Micky van de Ven

[Finney Is Back]

You've quite a bit of experience at a good level mate. Do pros actually down tools? To me, it looks like our lot are completely demoralised and have absolutely no confidence in themselves, their team mates, the coach, the fans and the club and that's what we're seeing.

I see lads who'd kill you to win a 5 a side game every week. I find it hard to believe that pros would just stop trying.

I think it is a little bit more nuanced than that. When you do something at elite level the margins between winning and losing are often very small. It is very rare for players to completely stop trying, However, it can happen that players don't absolutely bust a gut and do everything in their power to give everything they have. If a player stops believing in his teammates or the tactics then this can happen without a player intentionally taking it easy, it just kind of happens. I suspect one of the reasons why there is often a new manager bounce is because suddenly players give their all to try to impress the new manager (just kind of human nature really). Unfortunately in our scenario we had so few players available that there wasn't really a need for any of them to try to impress the manager as they'd be playing anyway just by virtue of being available.

For what it's worth (not a lot I hear a bunch of you say) I don't think we showed a lack of effort last night, I also didn't think the performance overall was particularly bad (we've been far worse in many games this season). We gave them three awful goals where they didn't need to create anything and then they got a 4th from a free kick that should've been a yellow card for diving for their player. I actually thought we showed a bit of resilience and fight to not roll over and some of our play was OK despite us having so little creativity in the middle of the pitch.

 

[DeanoAustin]

I think it is a little bit more nuanced than that. When you do something at elite level the margins between winning and losing are often very small. It is very rare for players to completely stop trying, However, it can happen that players don't absolutely bust a gut and do everything in their power to give everything they have. If a player stops believing in his teammates or the tactics then this can happen without a player intentionally taking it easy, it just kind of happens. I suspect one of the reasons why there is often a new manager bounce is because suddenly players give their all to try to impress the new manager (just kind of human nature really). Unfortunately in our scenario we had so few players available that there wasn't really a need for any of them to try to impress the manager as they'd be playing anyway just by virtue of being available.

For what it's worth (not a lot I hear a bunch of you say) I don't think we showed a lack of effort last night, I also didn't think the performance overall was particularly bad (we've been far worse in many games this season). We gave them three awful goals where they didn't need to create anything and then they got a 4th from a free kick that should've been a yellow card for diving for their player. I actually thought we showed a bit of resilience and fight to not roll over and some of our play was OK despite us having so little creativity in the middle of the pitch.

And that I can sort of get behind as a theory. I'm just seeing a lot of "these lads aren't trying", "they don't care", "they'll be off next year", "they have their millions so they don't care about our suffering". I don't buy it. These are competitive footballers so I don't believe they go out on that pitch and don't give it pretty much all that they can. However, I think your theory above could be right. Even a slight drop at this level, caused unwillingly by other factors, can have a fatal impact on the chances of success. I think it's far more likely that we're seeing that than lads saying "couldn't give a f**k today, I'm taking it easy".