I am going to say it!! Yes I am, Nathan Jones......................

Leuth

The biggest charge against Jones right now is that he okayed Alli on a 4-year deal. That's almost sackable in itself ffs

NabySarr

Leuth said:

NabySarr said:

Leuth said:

If you took our players individually and transplanted them into a decent Championship side, most of the first choice team wouldn't be glaringly out of place imo. Alli maybe, but I don't think he's going to be first choice again for a while if ever. 

If you took our players individually and transplanted them into most championship squads they wouldn’t get in the team. That’s the entire point, our players aren’t that good. Only Jones, TC and maybe Okonkwo would start for more than a handful of teams at this level. Early days but I’d say Koumetio could be another but it’s still not many 

Either Coventry or Skipp could easily play with a more progressive/physical midfield partner in a decent Championship team, and a fit Chalobah could be that partner obviously. Our whole first-choice defence is up to the mark (Mesik was miles better than his Preston counterpart for example, and I consider Ramsay our first choice RB). Campbell is obviously at this level if not higher and Leaburn would be a good option for most teams if they wanted a big man who can play a bit 

When I said more than a handful, Preston were part of that handful. Our players would get in the teams of Lincoln, Bolton, Preston, Pompey etc 

I don’t see Coventry and Skipp displacing anyone from most championship midfields other than those teams similar to us. Other than Preston and Pompey, every midfield we’ve faced so far has had better players than them in 

Lots of teams would take Leaburn in their squad, I don’t think many would start him 

LargeAddick

All the time we are ‘improving’ the squad on the cheap we are basically treading water. Our net spend this summer, said NJ, was 1.5m. Not even peanuts, more like the shucks of the peanuts. We’ve plugged holes with three so far less than inspiring loanees (Bindon, Ouma, Skipp) and people wonder why we suddenly aren’t playing like Barcelona. NJ is operating with at least one hand tied behind his back. The owners want out. All the time that continues nothing much will change. Avoiding relegation will again be an achievement under these constraints although I think we will finish 12th to 14th and that will be down to NJ’s good work.

Chunes

I'm using this example because it's the one Nathan referenced in his interview. (Those on mobile might have to zoom in). 



This type of thing was happening all game, between pretty much all of them. You can coach patterns until the cows come home but when you've got players who did this, it's not going to help.

Crispywood

I don’t get how we can build such an incredible backline in terms of quality depth and traits but can’t even sign a right winger or attacking midfielder 

fenaddick

Crispywood said:

I don’t get how we can build such an incredible backline in terms of quality depth and traits but can’t even sign a right winger or attacking midfielder 

I mean the reason seems fairly simple to me? You’re assessing different attributes. Our scouting system is good at assessing defensive ones but not creative ones. In the modern age it shouldn’t be hard to fix, you just keep tweaking the data model until you’re getting better results. What’s tough about that is you only have two windows to test it 

AberystwythAddick

Crispywood said:

I don’t get how we can build such an incredible backline in terms of quality depth and traits but can’t even sign a right winger or attacking midfielder 

Incredible is a bit over the top isn’t it. 

The defence is fine. No better than lower mid table, there’s a standout player in LJ but apart from that they’re all pretty average. 

Making_all_the_noise

When we’re 100% rested, we can play a NJ style game. Press from the front, midfield pushing up and defenders challenging every ball with intent. 

NJ doesn’t set us up to play through the middle so our game relies on a high press to keep pressure off our defence, to win the ball high and be ‘front footed’. 

When we don’t play like that, NJ bemoans the players and says they’re not doing as instructed. He doesn’t account for the front three looking absolutely sh*gged, which destroys the entire press and leaves everyone else exposed. You can’t play three games in 8 days in that style. He’s running our players into the ground and surprised they’re getting injured or simply unable to keep up that work rate. 

If Leaburn is off the pitch, we have no one who can make any impact upfront because they’re not going to get the ball to feet. We resort to hoofball because teams can press our defence and midfield easily and then run us ragged by passing the ball around us. Fans scream that the front three aren’t pressing but they’re honest pros who are clearly knackered. TC and Grant are asked to sprint to defend and then sprint to attack. Leaburn has to cover the keeper and two centre backs in the press and win every ball hoofed up to him. No wonder they’ve lost their legs. 

Meanwhile other Championship teams let the ball do the work. They’re set up to play football that’s sustainable across a season. 

NJ keeps talking about an evolution in our style. There is no clear evolution in our style. That’s a problem he has to resolve.

Can see us beating Bristol City with an intense performance and then getting run into the ground soon after the season restarts. All feels inevitable. 

Chunes

It's a bit of a myth that we press so much that we tire players out.

According to Opta, we are bottom of the league for Pressing Sequences.

Second bottom for High Turnovers. 

Making_all_the_noise

Even more worrying then because I have no idea what we’re even trying (and failing) to do if that’s the case. 

fenaddick

Chunes said:

It's a bit of a myth that we press so much that we tire players out.

According to Opta, we are bottom of the league for Pressing Sequences.

Second bottom for High Turnovers. 

Making_all_the_noise said:

Even more worrying then because I have no idea what we’re even trying (and failing) to do if that’s the case. 

NJ made it pretty clear he’d asked them to press more than they did on Saturday. His job now to figure out why they didn’t do it 

NabySarr

Crispywood said:

I don’t get how we can build such an incredible backline in terms of quality depth and traits but can’t even sign a right winger or attacking midfielder 

Defenders are cheaper, players that can create or score goals are more expensive. So I think that's how we've built a very good group of defenders without spending much money at all, but have a relatively poor attack despite spending quite a bit 

Leuth

Chunes said:

I'm using this example because it's the one Nathan referenced in his interview. (Those on mobile might have to zoom in). 



This type of thing was happening all game, between pretty much all of them. You can coach patterns until the cows come home but when you've got players who did this, it's not going to help.

Footage of Conor Coventry being rushed by a hilariously bad Ouma touch that wasn't even intended for him into giving the ball away. In the absence of any other footage, I will have to assume this is what happens every time Coventry receives the ball. I will not look up his pass completion rate or watch any other footage of him. Goodnight

(you do know how to get a rise out of me, don't you)

NabySarr

Chunes said:

It's a bit of a myth that we press so much that we tire players out.

According to Opta, we are bottom of the league for Pressing Sequences.

Second bottom for High Turnovers. 

We don't press that much, but I'd say we are a good pressing team when we do. We are usually a very good out of possession team in general. We sit back deep and are hard to break down, and try to pick the right moments in games to press higher up. West Ham is the best example of this where we were sat deep for most of the game but scored a goal from Leaburn dispossessing a centre back

Why we get tired is just because we don't have the ball much, so we are usually doing a lot more running than our opponents

Chunes

Leuth said:

Chunes said:

I'm using this example because it's the one Nathan referenced in his interview. (Those on mobile might have to zoom in). 



This type of thing was happening all game, between pretty much all of them. You can coach patterns until the cows come home but when you've got players who did this, it's not going to help.

Footage of Conor Coventry being rushed by a hilariously bad Ouma touch that wasn't even intended for him into giving the ball away. In the absence of any other footage, I will have to assume this is what happens every time Coventry receives the ball. I will not look up his pass completion rate or watch any other footage of him. Goodnight

(you do know how to get a rise out of me, don't you)

You mentalist. It's got nothing to do with Conor Coventry. Did you read the text of the post? 😂

Leuth

Chunes said:

Leuth said:

Chunes said:

I'm using this example because it's the one Nathan referenced in his interview. (Those on mobile might have to zoom in). 



This type of thing was happening all game, between pretty much all of them. You can coach patterns until the cows come home but when you've got players who did this, it's not going to help.

Footage of Conor Coventry being rushed by a hilariously bad Ouma touch that wasn't even intended for him into giving the ball away. In the absence of any other footage, I will have to assume this is what happens every time Coventry receives the ball. I will not look up his pass completion rate or watch any other footage of him. Goodnight

(you do know how to get a rise out of me, don't you)

You mentalist. It's got nothing to do with Conor Coventry. Did you read the text of the post? 😂

I mean, he does give the ball away in the clip, so I had to treat it like a direct attack

I know Ouma being completely unable to control the ball is the main issue

Chunes

Leuth said:

Chunes said:

Leuth said:

Chunes said:

I'm using this example because it's the one Nathan referenced in his interview. (Those on mobile might have to zoom in). 



This type of thing was happening all game, between pretty much all of them. You can coach patterns until the cows come home but when you've got players who did this, it's not going to help.

Footage of Conor Coventry being rushed by a hilariously bad Ouma touch that wasn't even intended for him into giving the ball away. In the absence of any other footage, I will have to assume this is what happens every time Coventry receives the ball. I will not look up his pass completion rate or watch any other footage of him. Goodnight

(you do know how to get a rise out of me, don't you)

You mentalist. It's got nothing to do with Conor Coventry. Did you read the text of the post? 😂

I mean, he does give the ball away in the clip, so I had to treat it like a direct attack

I know Ouma being completely unable to control the ball is the main issue

At some point we are going to have to stage an intervention for you 😂

blackpool72

Leuth said:

The biggest charge against Jones right now is that he okayed Alli on a 4-year deal. That's almost sackable in itself ffs

Jones has absolutely no say in how long a contract should be.
That's on whoever our senior management team is.
As they also gave a 4 year contract to Ahadme I don't have a lot of confidence in their decision making. 

NabySarr

Making_all_the_noise said:

When we’re 100% rested, we can play a NJ style game. Press from the front, midfield pushing up and defenders challenging every ball with intent. 

NJ doesn’t set us up to play through the middle so our game relies on a high press to keep pressure off our defence, to win the ball high and be ‘front footed’. 

When we don’t play like that, NJ bemoans the players and says they’re not doing as instructed. He doesn’t account for the front three looking absolutely sh*gged, which destroys the entire press and leaves everyone else exposed. You can’t play three games in 8 days in that style. He’s running our players into the ground and surprised they’re getting injured or simply unable to keep up that work rate. 

If Leaburn is off the pitch, we have no one who can make any impact upfront because they’re not going to get the ball to feet. We resort to hoofball because teams can press our defence and midfield easily and then run us ragged by passing the ball around us. Fans scream that the front three aren’t pressing but they’re honest pros who are clearly knackered. TC and Grant are asked to sprint to defend and then sprint to attack. Leaburn has to cover the keeper and two centre backs in the press and win every ball hoofed up to him. No wonder they’ve lost their legs. 

Meanwhile other Championship teams let the ball do the work. They’re set up to play football that’s sustainable across a season. 

NJ keeps talking about an evolution in our style. There is no clear evolution in our style. That’s a problem he has to resolve.

Can see us beating Bristol City with an intense performance and then getting run into the ground soon after the season restarts. All feels inevitable. 

I think the evolution is quite clear. It's just not what everyone was expecting to see when they heard the words evolution

It seems some on here were expecting us to start playing out from the back, dominating possession and playing through teams this season. All while still having a bottom 8 squad in the division full of players recruited to play a completely different style to that. That was never going to happen and if we attempted it we would get relegated

The evolution we are attempting is to be a threat on the counter attack, Jones mentioned it so often last season that we didn't have enough players that can do that, and there are definitely signs of that in the season so far. We clearly aimed to recruit players that have pace and are good 1v1 in wide areas in Grant, Alli, Nkeng and we obviously have TC already. What has let Jones down is the failure to secure a first choice right winger 

In midfield we want players that can play progressive passes quickly when they get on the ball to start off counter attacks, again I think there is a big gap between what Jones wanted and what he ended up getting this summer but you can see those attributes in who we've brought in Chalobah, Skipp and Ouma. 

The problem you describe where the front 3 are knackered and we can't press. When that happened last season we were fucked because we had no threat on the counter. This season we've seen it in plenty of games where we are knackered but Jones hasn't just moaned at the players for not pressing like you say (until Saturday when they were fresh so should have been able to do it). He's instead been happy for us to sit in and look to hit teams on the break. We saw it at West Ham, West Brom, QPR at home, Pompey at home last 30 when we were knackered

NabySarr

Also we really shouldn't be coming to any conclusions on an evolution, after 8 games. Unless you have a huge budget to buy lots of quality new players, you can't completely transform a playing style in 1 summer and 8 games. Patience is required, we might even be muddling through until January because we didn't sign a crucial piece of our evolution so are without a right winger.

Think how transformational the moving Thierry Small to the right with TC on the left was in league 1, a Rak-Sakyi level right winger could have a similar effect here. But until January we are either playing Grant out of position, Alli (please not from the start again!) or giving Apter another go. 

To me it's quite clear what Jones wanted to get in this summer to evolve the playing style wasn't delivered. So we are probably going to have to have a lot more patience 

Making_all_the_noise

I don’t think any fans were expecting us to suddenly be the Barca of the Championship. No one is expecting us to be in the promotion mix and everyone can see we have a low budget for the division. We just expected to see our style of play perceptibly change from last season. We have to see something progress or there is no evolution. The word is just a soundbite. 

We can dress it up with personnel matters as much as we like but I still don’t see a tactical change from last season. 

Last season we sat deep and defended the box in numbers, hoofed it long to a big man or desperately hoped TC would bail us out. We couldn’t play through the midfield at all which kept us pinned back. Last season and this season we’ve had to ride our luck at the back time and again, because we’re creating next to nothing going forward. 

Thats literally all we’ve seen for five games. It isn’t an evolution. 

SouthLincsAddick

fenaddick said:

Crispywood said:

I don’t get how we can build such an incredible backline in terms of quality depth and traits but can’t even sign a right winger or attacking midfielder 

I mean the reason seems fairly simple to me? You’re assessing different attributes. Our scouting system is good at assessing defensive players but can’t afford creative ones. In the modern age it shouldn’t be hard to fix, you just keep tweaking the data model until you’re getting better results. What’s tough about that is you only have two windows to test it 

Fixed it for you

soapy_jones

Jones had a great weekend, his favorite team got three p...o...i....  oh!

ElfsborgAddick

Making_all_the_noise said:

I don’t think any fans were expecting us to suddenly be the Barca of the Championship. No one is expecting us to be in the promotion mix and everyone can see we have a low budget for the division. We just expected to see our style of play perceptibly change from last season. We have to see something progress or there is no evolution. The word is just a soundbite. 

We can dress it up with personnel matters as much as we like but I still don’t see a tactical change from last season. 

Last season we sat deep and defended the box in numbers, hoofed it long to a big man or desperately hoped TC would bail us out. We couldn’t play through the midfield at all which kept us pinned back. Last season and this season we’ve had to ride our luck at the back time and again, because we’re creating next to nothing going forward. 

Thats literally all we’ve seen for five games. It isn’t an evolution. 

You should post more often.

aliwibble

blackpool72 said:

Leuth said:

The biggest charge against Jones right now is that he okayed Alli on a 4-year deal. That's almost sackable in itself ffs

Jones has absolutely no say in how long a contract should be.
That's on whoever our senior management team is.
As they also gave a 4 year contract to Ahadme I don't have a lot of confidence in their decision making. 

It's quite a while since I've listened to the Price of Football podcast, but I vaguely remember them saying something about some kind of accounting thing where you can spread the cost of the transfer over the length of the contract for the purposes of budgeting rules. Amortisation I think? So on the plus side it halves the dent in our budget for the season compared to a 2 year contract, and means we're not having to renegotiate next summer to avoid losing them for nothing the year after if they're a success. On the negative side, if it doesn't work out, things drag on like they have with Ahadme.

DOUCHER

AberystwythAddick said:

DOUCHER said:

I like NJ and think he has been a saviour for us but i'm also quite sure that he knows what a good defender is all about but his record of signing attacking talent is questionable. Matty Godden, no brainer but beyond that? Cardiff took Lincolns best (League 1) player in Moylan. We took  Apter, Olafe, Knibbs (proven flops atm and lets not mention Ahadme) and Kelman (jury out atm). That's not a pile on but its definitely something that needs addressing. It's not something that should be ignored.    

I don’t think this works as an argument really.

Last season we took Knibbs and Apter two of the best players in league one as well as the league one top scorer. 

Cardiff took Moylan one of the best performers in the league this season and it’s going well so far.

Had we made that signing there’s no guarantee that he would have had the same effect or impact that he does in a Cardiff side. In fact I’m almost certain had we signed him there’s would be people complaining that we dipped into league one again and are not being ambitious enough. 

Or we bought the wrong league 1 players 

J BLOCK

Crispywood said:

I don’t get how we can build such an incredible backline in terms of quality depth and traits but can’t even sign a right winger or attacking midfielder 

Because we don't have the money. These owners have landed on their feet with Jones. He got us up out of League one without spending much. Kept us in the Championship without spending much and now this summer we spent less than last summer. 

He can't work miracles. 

NabySarr

Moylan was the best player for the best team in league 1 that got 100 points. Apter, Knibbs etc were the best players for mid table league 1 teams, that’s the difference 

Redhenry

hmm, bet the recruitment team wish it was as easy as that