Originally Posted by
OldWhiteTaff
Jeez, all this talk of 'the players bottled it' is starting to irritate now, they may have played poorly yesterday, but fks sake, reading some on here you'd think they did it on purpose, which is of course fkn ridiculous. The truth of the matter is that this group of players have over-performed in 85% of the games they've played this season, but unfortunately because they are not Man City or Barcelona sometimes collectively or individually they don't perform as we would all wish. And what the fk do people expect??? Like I said we're not a team packed with world class players. So that means that some games Pablo fks up - that is of course why he's playing for us and not Liverpool. Why do you think Harrison is turning out for us and not Man City - because he's not fkn de Bruyne that's why. For every player, they have a level of performance e.g. when Aguero shoots maybe 85% of the time he gets it right, when Bamford or Roofe shoot then they get it right maybe 55% of the time - that's why Aguero is a £75m player and Roofe and Bamford play for us. Same for Alioski, if he had a pinpoint crossing accuracy of, say, 80%, instead of the 40-50% he manages then he wouldn't be playing for us would he???
So, when we get a bad day when more of our players fluff their lines (maybe because they're human beings, and yes, did feel the pressure yesterday - but then it could be argued that can happen to human beings, no matter how much they're paid....) then a result like yesterday might happen. But even then it also takes luck (or lack of it). For example, I bet Forrestieri has tried to connect like he did yesterday 50 times and his goal yesterday just happened to be the time when it all came together, whereas the 49 previous times it didn't, and the effort ballooned over the bar or drifted harmlessly wide. Same for Adam Reach's goal against us earlier this season - 49 times out of 50 that would not have gone in. And yesterday, if luck had been with us, Roofe might have scored, Bamford might have scored again, Pablo would have scored the pen, one of our long range shots would have flown in etc etc etc, or of course Macey might have fluffed either or both of his chances. Now, of course, with better players then the chances of making the right decision go up, the chances of making the killer pass go up, the chances of making the right connection go up - but then of course (as above) that's what the big clubs pay the big bucks for - the chances of a player 'doing the right thing' is higher, (but they can still fk up of course, it's just less likely). But we can't pay the big bucks, so we have players who are sometimes brilliant, and are sometimes not brilliant, and there's nothing that's going to change that until we can shop at Harrods rather than Tescos. And as long as we're shopping at Tescos then Tescos results are going to happen. The nightmare for all us fans is that unluckily one of those Tescos performances happened yesterday.
Yesterday was terrible, but there's no way the players weren't trying, it'd depressing yes, but in the end we lost because unfortunately too many of the players were on the wrong side of their % chances of 'doing it right'. And even when that happens sometimes wins are flooked, but sadly Lady Luck was looking elsewhere yesterday.