Professionalism and discipline

We lacked it before, we have improved. There are points when we still lapse, but we are improving. These are traits shared by Pulis and Allardyce,

Fitness
Organisation
Accountability

We had a squad utterly devoid of confidence, but seemingly wallowing in perceptions of poor luck and low morale. Roy seems to have drawn a line and made it clear that you can still get fitter, you can still run, you can still stay in formation. Roy is stricter than I had considered him. See the dropping of Speroni and Ward after poor errors in judgement. It sends out a message that unprofessionalism is unacceptable. Benteke took as close to a public dressing down as was diplomatic, with an order to buck up effort levels regardless of form and confidence. I thought Hodgson handled the situation well. It reminds me of Puncheon's penalty miss against Spurs which proved a catalyst for a good spell of form after the manager backed him. In a different way, hopefully Roy has used the Bournemouth penalty debacle as a nadir from which the only way is up.

I'm not entirely sure what Benteke's 'fingers in ear' message was actually meant to mean, but if it was some kind of statement towards critics, then it's a foolish one as he has not been unfairly treated. He needed to buck his ideas up before that free-flowing confidence was ever going to come back, and there were signs yesterday of him being a handful again. His ego might now allow him to admit he wasn't good enough and has been harshly treated, but his management have got him to start to turn a corner.

One significant area I think we lack is true leadership. Without Sakho there seems a lack of a definitive captain on the pitch, leading to penalty takers choosing amongst themselves. Pundits after the game summed it up when they said the captain should have stepped in, but then they're guessing who the captain is. Was it Dann? Was it Speroni? It should be pretty clear. Since Jedinak lost his starting place, we have been unable to find a captain who is consistently in the starting 11.

We are not a one man team, but let's be honest, without Wilf on the pitch we are a shadow of ourselves. We need to address that either by bringing a young creative player through the ranks, or by signing someone in January/the summer. When teams successfully neutralise him this season (or when he was out injured) Townsend hasn't managed to pick up the slack quite so successfully as last season. Of course, very few teams nowadays can keep Zaha quiet for a whole match.

Roy dropping Puncheon I think also made a big difference as he hadn't been influencing games for a long time and was constantly slowing games down when we are built for rapid counter attacks. As others have said, it also sent a message to ever-present players that they would no longer get picked on their name or affiliation to the club/area.

Finally, and most importantly, we have a manager who doesn't brag about his ability, but just seems to exude confidence in what needs to be done. This mature father-like approach seems to be creating confidence in the team, even when we fall behind. Even his insistence on playing Zaha up with Bentenke seems to be paying off with Wilf having 4 goals, plus assists, plus winning two penalties.

We have a very good front three, another strong four in midfield and strong competition in the centre back positions. We have invested heavily to build that solid spine and that perhaps has left us a little short on quality when injuries kick in, but another season in the PL and if Roy stays in charge and maybe we can begin building a high-quality squad.

He didn't drop Hennessy as he was picked to play at WBA but was injured in the warm up so who are the weak links you mention?

Conjunctivitis.com - A site for sore eyes.

I don't think it is to do with AP. It looks similar maybe, but we were pretty well set after the end of last season.

However, pre season under FdB was a shambles. That's what got him sacked more than the results I think. There was no need to change the system in the way he did and, even worse, suddenly throw out everything we'd been trying in pre season on the eve of the first game. That lack of a clear plan or leadership would probably have been one of the things that immediately started to worry Parish I would have thought.

We played pre-season with either Ward or Milivojevic normally featuring in a back three. Yet suddenly against Huddersfield, Luka was playing in a midfield four, Ward was a wing back (when was was the last time either played in those positions?) and Dann lined up with a 20 year old making his Premier League debut on one side and a 19 year old who'd arrived on loan 48 hours before on the other. Funnily enough, we looked like we had no idea what we were doing.

All this talk of systems is a bit of a red herring. Parish was right in the summer in saying that we need a plan B and trying to add something different, but that didn't mean FdB throwing everything away that we've been doing for the last five years. You don't need to change formation to change the style, our players are suited to 4231, and we're showing under Roy that we can play good football this way. In general, we're passing more and better now than we were under FdB but the formation is the same one we played last year.

There was a similarity with Pardew, in that we also looked unfit. Against Southampton for example, we actually played ok for large stretches, but then just as it looked like we might get on top and put them under some real pressure in the second half, we looked absolutely knackered and the onslaught never materialised.

It's no surprise Benteke is playing better now, because even before his injury I would have said that he and quite a few others, including Luka, Ward and Dann looked really sluggish. You don't just see it in Benteke's work rate now, but look at the way he's holding off defenders like he did last season. In August and September he was being brushed aside, now he's looking like the target man we rely on. The way he shrugged off the defender before playing in Wilf yesterday was class.

Employee of the month is a good example of how someone can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.

So the old timer is being replaced then?

Conjunctivitis.com - A site for sore eyes.

Pardew was the manager and ultimately responsible for recruitment / choosing players.

Some of the injuries arose from poor base fitness but he isn't responsible for the mess this season.

Edited by Rachid Rachid Rachid (17 Dec 2017 10.24pm)