Naivety

John Coghlan 22/09/2007 7comments  |  Jump to last
I was struggling to come up with a suitable description for this week?s series of disasters. The word naivety (naivete?) popped into my mind. From the Dictionary definition:
Naivety: noun: lack of experience, wisdom or judgement
Alternative definitions:
  • Playing out 86 minutes of a game against Man Utd and not expecting them to try to win it.
  • Allowing an aggressive centre-half to run unchallenged across our box to score.
  • Expecting a 12 noon kick-off to stop people going to the pub.
  • Sending tickets out by ordinary mail (despite charging them an extra-ordinary £1.50 postage) on a Tuesday and expecting them to arrive next day while there is an industrial dispute going on in the post office.
  • Playing an unknown team from the Ukraine with a never before (except in last 5 minutes) 4:3:3 formation having spent most of last year playing 4:5:1
  • Expecting players who have played 4:4:2 since they were five years old to even understand a new formation.
  • Having got a lead to then carry on playing like our lives depended on scoring 6
  • Thinking Hibbert is a European class fullback or that Neville is a midfield player
  • Leaving one of our best new signings out, preferring Carsley (who was only given a new contract when all other options vanished)
  • Expecting sensible refereeing from a foreign official.
  • Never thinking back to the 60s /70s /80s when every British team (except for Liverpool) went after a Euro game hell for leather hitting posts, bars, goalkeepers, suffering ludicrous referees and match fixing only to let in a sucker punch away goal
  • Letting in a sucker punch away goal.
  • Having the same penalty taker take 3 shots having failed with 2.
  • By-passing what is laughingly called a midfield all night by booting it to an idle centre forward who is not even very tall or else for AJ to try to score from the corner flag.
Look at the format of this team
 Wessels:    Defender
Hibbert:    Defender 
Yobo:       Defender
Lescott:    Defender
Baines:     Defender
Carsley:    Defender
Neville:    Defender

Osman:      Forward
McFadden:   Forward
Yakubu:     Forward, allegedly
Johnson:    Forward

Subs:
Howard:     Defender
Jagielka:   Defender
Anichebe:   Forward
Valente:    Defender (remember him, World Cup semi-finalist, Porto player, may know a bit about European football?)
If table football was played that way you would need only 2 levers and guess what, it would take 30 minutes to score a goal.

There is simply no excuse. Even if we haven?t been in Europe much, a few hours flicking through videotapes and DVDs would provide a least a cautionary lesson for all of the above. There shouldn?t be anyone associated with the club from our £25 million forward line (who between them have scored 1 goal this season) to the lunatic who runs the box office, Kenwright (very quiet this week) the fat controller and David Moyes sleeping easily this week.

Or maybe they should take up Table Football?

Reader Comments

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Michael Newton
1   Posted 22/09/2007 at 17:38:28

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ALL THESE POSTINGS ARE MUCH OF A MUCHNESS.

I think this forum is now littered with postings such as this, it is scrambling my head, can’t we move on to the Villa game as I am going round in circles reading all the same things over and over.
Carl Heyes
2   Posted 22/09/2007 at 18:23:27

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John is absolutely spot on! I thought as soon as i saw the line up that this is naive. 4 2 1 2! against a strong physical side. Neville at right back. jagielka in midfield 4 4 2. We would have wasted them
Sheedy o Toole
3   Posted 22/09/2007 at 18:37:37

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Yes...Moyes should be hung for trying to run up a substantial lead at home and deliberately trying to lose the game.
He’s in the pay of SMERSH you know !
Thomas Corker
4   Posted 22/09/2007 at 18:39:40

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With the exception of Hibbert, I didn’t really have much of an issue with Wessels and the back four really. I would’ve preferred either Valente or Neville there.

On the issue with 4-3-3, despite us never using it I was rather happy about it when it was announced because I thought it might actually mean we might actually attack. The midfield particularly let us down, I feel. As for Yakubu, his performances have been below par so far and, penalties aside, I didn’t have much of a problem with AJ beyond the lack of goals.
Ronald Hooker
5   Posted 23/09/2007 at 02:08:17

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I agree mostly, you pretty much knew how we would change our play after the goal went in. We then let them back into the game. Talk about a nervous team. Its the same week in week out.
Derek Thomas
6   Posted 23/09/2007 at 05:04:47

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Micael Newton: ’ALL THESE POSTINGS ARE MUCH OF A MUCHNESS’... the same things over and over.

Which bit of ’penny’ and ’drop’ don’t you get yet.

For every false dawn that comes along and I say Davie’s learned the lesson now since (say) Spurs at home in feb 07 there are 4 or 5 crap hoofball, tactically inept fiasco’s culminating in a Bucharest-esque meltdown. This is as good as he is going to get.
Brian Waring
7   Posted 23/09/2007 at 11:35:13

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A good coach would have changed the tactics the other night,when he realised, they were blatantly not working.FFS,most of the crowd in the stadium knew this,so why the fuck didn’t Moyes see it?Answer,because he is tactically inept,and when things aren’t working,he does not have a fucking clue what to do.


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