Nottingham Forest - Luton Town

[Sniffer Dog (Admin)]

We should stick to the facts, not fantasy and hindsight.

It is what it is, we went 2-0 up, thought the game was won, took off Sangare, Dominguez and Boly and brought on Yaytes, Kouyate and Worrall. That was in response to Luton bringing on Barkley and Townsend to give them more of an attacking threat.

We can dress it up how we want with hindsight and fantasy but they are the facts right there ^^

[Salvatore Matrecano]

So its not fantasy and hindsight accusing Cooper of bringing on his mates for no good reason?

[Sniffer Dog (Admin)]

Gentlemen have a nice afternoon. I'm off out for a walk because my head is getting sore banging it against a brick wall.

[Forest1970]

So its not fantasy and hindsight accusing Cooper of bringing on his mates for no good reason?

Good god it's not school you know where the team captain brings his mates on and not play the better players. As Sniffer said Luton bought on 2 attacking players and were willing to risk going out for the win or get stuffed trying and Cooper rightly or wrongly  bought on more defensive players and play out for the 2-0 win and we know the answer to that now. It's definitely not "I'll play my mates now thanks" because Cooper is more intelligent than that and he  now realises he mucked up but saying that name a manager who hasn't done something similar.

[DR Forest]

We should stick to the facts, not fantasy and hindsight.

It is what it is, we went 2-0 up, thought the game was won, took off Sangare, Dominguez and Boly and brought on Yaytes, Kouyate and Worrall. That was in response to Luton bringing on Barkley and Townsend to give them more of an attacking threat.

We can dress it up how we want with hindsight and fantasy but they are the facts right there ^^

When you get back from your walk can you spell out the point you’re trying to make here?
I’m not being facetious, I just don’t understand.

I can’t work out if you’re trying to say it’s cooper’s fault because he was too negative, trying to defend against these players and so allowing them more territory and the upper hand? 

If so, what should he have done?

It’s a fact the changes contributed to the result, but given the injury list was it not fair to think bringing on experienced players in like for like positions was reasonable to protect some who appeared to be labouring? 

The bit I can’t understand is why take off Dominguez unless he was struggling with something we don’t know.

[Sniffer Dog (Admin)]

You have just said yourself that you can't understand why he took off Dominguez so you obviously think it was a f**k up too.

Some say he shouldn't have took off Dominguez, others have said we shouldn't change a center back, others have said we shouldn't have taken off both Dominguez and Sangare but just one or the other, others have said we shouldn't have made all 3 subs at the same time.

I don't think there is anyone who is in complete agreement with what actually happened so it's totally fair game to flag it up and ask some questions of the decision that Steve made. And that is all we are doing, asking some questions, that is what this forum is about.

[DR Forest]

I questioned why he took Dominguez off but that doesn’t mean I think it was a f**k up.
I said there may be reasons of which we are not aware.
Even if the reason was ‘I thought the game was won so wanted to give yatesy some minutes’ it’s not an unreasonable idea given our current injury list.

What I hope now is that the club continues its evolution.
We need a top CB and striker that aren’t made of biscuits.
Felipe Joe and Scot aren’t the future, and probably neither are dorigi and wood in the long term.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe we should have at least 14 points now and we’ve made it hard for ourselves unnecessarily; but there will be more bumps in the road before we can replicate villa or Brighton.

[McDurban]

If you've dominated for 70 minutes against a shite team and are 2-0 up, why wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the professional footballers coming on for the last 20 minutes or so would be able to see out the game? Especially when one bleeds garibaldi and another was many people's 'first name on the team sheet' until they spunked £30m on a player yet to show he's much better on a consistent basis?

If you've dominated for 70 minutes against a shite team and are 2-0 up, why wouldn't it be reasonable for a manager to think its an opportunity to rotate a few players to reduce the risk of muscle injury to some older ones who have a history of muscle injuries (Boly, Serge) or who are simply blowing out of their arse (Sangare)?
Especially when the injury list includes Taiwo, CHO, Dorigi, Danillo, Felipe, Montiel, Tavares and until recently Aina and Niakhate?
Doubly especially so when, arguably, 7 of those 9 would be starters if fit?

He made the call. But for two utter f**k ups that you couldn't foresee, it would have been the right call 99 times out of a 100.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing......

Agreed

Agreed +1

[Salvatore Matrecano]

Moving this whole conversation on a bit to a few theories I read which I thought were interesting and which hasn’t been discussed.

Firstly the tactics of defending a lead. If we were setting out to basically see the game out by the low block we used for much of last season reasonably effectively then we should have gone to a back 3. So the biggest mistake may have been not bringing on Niakhate over Kouyate as the central pivot.
Our midfield reverted to type from last season not being able to retain the ball putting pressure on 2 centre backs.

Our fate was sealed by the second mistake (could have been necessity) of removing Elanga. This was our only outlet with any pace and he was replaced with an anonymous Williams leaving only Wood, who was by now on his knees, to hold the ball up and keep the defence busy. We dropped deep, Luton CB has all the time in the world to come forward and hoof the ball into the mixer for the equaliser, it was almost inevitable.

Of course this was mainly due to injuries that we had no other forward option but think it shows how much we do miss Johnson, he was always our outlet when we adopted a low block, on Saturday at the end we had none.

None of this is meant to be critical, just a different look at it and possibly what we could do differently in another situation.

[wassy04]

Moving this whole conversation on a bit to a few theories I read which I thought were interesting and which hasn’t been discussed.

Firstly the tactics of defending a lead. If we were setting out to basically see the game out by the low block we used for much of last season reasonably effectively then we should have gone to a back 3. So the biggest mistake may have been not bringing on Niakhate over Kouyate as the central pivot.
Our midfield reverted to type from last season not being able to retain the ball putting pressure on 2 centre backs.

Our fate was sealed by the second mistake (could have been necessity) of removing Elanga. This was our only outlet with any pace and he was replaced with an anonymous Williams leaving only Wood, who was by now on his knees, to hold the ball up and keep the defence busy. We dropped deep, Luton CB has all the time in the world to come forward and hoof the ball into the mixer for the equaliser, it was almost inevitable.

Of course this was mainly due to injuries that we had no other forward option but think it shows how much we do miss Johnson, he was always our outlet when we adopted a low block, on Saturday at the end we had none.

None of this is meant to be critical, just a different look at it and possibly what we could do differently in another situation.

10 mins to go, home to Luton and 2-0, not sure bringing on a 3rd CB would've been well received?! Would've probably need to change both fullbacks to go to 3 CBs though as Serge was knackered and Toff isn't fast enough. Hypothetically though wingbacks in that situation would've given us an outlet that we didn't have.

I've been thinking since we changed to 433 we're a wide forward short and that was before CHO got injured.

[Salvatore Matrecano]

Yes I agree bringing on a 3rd CB vs Luton would have brought its own criticism but just saying it may well have been the smart move.
With current injuries it does feel we simply don’t have the squad to play a 433, suspect we will see a bit of a formation change on Saturday.

[JWJW]

Cooper admits the Luton result is on him.......he made the wrong decisions.