wardyfox86

If it was El Khannouss starting yesterday and getting 2 assists, he would have had 6 new pages on his thread full of glowing reviews. If Cooper is insistant on this "set up to not lose" approach to 90% of games, then Ndidi getting goal contributions in his defensive CAM position will be vital in that being successful.

This is the Premier League though, you can put all but a couple of side in this category. I can't see where more than about 5 wins are coming from, especially if we continually play to just not lose. We have a solid enough squad, but like you say, his management of line ups and in-game has cost us 2 points at the very least. Even the Fulham and Villa results felt like opportunities missed through setting up not to lose.

There's plenty of room between "committing men forward" and what we saw for 20 minutes today. Park the bus like that and fail to see it out, you'll rightfully come in for criticism.

Can't really blame him for getting hired. Shouldn't really be anywhere near a PL job. Rare miss by our board who, despite everyone despising them, have a good recent track record of getting the right man in. We'll go down with him in charge, but I doubt we had too many knocking at the door with the expected sanctions.

Bang average all round. Long ball rubbish for much of the second half. Half decent players, Championship manager, League One tactics.

That's the longest we're gonna have a 2 goal lead this season isn't it? Cooper had no intention of us going and bagging another. It's gonna be a long season of us hanging onto 0-0 and 1-0 scorelines. When he's gone we need to go for someone like Rohl or Cifuentes.

Didnt deserve to win the game on this showing anyway. Atrocious second half just trying to hold on from minute 49. We have better players than Cooper is giving us credit for. Sets us up like we're fresh out of League 2 playing Man City. We'll go down with a whimper with him in charge.

Steve

fair enough. As difficult as sarcasm is to detect in text form, I'm usually pretty adept. This one slipped through.

I can't think of many occasions where this HASN'T been written into a loan contract between 2 PL teams. It's pretty commonplace.

True. Look at the bucket load of goals he scored with the likes of Olise, Eze and Zaha supplying him I jest, because I do agree with you

I just can't see where 12 or so wins that we require will come from without taking games to teams at home. Coupled with Cooper's away record it's hard to see 30 points without even taking into account the points deduction. The bottom 6 already look like the mini league for relegation and Palace strengthened well on deadline day. Can we pick up points where they can't?

Christ, half a page of laughing at Everton...

What is the point in friendly games if not to get the players up to speed with the approach you're trying to implement? If the approach is to win the ball back well and then look clueless with what to do with it, preseason was a success.

A touch in the opposition box there, great half...