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What are the specific groundbreaking takeouts you think I might be excited by here, Clive? (Not trying to be clever - I'm just a bit perplexed.)
We need to be on it every game. Set pieces matter. We need to be consistent. The past is the past.
I mean, it's not exactly forensic levels of footballing analysis, is it?
I also don't understand why he thinks Portsmouth (or 'Porpoise', amusingly) have made improvements since the start of the season. We've won five of our last seven, and they've lost five of theirs! We should be going down there with all guns blazing for three points.
Look, JS seems like a smiley type of guy you could have a congenial glass of French wine with - but I just don't find him very interesting or someone who even tells it as it is.
It's hardly persuasive that anyone loves everyone, on LfW or anywhere else, but Happy Xmas to both my private supporters and (neurotypical) public detractors regardless.
Re all things JS and QPR, we've had two or three heart-warming performances/results at home, but the next 6 games (I'm including our FA Cup game and the away trip to Stoke) will tell us much more. Of the league fixtures, reading things with my half-century-old grizzled head as much as my heart, I think it'll be 2W, 1D, 2L - in other words, par for the course for our season so far. (Perhaps we should run a LfW sweepstake - if legal?) Obviously, I hope we raise the bar and make me eat my (Loft for) words.
I think Julien is doing an OK job (sometimes better than OK, sometimes worse) with the enhanced squad he has, and hopefully he and the players are improving. I don't find him particularly 'studious', for the record. Studious is, for example, making sure our full-back is detailed to show Middlesbrough's Whittaker outside so he doesn't get a strike away, or at least picking up on it afterwards. Studious is realising Nardi needs to learn to catch a ball and communicate more decisively with his defenders, and doing something tangible about it. Studious is making it clear, both implicitly in games and explicitly after games, the specific thinking behind making or not making subs in a way that dispels our more than occasional perplexity this season about his lack of reactivity and/or idiosyncratic choices. Studious, in short, is a professional coach giving me - a burning amateur who watches closely and loves to learn - illuminating insights into our strategy and showings, as the best of LfW posters from time to time manage to do. As I've pointed out, and even by 'managerspeak' standards, Julien likes to talk about games and other teams in anaesthetising broad-brush generalities which tell one nothing about the team and/or opposition - in a way that that makes me worry he's much more a 'bigger picture' kind of guy (or, in other words, one who tends not to see the trees for the wood).
I think the Leicester game was probably (and to me somehow sadly) in some part the players socking it to Marti, so, for different reasons, and much as I enjoyed it, I'm taking it out of the recent picture for the opposite reasons that Clive implicitly sidelines the Boro game in his own piece. That might strike some as unwarranted, given the quality/resilience we showed against Hull and Brum, but time will tell. As we'll all agree, however, good teams show steel and panache on the road too - that's what makes them good teams, as distinct from those (like us, historically) that turn it on when we feel like it then phone it in when we've had to get on a coach for a bit, we're too far North, or it's Boxing Day.
So ram my equivocations down my throat, Rs, and let's take this seriously counter-cultural! Give me 10 points from here to Stoke, go to the Hammers with a credible team and win (or at least put up a proper fight), and then we'll talk again!
So you basically don't (or don't yet) rate any of our midfield/wingers (apart from the absentee Chair) - even though we're on the cusp of the playoffs, and Dembele, Smyth and Siato have all been scoring and making goals for fun of late. Glad you're not in our dressing room right now.
If you're right about Bennie, he needs to start turning the myth into something real. He's still young (20 next birthday), but has been with us for 18 months (12 apps no goals), and either he's up to the Champ or he's not. Morgan is a very similar age, but already has 40 apps and a couple of goals under his belt. Let's hope he can.
These arm-Chair critics Wheel out the same Easy objections concerning Ili's limitations, when it's quite clear his Electric spirit, High workrate, and indisposition to hit the Deck get the whole ground Rocking.
Away day after a good win vs relegation battlers, Boxing Day, and a sold-out away allocation. We've been here before, haven't we people? To coin a phrase, what could possibly go wrong?
Over-generalised/pessimistic, even in this day and age. Sunderland, last time I checked, are 6th in the Prem. Of their playoff-winning 11, all bar Bellingham are still part of their first team squad.
A salutary lesson in the converse direction is us (x 2): When we went up (both times) and brought in the likes of supposed Prem quality of Bosingwa, Fabio, Ji-Sung and Jenas over the heads of the likes of Derry, Hill et al, it damn nearly relegated us the first time before our owners cleverly accomplished it the second. We'd have been better off retaining the nucleus of the first side and could hardly have done worse! Sure, you need quality at the top, but you also need togetherness, spirit, and knowhow. Oh, and respect.
Yet more evidence (if any is needed) that there is no necessary correlation between budgets and performances. On paper, Leicester should be wiping the floor with us, but if anything Stephan's pore-match comments suggest he over-estimated them. We should expect to compete with everyone in this ropey league. Now we need to go and do it.
He doesn't look that happy in the job, does he? By contrast, he says he was 'very happy for two seasons' with us and is glad for us that we're doing well - politic or authentic, who can say? Says he thinks we're doing well under Julien and it will be a tough game at LR. Hasn't thought much about the reception he'll get. Refuses to comment on circumstances around leaving QPR and whether he paid his own release clause - just because it's football and the universe will obviously explode if he spills the beans.
I anticipate a 1-1, and on this occasion (Leicester being my 2nd team) I'll take it.
Football is corrupt, and we were cheated, end of. Spurs looked virtually ashamed to be picking up the trophy. If I'd have been captain, I'd have handed it back.
Always a bizarre idea - the generalised love of a far too big city like London!
I mean, I love Highgate, the ICA, and Shepherds Bush, obviously. But to extend that, say, to Tottenham Hale, the Euston Road, and Regent Street - well, that way madness lies.
Your 2nd para implies our playing 'style' under Marti might have had at least as much to do with the manager as the squad.
Meanwhile, some of our performances of late (the ones I'm hanging my magic hat on as a fan at least) are raising my aspirations/expectations for the Leicester game if Julie's recent words about having 'ambition' are not to sound like hot air.
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