Roy is known as a hard task master, and is well respected by many former players.

I am sure as a Premier League club with a professional coaching setup then the players are getting the right mix of fitness and football in their training week. One thing you cannot accuse Connor Wickham (for example) of is not training hard.

Hodgson is culpable for the decisions he makes tactically, but if you boil it all down you can glean a lot from the stats.

Against Burnley we had 29 shots, 9 on target. This means Hodgson put a team in place, and tactics to support and complement that team, and they carved out 29 sniffs at goal.

The fact that the team could only score from a cross, and a worldie, is a bit harsh to blame on the manager.

I for one think perhaps the coaching of a player like Sorloth may have fallen short, as even his positional sense is terrible. However saying Roy is to blame for the amount of chances which are converted, albeit with some wiggle room based on quality of chance, is harsh.

Is he responsible that Zaha couldnt score a one on one and Jimmy Mac somehow kicked over the ball with an open goal at Watford?

Tactics and chances created can be hung around Hodgson's neck but chances taken? Its up to the player to score from the chance he gets.

Pillory Hodgson when we have matches where we have 2 or 3 shots on goal, but not for the conversion rate.

Trump lost. Badly. Hahahahahahaha.

I agree with that in bold to an extent; practising one on ones would help, but of course individual errors and bad decision making isn't his responsibility. He isn't one of the 11 on the pitch at the end of the day.

Stats can only tell so much of the story, the ones that matter are points taken, and the relevant one is goals scored. Not good.

He is responsible for the why our strikers play under instruction. Sorloth (by all accounts Hodgson's choice) wasn't of the required standard, but how do you explain how the others get used?

Bentekkers working the channels, receiving the ball short and holding up play? He's a head on a stick man, stay in the box and put it on his head lads!
Ayew running about, getting into physical battles when he doesn't have the strength: he's a poacher or a chase down man.
Other than Vs Grimsby when he was in the box and gave us all the opportunity to see how bad he actually is, Sorloth was receiving short and getting into footraces from 30 yards out, when he's a tortoise. All part of Roy's plan A, absolutely no attempt to play to individual strengths.

Correct. Meyer especially looks terrified to pull the trigger.

Good points. I feel that Sorloth was a panic buy. Like to be proved wrong but no amount of coaching will make him PL standard. It was a punt in the dark. Somebody within the club obviously felt he had something to offer. If it's Roy then that is a cross against him but he still should be manager. Do we really think that sending him out to Belgium will improve him substantially ? Much better to farm him out to the Championship. He's gone to ease the wage bill presently. Love to be proved wrong and he can come back firing.

Edited by Booted Eagle (18 Jan 2019 8.25pm)

“ [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know. ”
—United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

Why is he smiling at the end of the game today? How many times is that now this season that we've been doing well at half-time and just thrown it away in the second half? Can he not inspire players at all? Brings on Schlupp again when we need a goal so he can move Zaha (no goal in 14) up front? Absolutely clueless.

The post you're commenting on certainly is.