sponge-foot as a lone striker was laughable. The bloke could still be at Brammal lane now and he still wouldn't manage a shot on target. If he's really the best option we've got as a striker, we are truly fucked. To continually play cousins on the right is madness.
Whenever we gained possession, it was either hoofed up to no-one, or when we brought the ball forward, our play was so slow, it was like they were trying to dribble with an egg rather than a football.
I was hoping that powell would rip into them at HT and tell them standards were not being met and hopefully change the shape and hopefully take that useless welsh twat off, but instead we came out exactly the same and as soon as they scored, there was only ever going to be one outcome.
So, thanks for the memories of a fantastic playing career with us and a great 2011/12 season as our boss, but can you leave your keys at reception on the way out please.......................
Will leave comments until the morning, so inept.
Time to turn a new leaf - new ATTACKING formations from now on & try out some of the players not yet seen. Nego is a right back , then play him there & push Wilson to wide right. Play Pete the Pole & Reza together up front - cant be any worse than Church & Tudgay and if you don't play them you'll never know.
Finally - next Sat is our cup final. Win that game & I can forgive today. Lose it without a whimper like today then CP, RD & the rest of them can f**k off.
Back in pre-season, I watched us in a friendly at AFC Wimbledon a few days before our first league game, away at Bournemouth, who had just come up from the third tier. We had returned from our training camp in Spain and all our players looked lively and started on their toes. But within twenty minutes our midfield had been casually brushed aside. In the second half, Wimbledon - this team two divisions below us, remember - were marauding, passing out wide and swinging lethal balls across our box. We hung on for a 1-1 draw. Four days later, when the league season began, we lost at Bournemouth.
As a Covered-Ender of 50 years' experience, I sit in the Lower North now and revel in the way our good opponents come at our defence. Balls from midfield are spread wide, controlled in an instant, passed and moved with deft touches to knowing runners. On the edge of our box there is this gorgeous quick interplay - silently done, without fuss: the quick triangle, the four-yard pass weighted precisely, a feint and movement to open and receive.
Meanwhile, we, Charlton, are technically unable to string three passes together. Barnsley, Burnley, Donny - all those dreary teams who beat us at The Valley last season and this year again - not a single one of their players was thinking "I want a new contract, I love my manager, I am waiting for a wealthy owner." Those players - the ordinary ones at Sheffield United who beat us yesterday, for example - are rehearsed and drilled by good coaching. I look open-mouthed at our hapless performances at The Valley: they are utterly devoid of method, intelligence, intuition or design, and I wonder: What on earth goes on at Sparrows Lane?
I take you back again to our pre-season game at Wimbledon last July. They were two divisions below us. We made a bright start, but within twenty minutes we were completely outplayed. It is our right and our duty to stamp our authority on a team from a lower league. This failure of ours, again and again, is inexcusable.
Too many Charlton fans think we continually disappoint because "that's what we do". Such a pathetic attitude.
Be horrified at fans booing our own team but not at a positive attitude shown by some, but sadly lacking in the majority of everyone I have ever known connected with Charlton.
Big game in midweek and then the shite down the road on saturday , its not good enough , away from home we.are weak , our home form aint much better , i think CP needs to get results in these next 2 games or his job is on the line .
The players need lifting and if 5000+ fans away from home cant do it then wot the fuck can .
That was just an awful game of football from Charlton Athletic. Firstly the quality on display was abysmal. We didn't seem able to string any passes together and just didn't have the quickness of thought or actions to create anything positive in the game. What disturbed me was that I felt Sheffield United were very bad and were there for the taking but we just didn't have the ability or know how to take advantage of that. I thought they looked like a L1 outfit which doesn't say much for us does it.
I thought the midfield was very weak. Cousins outside just did not work. In the center of midfield we totally lacked any creativity. It's all very well blaming the attackers but without any midfield service we are just never going to score. That's why we've been starved of goals all season. Would it have helped to have Reza up there starting instead of Church or Tudgay? Who knows. All I do know is that he is being hailed as some sort of Saviour by Iran but he can't get into our team even though we haven't been able to score for toffee this season. Also, in his first two games for us he was very unlucky when he hit the bar with a chance that he alone created and very unlucky when he hit the post with a chance that came to him when he had to act very instinctively. At least why don't we persevere with him rather than with the likes of Tudgay (who is a has been) and Church (who just isn't what you would call a goal machine).
What worried me about the game was that I felt we just never really created any clear cut chances. Harriott's chance was not a created chance but something that fell to him and he was desperately unlucky. I think in any game you need to create chances and we never seem to do that and, furthermore, we never seem to actually try to do that. So, apart from that, I think it was odds on that this was going to end in a drawer from our perspective even though that was the last thing we needed. I think that was what we were playing for with the hope that some half chance would go in for us. I don't think that's the best way to approach games. Is that because we lack the quality of players? Is that because we are just coached too negatively? I just don't know but it's this that is worrying me for our chances for the rest of the season.
I am really perplexed at the moment and something isn't right in the State of Denmark.
Very, very frustrated.
No positives what so ever from the football yesterday, and next Saturday we have our bi annual humiliation. Can it get worse? the one bright spot in a horrible season has just ended horribly.
We can't score and therefore every optimist thought I might have regarding our survival in the championship is crushed by this fact. I am not a football expert by any means, but it simply comes down to poor players and poor tactics.
I love this club to bits, but yesterday that love was tested to the limit by yet another failure to turn up when it matters the most.
Every time such an event comes around we, the fans, turn up, we make the effort. Where were the team?
Driving out of Sheffield yesterday was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. Good luck to the Blades the deserved their victory and should enjoy their day in the sun, metaphorically and literally.
I would start training this week by putting the players onto the various CAFC fan forums and make them read exactly what their gutless performance means to so many people. Up to now I always thought that this group might be "limited", but at least they cared, now I am not so sure.
Still put this into prospective, I will wake up for several years to come in the middle of the night having cold sweets over something that happened yesterday. No the football was bad, but not the bad, we came within a knats cock of an 80 mph central reservation smash on the M1. A mobile phone, Range Rover, and woman driver combo nearly did for four Addicts fans.
No passion, No Desire, No skill, No flair, No fight, No ideas, No passing, No movement, No chance.
These are basically our tactics…..wood to morrison, out to wiggins, back into wood, walks forward…clip…headed away. Repeat.
After about 5-10 minutes it was so obvious that they had two big immobile centre half's, so why keep Tudgay in the hole??? They need dragging apart. When the ball did find its way to Poyet, he had nothing. Not one option.
The whole tactics were appalling today and we matched by the performance.
Sheff Utd sat back, and we had nothing. Not a clue.
Awful game.