My big issue with Manning is how bad we are with the ball now

Without the ball I can see improvements. Our shape and press was generally better yesterday as it was against West Brom. I could see a bit of evidence of coaching in the way we set up to win the ball higher up the pitch and it worked quite well. We were better. But its still not enough.

Farke and JHT were technical coaches who were obsessed with quality on the ball and attacking patterns of play to progress "through the lines" as they say. Perhaps a bit too obsessed but you could see it in our play. Yes it was undone at times because we didn't have enough defenders under JHT who were good enough passers and we still lacked that defensive midfielder to cover when we lost it, but we were able to dominate possession in matches and when going forward, players normally had two, maybe three options for a pass when they got the ball. You could see it has been drilled into them. I loved the fact that under JHT we could take pressure off our defence by retaining the ball for long periods.

Under Manning there is nothing like that. Nothing. There is nobody running in behind (possibly due in part to lack of pace in wide areas in the squad now Diallo is out), there is very little movement from our players when we have the ball and there are just not the sort of drilled patterns of play that mean that it becomes second nature or that players just instinctively know their team mate is making a certain run so don't really need to look before playing the ball. Players that we know are good technical players look unable to cleanly pass the ball at times or are taking an age on the ball looking for options and getting caught with it. The only pattern we have is to drag them over to the left then switch back to the right to try and get Stacey in down the line. That works sometimes but it won;t every time. as our full backs are our main outlets they are also completely knackered and get caught too far up the field. If you watch that game back again the scum were really not very good. they played no decent, passing football at all. They just lobbed the ball over the top into the channels to try and exploit the fact our fullbacks were often pushed forward. There was nothing cultured or particularly skillful about it but they had willing runners able to stretch us when we overcommitted or lost the ball in dangerous areas. Thankfully, we did the latter less than is often the case yesterday but it still ended up costing us two goals at crucial moments. It was our poor play with the ball that cost us yesterday not without it.

We were definitely a bit better than we have been and had Topic's shot gone in then it might have gone a different way. I can see the basis of a decent midfield and side there. But for me, its still not enough due to the extraordinary lack of quality on the ball we display under Manning. I think its noteworthy that what success he has had has probably been with clubs and groups of players where they will often have been trying to negate more skillful opposition at bigger clubs or playing in divisions where there is generally less quality. I am not sure he knows how to coach technical quality on the ball and passing and movement. Its all a bit stodgy and generic.

And for that reason, I remain out. I hope he is sacked today.

Knapper too has huge questions to answer about the lack of quality/pace we fine ourselves with in attacking ares with just a couple of injuries.

Posted By: Jim on October 6th 2025 at 09:20:09

Message Thread

Reply to Message

In order to add a post to the WotB Message Board you must be a registered WotB user.

If you are not yet registered then please visit the registration page. You should ensure that their browser is setup to accept cookies.

Log in