Latest thoughts on Deila?

No question about it. My point was though, would you rather be in the position we are just now, or how we were last season at an identical time. That is a no brainer for me. I would choose where we are this season every time.

 

Ajax away was embarrassing. We were gutless that night.

 

I'm not trying to undermine your opinion but i dont see how anyone who watches football would rather be in the position we are now compared to last year. I am worried by our performances on the pitch.

The only thing RD has over Lenny at this stage is that he is still in the League Cup. It is unfair to give him the "he is still in europe after xmas" defence because he limped through a europa league group while Lenny went out of a champions league group.

The real measure is our performance on the pitch. We do not have the players to play the style he wants to in europe, and we are getting our * handed to us regularly. Im not even angry we conceded 4 last night as i was half expecting it anyway. And we should not be playing 1 striker in Scotland.

RD has a bit of breathing room to get it right and he very well may turn it around. I know football though and i know that the 433/451 is not right for us at this time.

 

Nonsense. We are through because we deserve to be through, simple as that. Just like every other team that went through, they did so on merit.

 

I never said we didnt deserve to be be through. I said we limped through the group. This is true.

The only acceptable performance we have had in Europe under RD has been away to Maribour and Salzberg.

Also if he persists with his system then i would prepare for some spankings in european competition in the future.

 

Away in Astra we completely controlled the game, and apart from the first 20mins at home to Salzburg, which were shocking, no question, we played better in the next 70mins than any other European game this season. Last night we had 6 first team players out of the starting X1, and it was a close to a meaningless game as it gets, otherwise we might well have finished the group on 11 points.

 

We never limped through, we qualified (deservedly) with a game to spare..

Was some of it disappointing along the way? Yes but we were quite rightfully the second best team in this group and the table reflects that..

 

just a wee snippet tucked away in his comments in the paper today " even if we don't get new players im confident of the squad we have " deary me !!

 

True away to Astra was acceptable

 

With the exception of a defensive midfielder next to Brown and possibly a right wing, I'm pretty happy with our first team. We lack quality when the first choice is not available. I feel pretty confident that this team would have beat Zagreb handily:

Gordon
Lustig VVD Denayer Izzy
Brown Bitton
Forrest Johansen Stokes
Guidetti

 

aye forgot we had 5 of your side unavailable

 

In a way i sort of agree with him if we played the diamond:

........................Gordon......................

Lustig.........Denayer...........VVD..........Izzy

........................Biton...............................

...............Brown..............Johanson.............

......................Commons..........................

.................Gudetti.............Stokes.............




........................Zaluska...........................

Matthews.......Ambrose.........?................?

..........................Kayal...........................

...............McGregor..............Mulgrew..........

.........................Forrest.........................

...............Scepovic......Thumb..............

 

Yep, that draw got us through, look at the table

 

losing 2.5 goals per game in euro needs fixing badly.
We got out of jail twice this year...legia * up and this group finishing 2nd.
Im sure we will get pumped in the next game as our defence just cant cope with anything other than splfplf.

 

Look at our performances on the pitch. Are you honestly happy about were we are and were we are going?

 

I agree 100% and it is the same problem we had vs Legia. System.

 

I am, our domestic form and in patches in Europe show we're moving forward like our second half performance against the best side in the group (Salzburg)..

 

Fair enough, as you can tell i disagree. I hope to be proven wrong though

 

You have to take things in to account, for instance having lustig at right back last night and 2 of those goals aren't going in and i think we'd have won or at the very least drawn, all hypothetical i know..

I expect some areas to be addressed in January a month before our last 32 game which is 2 months from now and we're still developing don't forget..
With a (hopefully) full squad plus john guidetti to pick from i think we'll be ok..

 

We seem really erratic under Ronny.

I hope he's got big changes planned ahead over the next couple of transfer windows.

Still some bizarre decisions he makes, i.e. Continually using McGregor after a great start, it seems to have bought him an immediate pass for the team. There could well be potential there, but I honestly feel playing him more is a bad thing for him at the current time.

We still are shabby on the ball and defensively we can look all over the place though.