Alone in the Park - it's the Prem 2020-21 thread

you know I thought about him the other day and I completely forgot that he managed you, just assumed he sort of disappeared into the mist after leeds

A Spurs fan outside White Hart Lane once shouted at me "you should be ashamed you're the werst team ov eva seen" after a particularly pathetic 0-0 with O'Leary era Villa and I think I know how he felt

― hiroyoshi tins in (Sgt. Biscuits), Saturday, 12 December 2020 19:24 (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Think i was actually at that one tbh

I am Spurtacus.

Not sure about that in real time, but should have crossed tbh do hes lucky either way

Offside!

Excited to find out whether Sheffield United will secure their second point of the season before February. They don’t look much like doing it today.

I think they are going for the Hudds model of being the biggest pile of shite to somehow stay up and then have a tilt at being worse than Derby in their record-breaking relegation season

although tbf they did alright last season didn't they - but now everyone has their number!

It still rankles that we could have picked up Che Adams for a packet of crisps and a few training cones when he was at Ilkeston. And our stupid fucking manager (think it was Simon Grayson) and scouting staff ruled he was no better than anything we had.

I have a half-baked theory that unless you're George Graham or Alex Ferguson, the authoritarian managerial approach has a limited shelf life and Wilder has pissed enough of his players off that they've just given up. Either way they're making Saints look amazing so I'll take it.

That might be it, though it’s hard to see any manager getting much more out of this squad.

I’ve seen most of their matches this season and, if anything, they’re getting worse. Earlier they were creating chances and blowing them - they’ve managed one shot on target in the last 180 minutes.

Alex Ferguson knew when to be kind to his players.

We've had an interesting week at Charlton, with rumours of meltdown after we subbed Jonny Williams on (and he pre-assisted a goal) but then off again 22 minutes later after he jumped out of a tackle, after which we dropped back completely and Shrewsbury got a 94th minute equaliser. Bowyer criticised Williams harshly and everyone, me included, thought Bowyer had fucked it. Yesterday, he brought Williams on after 50 minutes and he absolutely ran the show. It was revealed after the game that Bowyer had in fact put his arm around Williams during the week and merely stated that he backed him but wanted him switched on and challenging. I still disagree with the initial course of action, but Williams' display yesterday was that of someone who'd both been given backing and who wanted to prove a point.

tl;dr: managerial authoritarianism is a public front but it needs to go hand-in-hand with private kindness. iirc Mourinho also does this, even if he is a bastard

Sure - the public front/prvivate kindness was invisibly folded into my half-baked theory: Ferguson could be a cunt but his players would go over a cliff for him, year after year, so he was clearly managing them differently in private. It's impossible to know but Wilder looks isolated and I wonder if he's just doing the horrible bit. All speculation of course.

be kind to your players
tho they don't deserve it
remember they're footballers
a difficult stage of life

Some ppl get away with it, is the other thing, whether instrinsic characteristic or contextual power

is palace's keeper quite done pls

he is now

Ah, he’d done so well until then.

lol

never seen a notional player rating fall so far so instantly

Now hes a dick, etc

Very good response from Palace.

Yeah, far better team these days. Eze has given them a new dynamic with Zaha freed up.

Very good game imo

Sissoko needs subbing

A deserved equaliser. Spurs can’t play like this and expect to win.

No complaints at all, for this passivity in attack you simply have to defend more easily

would rather we attacked them from here

Strangely poor defending set plays too

is palace's keeper quite done pls

― imago, Sunday, 13 December 2020 14:36 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Definitely not.

this fucking guy

Is he tho

Lo celso did himself no favours today

Not an awful point that

Has any team managed to make it to Xmas with just the one point before? Asking for a friend in Sheffield.

i'm sure that hasn't happened in the history of english pro football tbh

albeit that the season has started in august or september every year before this

if they had a half decent manager they would be at least 20 pts ahead!

Agonisingly shit, long VAR review for a Fulham non-penalty

For once the ref actually went over to the monitor and was like lol fuck u on about lads

Was gonna say over the weekend I think Fulham will go down but I don't see them being 9pts in a season flameouts, they'll get it down on the deck and play some nice stuff and surprise a couple of teams or whatever ¯\(°_o)/¯

― Dadjokke (Sgt. Biscuits), Monday, 28 September 2020 18:15 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hmm

Andersen, Robinson, Lookman and Loftus-Cheek have improved them immeasurably.

extremely funny to see three fulham players foul curtis jones at the same time

LiVARpool

yeah something tells me that when hands are tight to the body and you're not looking at the ball, a penalty is hardly just

Lol I think we've comfortably had more var calls go against us than anyone this season

obviously that has nothing on the penalty that's going to be given to liverpool to win it ;)

The measure is more properly incorrect var calls, or calls not referred to var that shouldve been

How one would measure this, idk

The inevitability of those handballs being given til the end of the season hasn't diminished their tedium in the slightest

I was sick of them in may last year tbph

A good weekend for... *scans table*... Southampton?

tbaf, Fulham's goal could easily have been VARred out of existence for a tiny shove on Salah so

I was amazed it wasn't