Unai Emery

[robleflaneur]

On the MON thread there's valid criticism that he never rotated the squad and the players were burnt out by April.
Here the manager is blamed for rotation.Surely,he needs to find out how good his squad players are ?  He won't have many other opportunities before the transfer window.
Better in the early rounds of the League Cup than an important PL game where we need points to get away from the bottom 3 places or in our holy grail,the FA Cup.

[PeterWithesShin]

On the MON thread there's valid criticism that he never rotated the squad and the players were burnt out by April.
Here the manager is blamed for rotation.Surely,he needs to find out how good his squad players are ?  He won't have many other opportunities before the transfer window.
Better in the early rounds of the League Cup than an important PL game where we need points to get away from the bottom 3 places or in our holy grail,the FA Cup.

Difference is that for starters the vast majority have over a month off from playing after Sunday.

[robleflaneur]

Liverpool,Everton and West Ham changed their entire teams.Brentford probably made the fewest changes and went out at home to Gillingham.
Brighton played on Wednesday and will have had more rest.
The point about finding out about your squad players in match games is important for a new manager and gives them game time if they need to be called on.

[ozzjim]

He needs to learn about his squad, last night was a few hour to do so, once which we were leading with 30 minutes to go, so he didn't do too badly. We tired and perhaps didn't make the right changes, but he'll have learnt a lot.

[Risso]

On the MON thread there's valid criticism that he never rotated the squad and the players were burnt out by April.
Here the manager is blamed for rotation.Surely,he needs to find out how good his squad players are ?  He won't have many other opportunities before the transfer window.
Better in the early rounds of the League Cup than an important PL game where we need points to get away from the bottom 3 places or in our holy grail,the FA Cup.

Difference is that for starters the vast majority have over a month off from playing after Sunday.

And O'Neill's teams played in Europe.

[Brend'Watkins]

Momentum is also a very important factor.  We win last night and we go into the Brighton match very positive.  Now we'd settle for a point.

[PeterWithesShin]

By full time Sunday we'll have played 3 games in the previous 2 weeks and nearly all our players have over a month off. If he can't work out who can do what by working with them uninterrupted for over a month then i'm not sure 1 game against Man Utd reserves is going to tell him much either. Apart from maybe Chambers was a surprise with playing poorly, did any of us learn anything new about any player last night? Unai strikes me as an excellent coach so that month should tell him everything he needs to know.

[Clark W Griswold]

Last night he made a mistake starting Olsen and made a mistake changing the defenders during the second half. I'm not quite sure why he did it, other than maybe wanting to have a look at Olsen and thinking that because we seemed in reasonable control of the game Man Utd wouldn't trouble us too much even if he changed the defenders. He did get that wrong, but his first match was the best we've played all season, and quite possibly one of the best games we've played since we've been up. Last night was possibly the best away perfomance of the season. I know that doesn't say a lot, but we were the slightly better side at old trafford for 60 mins. It's going to have to be a long term thing with Emery, he has a proven track record of improving mediocre sides and winning things so we need to be with him for the long run this time. On the face of it, it's the most ambitious managerial appointment for 16 years, let's not get silly because we lost at old trafford. I'm quite sure Olsen won't play for us again for example, unless it's enforced sometime after the world cup.

[Brend'Watkins]

did any of us learn anything new about any player last night? 

Konsa isn't as good with the ball at his feet as we once thought.
Watkins can finish like a proper striker.
Watkins' touch is far worse than we thought.
We now know why Chambers hasn't been near the starting 11.
Bailey has some great talent we are starting to see
We need a proper back up keeper.

[Neil Hawkes]

Cannot believe some of the posts I am reading in here.

We haven’t won a cup for 26 years mate or finished in the top half of the prem for a decade
Once we give up And accept rubbish lineups rubbish performances and rubbish players Nothing will change

It doesn’t matter whether the manager has been with us for 2 games or 200 games you should never throw in the towel, Which is effectively what happened last night

So you might not like it but I will never give up Wanting us to win every game and every cup game, last night‘s first half was complete bollocks On every level
And the moment we accept that we’re fucked

Absolutely John. He *didn't* have to have a look at Olsen last night. That he did so was a huge reason we lost. Whoever is reserve keeper is only ever going to play in emergencies, and it's not like they ever get picked just to give the main keeper a rest, so really, what was the point? He didn't give us the best chance of winning the game, and that for me is completely unacceptable, especially for people like you who travelled for hours there and back to support the team. We've never accepted it with a manager before now, and I'm not going to start just because he isn't Gerrard.

There is absolutely no way that Owners are going to spunk millions on new players until Unai demonstrates who and what is required by playing everyone, and binning those that aren't fit for purpose.

Pissed off at the way we lost the game, but not pissed off with what he proved last night.

Much better to have this situation now, and not in a league game, where we need to get comfortably clear of a relegation battle.

If the same shit show develops in the match against Brighton, I will be very surprised.

By the way - those scrotes mowing the grass ever closer to the video conference - basturds

[PeterWithesShin]

did any of us learn anything new about any player last night? 

Konsa isn't as good with the ball at his feet as we once thought.
Watkins can finish like a proper striker.
Watkins' touch is far worse than we thought.
We now know why Chambers hasn't been near the starting 11.
Bailey has some great talent we are starting to see
We need a proper back up keeper.

Which of those didn't you know before kick off?

[paul_e]

We all want the same thing at the end of the day but I do feel we are getting ahead of ourselves a little as we know this team can perform. They just arent consistent at it. I do believe that he was naive yesterday in the team selection but at least now he knows what he is working with. Martinez is frustrating as we need to get stronger and tell internationals its club over country. We pay the wages and as a keeper, he is low risk enough he could have been played but do many prem sided field their first choice keepers?

Eddie Howe played Pope for Newcastle, who essentially won the penalty shoot out for them.

From what I can tell he's the only genuine first choice premier league keeper that started in the week, Bournemouth and Chelsea being the 2 questionable ones because they changed first choice with their new managers.

[Brend'Watkins]

did any of us learn anything new about any player last night? 

Konsa isn't as good with the ball at his feet as we once thought.
Watkins can finish like a proper striker.
Watkins' touch is far worse than we thought.
We now know why Chambers hasn't been near the starting 11.
Bailey has some great talent we are starting to see
We need a proper back up keeper.

Which of those didn't you know before kick off?

All of them.

[PeterWithesShin]

All of those apart from Chambers have been talked about a lot on here all season. Longer in the case of Ollie.

[Brend'Watkins]

I know, I've been involved in the discussions.

I never thought Watkins could finish like that and his touch is worse than I thought it was.
Didn't know much about the back up keeper keeper having only seen him play V Man City last season.  He's clearly not good enough as a back up for the way we want to play now.  Bailey has shown glimpses of his talent before but nothing like that skill he showed last night.  I thought Chambers might have been out due to illness or injury or was carrying a niggle.  He had been reasonable in the games he'd been called up for previously.