- Mar 7, 2005
- 9,018
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And yet you have no qualms about demonising Levy, lol? You're inconsistent SS, don't know why, because in most things you're ultra rational, just this little bug-bear turns you into a Mr Hyde.And how do you know what Jol wanted to do last summer? No-one knows, which is why, far from demonising Comolli, I've always defended him; we have no idea of the constraints they were working under.
And the second observation doesn't follow from the first. We started poorly came good in the couple of months up to Christmas (we looked particularly impressive in Europe) had a mini collapse in January, causing me, amongst the many, to plea for patience, came good as we thought we would and as you say came up with a stupendous finish to the season. We once again won every game pre-season and hit the ground running at Sunderland where inexplicably Martin Jol played an ultra cautious side which ended up ruining my day with the lacklustre performance. From that point on we went into free-fall, Jol seemed unable to cotton onto the changed way teams were playing against us, whilst a succession of managers identified the same weaknesses and exploited them, by the middle of October the entire team were a gibbering wreck, the mere hint of a cross into the box, a corner or set-piece had the fans, our coach and even the players hiding their heads behind their hands as the inevitable occurred. Leads were thrown away, we drew where we should have won lost where we should have drawn and quite often lost abysmally when we deserved too.Simple fact. Over the last twelve games of last season, with almost our strongest possible line-up, we put together our best set of results in a run-in since 1951. Contrast that with the rest of the season. It was obvious to just about everyone on SC that we needed to strengthen in certain areas; if it was obvious to us lot it must have been obvious to Jol, and Comolli, for that matter. So why did we buy a bunch of promising kids instead?
Meanwhile the Faithful (and the capital 'F' is deliberate) refused to accept that it could be the coaches fault that the same basic team of the previous season, plus some improvements, the same team which had performed so well in the run in was suffering as the result of the Head Coaches inability to get them to defend, oh no, they couldn't defend because a thousand miles away some club officials had been caught in a press sting sounding out an alternative coach.
FFS, can you imagine Fergie ever being so weak? "Och, I canna do it nae more, ma jobs o' tha line..."
Why can't you teach a team to defend when you're under pressure? And surely coaching under pressure is what being the Premier League is all about?
It should also be crushingly obvious that Ramos has bought about our revival using the exact same players Jol was failing with, in fact in some cases it is using players Jol never even gave a look-in to. The really incredible difference however is that Ramos had to work his magic on a team reduced to a quivering wreck, while Jol f8cked up with a team high on confidence off the back of phenomenal end to the previous year and following a great pre-season.It should be crashingly obvious that Juande has decided that we simply don't have the necessary strength in depth to compete; FFS, we've spent £20m-odd on what's effectively a whole new back line. If Tiago and his agent hadn't twatted us about you could have added the thick end of another £10m to that. And if Jarque hadn't been injured, it seems pretty likely that Espanyol would have a much healthier bank balance now.