Fair enough last night was a very bad performance on the night and probably the lowest we have dipped since Dagenham in 2011. But I think the words gutless and spineless are totally the wrong words to describe it. I think we lacked confidence and self belief. From the moment that first goal went in the confidence very rapidly drained away from the lads. This is pretty much what happened at Dagenham that day. Their first goal came after about half an hour and in that final hour was when the confidence went. When confidence drains like that as a player you quickly become very frustrated meaning making more and more and more mistakes. But one thing I do not believe, as bad as the performance was last night, is about the players not wanting to try and not caring, it could not be further from the truth. They do care but unfortunately didn’t perform.
When your confidence is down in sport it can be very difficult to get out of, no matter how good you are. Take Alastair Cook for example. About a year ago as a batsman he could hardly buy an innings total of double figures and it went on for a while and maybe he believed he was on going to get a small total. But he had one innings where he got a good and his confidence came back again and he recently got a score of over 200 runs in a single innings and now every time he goes to the crease he believes he is going to get a high total. Now in football when you are in a bad run like we are it can be easy to lose a bit of belief that you are going to get something when you suffer a setback. When you are in a good run and you suffer a setback you always seem to believe you are going to recover.
When you have had a bad performance like that, like last night, for me, in my philosophy it’s never ever a case of bad performance, end of! It’s a case of why did you under perform? Or why are confidence and belief levels as low as they are? It’s not about excuses such as the weather, referees, tiredness, etc. It’s about genuine reasons. It’s about getting the lads in both individually and collectively and talking to them in a cal but constructive manner and getting them to contribute their thoughts as well. That would be watching the game again and without losing any tempers saying what they did was wrong and why it was wrong and saying how it should be done and putting it into practice on the training field afterwards. It’s about good man management and treating them like adults and also trying to get the best out of what is available to you. It’s sometimes about getting into their minds to improve performances and that bringing confidence and belief back again.
If you don’t agree with this you are a little bit silly because it shows you want these indifferent performances to carry on. I certainly don’t I want to see what I believe to be a set of by and large honest find their performance levels and confidence levels and belief levels again and I am sure every other fan wants to see confidence and belief improve as well.
So here is to hopefully better thing. Keep the faith!
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Sadly there are too many people on here that believe the "man-up" approach should be taken by all Footballers
More concerning for me though - as to some extent at Reading, but more so last night - was the complete lack of ability to make any fast, forward movement whatsoever. We had enough possession, but it was all crab-like or back, or occasionally an attempted pass forward to a man facing our own goal (who then passed back, or lost it). To me, this smacks of a fundamental failure on the training ground - which goes way beyond confidence and effort. Same happened last season of course, to a point where we just became unwatchable - it seems we're at that point again.
Solly, Diarra, Cousins and Watt.
Pope, Sarr, Fox (debateable), THD, Ba, Berdich and KAG are not, at this point in time, good standard championship players.
I think Lionel Messi would have been lacking confidence of a good result in that starting line up.
Although Luzon is not blameless, RD is totally responsible.
RD your so called "plan" was and even more so now, is sheer footballing suicide and you are slowly killing my club.
Something supporters of many clubs should think about when they see their team concede