Where was Guthrie again?!

[Hoop Blah]

Brendy, it sounds like you now accept that McDermotts tactics and handling of Guthrie did contribute to his poorer performances, on field mistakes and his failure to live up to your expectations as a player.

[Ian Royal]

not really no. loads of people blaming brian when guthrie was passing to the opposition/the stands
loads of people still doing so.

No they aren't. You not being able to differentiate and saying its trur doesn't make it the case. 10 quotes from different people or you're talking balls.

And I mean quotes of people saying everything guthrie did wrong was mcdemott fault. Not just a lot of blame lies there in general.

[melonhead]

the reality is hes played much better in a system more suited to his play, and has begun to look the player that may have kept us up.

That’s why it is important that managers strike a fine balance when dealing with ‘problem’ characters like Guthrie.

Earlier in the season you wouldn’t have much of it when some suggested we play a system to Guthrie’s strengths. Adkins has done exactly that from the word go and we are seeing the benefits.

No McDermott's 'fault', that lies with the reaction of the player, but Brian might have done more to 'manage' him for the team's benefit.

tbf he tried it early on, and gave up very quickly, for no real reason

[melonhead]

Brendy, it sounds like you now accept that McDermotts tactics and handling of Guthrie did contribute to his poorer performances, on field mistakes and his failure to live up to your expectations as a player.

ive always accepted that, im just not having that taking any real spotlight away from dannys reaction which was "unforgiveable" for a proffesional footballer.
for that the buck stops with danny.

all the rest is down to danny and brian pretty equally

[melonhead]

not really no. loads of people blaming brian when guthrie was passing to the opposition/the stands
loads of people still doing so.

No they aren't. You not being able to differentiate and saying its trur doesn't make it the case. 10 quotes from different people or you're talking balls.

And I mean quotes of people saying everything guthrie did wrong was mcdemott fault. Not just a lot of blame lies there in general.

i never said people have been saying everything dannys done isbrians fault though, so it would be an odd thing to do.
just saying many many people i know on here and outside of hobnob have excused all the bad because of all the briany reasons detailed already.

brian influenced things on the pitch as much as he could, but brian wasnt saying to danny guthrie in training every day, cmon now danny, when you get the ball in the game, i want you to pass it to the opposition, then petualntly wave your hands as if blaming one of your colleagues. thats for sure.

[Sanguine]

Who f*cking cares where he was.

Yes, he's had little opportunity, but he adds nothing to this team, and his extra powder puffness (even compared to our powderpuff midfield) just leaves us more exposed

He hasn't done a single thing when he has played that has even made me raise my eyebrows. Not a pass, not a cross, not a run, not a shot, not a tackle.

^^^^^^^^^^THIS!

Really, brendy?

REALLY?

[melonhead]

at that point, he hadnt done aything that raised a positive eyebrow from me(chelsea/stoke aside).
now he has started to(like jem and HRK)due to a change in management/style.

how does that change how he played under brian?

and how has that got anything to do with people were blaming brian for guthries poor performances?

[Sanguine]

:|

at that point, he hadnt done aything that raised a positive eyebrow from me(chelsea/stoke aside).
now he has started to(like jem and HRK)due to a change in management/style.

how does that change how he played under brian?

and how has that got anything to do with people were blaming brian for guthries poor performances?

It seems strange to claim you have always accepted that McDermott diminished Guthrie's performances whilst at the same time agreeing that he had done nothing whatsoever of note on the pitch.

Imho.

Earlier in the season you wrote Guthrie off as an awful signing, a failed experiment – a handful of games under a new boss and you are praising him. Maybe the signing was right, but Brian wasn’t up to it?

[Hoop Blah]

Kind of agree, but i'm not going to go overboard after one good performance against opponents who allowed us all the time in the world to play football.

He obviously has some talent but I'm not sure about the application.

Also amused by the way his earlier performance involving miscontrolling the ball, pinging passes into the stands and so on were all McDermott's fault.

I disagree. Who said that then?

loads of people.
loads of people still saying it

Brendy, that's when you said people have been blaming all Guthrie did was McDermotts fault.

McDermott takes a lot of the blame for Guthries performances. It's nice to see you accepting that.

[AirRaidSiren]

Brendy, it sounds like you now accept that McDermotts tactics and handling of Guthrie did contribute to his poorer performances, on field mistakes and his failure to live up to your expectations as a player.

ive always accepted that, im just not having that taking any real spotlight away from dannys reaction which was "unforgiveable" for a proffesional footballer.
for that the buck stops with danny.

all the rest is down to danny and brian pretty equally

And you're still going on about something that happened nearly 5 months ago, really?? It really is that long ago and what does it take for some of you to forget it?

For the life of me, I cannot get my head around the fact that Guthrie was bought by Brian in the past to play football which doesn't suit his style of play and that point isn't highlighted by anyone. Why on earth would you scout someone/watch someone, then buy him to play a different role to what his style of play is? The mind boggles.

[P!ssed Off]

I'd say McDermott was 75% to blame for the Guthrie 'Sunderland affair'.

The usual scenario is that a regular starter plays badly for multiple games in a row, gets benched and then reacts badly. In this scenario, obviously the player is completely at fault.
This was not the scenario with Guthrie however. In the Guthrie affair, the regular starter played badly for multiple games in a row and was still not benched, leading to a reaction from those on the bench.

I was not remotely surprised by the Guthrie incident, it had been coming for weeks. In just the previous game, away at Southampton, Reading were screaming out for a passing central midfielder but McDermott snubbed Guthrie, bringing on Hunt for Tabb. The only person that seemed surprised by the Guthrie Sunderland affair was McDermott.
Did I feel hatred to Guthrie? No. I felt empathy because the form Leigertwood was in even I might not have accepted being snubbed for him (and I'm shit at football).

In a voluntary sport situation, if I turned up to play every week and was never allowed off the substitutes bench due to the manager's blatant stubborn favouritism, even though I was at least as good as those on the pitch, then I would stop bothering turning up for games.

Obviously Guthrie is a professorial sportsman and the two situations are different. You could say he has to remain professional and carry on, but at the same time he is a player at his prime age, probably expecting first team football when joining the club, whose career was essentially being wasted by the manager. Overall, I can only give Guthrie 25% of the blame.

Clearly McDermott did not learn very much from the incident, hence the fan's reaction later in the season to Leigertwood being substituted off. Other players, including McCleary, and now to a lesser extent HRK, have since spoken out about what they felt was McDermott's favouritism.

[Extended-Phenotype]

Refusing to go to work when you've been treated badly is pretty understandable imo. Stupid, yeah. But hardly close to "unforgivable".

Sitting on a bench (if he was lucky) watching three other morons hoof the ball to the opposition for 90 minutes? "Fukthatshit" isn't an unbelievable reaction.

[sandman]

Yet Federici is accused on here of doing the same thing, without any evidence, except the testimony of the bloke down the pub and he gets criticised for it. One of your favourites actually does refuse to be on the bench and it's excuse after excuse, now including the laughable claim that he was treated badly. How exactly? Because he wasn't picked? Well, again, when the same thing happened to Federici we were told on here that that is "just a fact of football".

What about Shorey? He's criticised on here for getting pi55ed on a night when he knows he's not playing and we're told that he should've been ready to play even though Basil Brush would rather pick the under 12's left back than him basically because of a contract clause. That should make the "Now that's what I call being treated Badly" album.

Sure I'll get a "hilarious" Inferior-Prototype barb. Oh how we'll laugh.

[Hoop Blah]

I don't think anyone's excusing Guthrie's behaviour and he's had plenty of stick for his non-appearance at Sunderland. Federici's situation is slightly different as he basically played shit then threw his toys out of the pram for getting dropped (plus he's got a history of come and get me pleas). Guthrie was a bit different as he'd played well, got dropped, lived with it, then when he didn't really get a chance to prove his worth and saw players not performing well given more opportunities than him, wrongly threw his toys out.

None of that justifies Guthrie's actions but I guess it means people have more empathy with him than Federici who's form warranted his dropping for a superior replacement.

[creative_username_1]

Before we all start sucking each other off.....we've won one match under NA and taken 6 points from 18. Guthrie has played in a majority of these games.

NA has accumulated 31 from 35 games (would need to check that but it's about right).

31 from 35 games - Reading and Southampton
6 pts from 6 games - Reading
25 pts from 29 games - Southampton
(i'm not going to bother extrapolating as we have empirical evidence the rest is guesswork)

I'm actually naturally bullish on things and if asked i'd say we can win the league next season playing some good (to watch) football with NA at the helm. There have been encouraging signs

If Guthrie stays (i hope he does) we can observe him playing next season and assess how he does. If he goes there'll be those arguing how he could have been the best thing since that goal wot Robin Friday done.

tbf tbh i don't really give a shit whether he sulked away at Sunderland. When he did play he didn't really deliver under BMD. This may not have been Guthries faul but we have no way of testing* how he would have faired under a different system.

*even i'm starting to bore myself about testing

[winchester_royal]

NA didn't have close to 29 leaue games in charge of Saints this season

[creative_username_1]

NA didn't have close to 29 leaue games in charge of Saints this season

Quite right, his last game was Chelsea away in Jan so more like 22/23. I was kind of thinking if it was wrong as
it would have meant he'd nearly completed a full season

[Ian Royal]

He's also got 5 points from 6 games here.

[creative_username_1]

megamurked myself here. That was an embarrassing counting error 3+1+1=6

knew i should have checked rather than just adding about right in brackets.

Also note i'm not drawing any conclusions

[Ian Royal]

hmmmm dodgy statistics, no conclusions....


Hi snowball.