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Toxic, negative atmosphere being created and Parker scapegoated at the business end of the season

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Written by Allen

I feel sorry for the fans that went to Preston and were disappointed by the performance and result (fair play to all who made the trip), but this is Championship football, there are no easy points in this league.

Our performance against Preston wasn’t great, we couldn’t open up their defence and we didn’t attack them enough, possibly for fear of being hit on the counter (as per both of their goals).
I think Scott Parker is a good manager and has done a brilliant job with us. I would have been happy if we finished 6th this season, that was my expectation at the start, but at the moment we are on course for 2nd.

People will say the championship is weak this season, there is an argument to say it’s not; Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough are flying, knocking out and outclassing a full-strength Manchester United and Arsenal in the FA Cup. At the bottom end of the table, there are teams like Reading struggling, they have some great players (Swift, Jiao etc). It’s not easy and we shouldn’t expect to play everyone off the pitch each week because we have “talented” players.

There is an argument we don’t have a Plan B, in January we signed Kieffer Moore (physical presence and ariel threat) and Sirike Dembele (flair player with Danjuma/Zaha/Sterling like magic). Gary Cahill’s lack of pace got exposed and targeted, so we signed Nat Phillips. Jack Stacey’s form dropped so we signed Ethan Laird. Todd Cantwell also gives us so much more in attacking midfield positions.

Parker has done very little wrong. I loved the passion he showed at the end, but our fans put a negative spin on it. Philip Billing is another scapegoat, someone also saying Ryan Christie was awful and negative when he came on – I saw the complete opposite, Christie came on, ran at them, had a go at them and didn’t really put a foot wrong.

My worry is this negative mood from our fans is contagious and going to put unnecessary pressure on the players and “take away their freedom to be creative and play with flair” (similar quotes from many fans accusing Parker of not allowing our skilful players to play to their strengths with all his negative tactics).

Your say…

Neil Dawson wrote…

Football is wonderfully subjective in a world where most other things are pretty set in stone.

You are right about the championship being a slog but we have a superb squad and a deep squad, we are a very forgiving fan base and have low expectations bred from years of mediocrity.

The fact that fans are unhappy when we will be comfortably second in the championship if we win our games in hand tells you everything you need to know. The football must be pretty dull if people are moaning with that league position as the backdrop.

I think most honest football fans can see when a team is playing collectively better than, on target with or worse than its individual talent and are fair around their treatment of that. We aren’t maximising our talent currently and it’s pretty obvious it’s the robotic over coached process of play and the negative need to protect a lead at all costs. We were warned about this from a previous fanbase, we hoped the situation had changed, it doesn’t look like it has. – Join the conversation, click here.

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1 comment

  • D. Coveney says:

    Boring side tappy football gets you no where. You won’t see a premiership team play sideways football. They go for the jugular

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