Mitrovic

[rebel]

Mitro needs some support. Unfortunately we spent a fortune, relatively speaking, on Cav and Knocks. Neither of who can cross and aren't premiership level

Agree, Tete has been getting crosses in, Cav and Knocks has the ability, but you've got two players who like to hog the ball, they don't work to get that cross in early. We are so slow in everything we do.

[toshes mate]

We waited so long for a decent striker after we sold and lost two.  We are going to wait even longer for a replacement if Mitrovic moves on, and we do not have Jokanovic making light without the necessary ingredients.  The Club needs to stop finding scapegoats (of which it is so very able) and instead tackle the disease that is causing the rot and then perhaps we will get soemwhere.

[RaySmith]

Good post Sting.

Mitro offers us a lot,  can hold the ball up and lay it off, crucial help in  defending corners, as well as being our leading scorer by far - and I agree with Sting that we looked pretty toothless without him, even if we  did manage to  win those few games.

But  on Tuesday particularly, there was far to much reliance on crosses to him, though on another day  he would have put at least one of them away, and we need other players to play alongside him,  with pace on the ground to go past defenders.

We do have players who can do this, but hey didn't seem to do it against Villa, and we definitely need another proven goalscorer, with  pace, who can play off Mitro, and also  to play if/when he gets injured/suspended.

[rebel]

Good post Sting.

Mitro offers us a lot,  can hold the ball up and lay it off, crucial help in  defending corners, as well as being our leading scorer by far - and I agree with Sting that we looked pretty toothless without him, even if we  did manage to  win those few games.

But  on Tuesday particularly, there was far to much reliance on crosses to him, though on another day  he would have put at least one of them away, and we need other players to play alongside him,  with pace on the ground to go past defenders.

We do have players who can do this, but hey didn't seem to do it against Villa, and we definitely need another proven goalscorer, with  pace, who can play off Mitro, and also  to play if/when he gets injured/suspended.

How many headed goal attempts did Mitro have without scoring? We aren't talking about one or two, was it 8 / 9? A couple of chances he should of put away.

[Sting of the North]

Good post Sting.

Mitro offers us a lot,  can hold the ball up and lay it off, crucial help in  defending corners, as well as being our leading scorer by far - and I agree with Sting that we looked pretty toothless without him, even if we  did manage to  win those few games.

But  on Tuesday particularly, there was far to much reliance on crosses to him, though on another day  he would have put at least one of them away, and we need other players to play alongside him,  with pace on the ground to go past defenders.

We do have players who can do this, but hey didn't seem to do it against Villa, and we definitely need another proven goalscorer, with  pace, who can play off Mitro, and also  to play if/when he gets injured/suspended.

How many headed goal attempts did Mitro have without scoring? We aren't talking about one or two, was it 8 / 9? A couple of chances he should of put away.

On the top of my head (see what I did there?) I can remember one fairly good chance for Mitro when he headed outside the far post, but there might have been some other chances that I can't remember. Most of the rest he was double marked and it was good of him to even get his head to the ball but almost impossible to make something of it. We should have crossed far less often, or at least not only in obvious situations at our obvious target. We made it easy for Villa's defender through our own shortcomings. Mitro occupied two defenders basically the whole game, and not once did we tactically seem to exploit that fact by doing something other than lofting the ball towards Mitro.

[RaySmith]

Good post Sting.

Mitro offers us a lot,  can hold the ball up and lay it off, crucial help in  defending corners, as well as being our leading scorer by far - and I agree with Sting that we looked pretty toothless without him, even if we  did manage to  win those few games.

But  on Tuesday particularly, there was far to much reliance on crosses to him, though on another day  he would have put at least one of them away, and we need other players to play alongside him,  with pace on the ground to go past defenders.

We do have players who can do this, but hey didn't seem to do it against Villa, and we definitely need another proven goalscorer, with  pace, who can play off Mitro, and also  to play if/when he gets injured/suspended.

How many headed goal attempts did Mitro have without scoring? We aren't talking about one or two, was it 8 / 9? A couple of chances he should of put away.

I said 'on another day he would have put least one of those  away' and though he was double marked, we have seen him in the past manage to score in similar difficult circumstances,  and he did  come close on a couple of occasions on Tuesday, but he just didn't have  the luck.

But, as said,  he did well to keep getting his head to the ball while so marked and balked, with defenders getting away with it as usual , and Mitro himself getting penalised.

But i was agreeing that we were far too reliant on Mitro, and it was predictable that  nearly al our attacks seemed to be crosses to him in the box. That we scored, though disallowed, from a different kind of attack, says something.

The main point i was making s that we need to  diversify in attack, which we usually  do more than  last Tuesday, and we need to keep Mitro, but with a pacey, proven goalscorer alongside him, and deploying other attacking options, which we  should have with the players at our disposal.

But another proven  scorer. who can play off Mitro, or on his own if required, is  urgently needed, though BDR maybe can do this to an extent.

But keep we need to keep Mitro.

[blingo]

Could you trust TK to bring in another striker of Mitrovic's quality if he was sold?

[FFC In Oz]

Could you trust TK to bring in another striker of Mitrovic's quality if he was sold?

I wouldn't trust TK to organise a shag in a brothel

[john dempsey]

in my opinion first class player
trying to do his best with second rate tactics,
think he will be looking to get out of this mess
such a shame.

[WindyCity]

Sorry, not buying.  Rationalization.  And I do like Mitro.  That said, everyone could see he was on a bad wheel.  Yes, credit to him on the give and go with Bryan.  But I'm looking at the overall picture, and FFC played without his services for most of that final run playoff push.

Are you joking?
We scored a few goals without Mitro against crap teams.  Whoopie doo.

Whoopie doo?  Crap teams?  Wow!  Guess what.....FFC had to beat those 'crap teams' with or without Mitro, and in this case without, to have a sniff at promotion.  As we all know, this is a tough league (Champ), even against 'crap teams'.  Credit to FFC for playing on even without their top goal scorer and earning a top 6 finish.  FFC I thought played very well indeed without Mitro for quite a few games last season with mostly good results.

[Plodder]

The team was supposed to be built around Mitro (our best player)  so you're saying Parker plays a style that he's not best suited to? He was top scorer in the champs. How did he manage that? Imagine if he played in a style he was suited to. He'd have scored 50! [emoji23]

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[/quote]

What makes you assert that the team "was supposed to be built around Mitro"?  Neither Jokanovic nor Parker, nor anyone at the club has made that statement.  It is perfectly reasonable to argue that Mitrovic should be kept in the team and the rest need to play better (maybe we would be best served by Mitrovic playing with another nippier forward), but "building around" him would be a grave mistake. If he is injured or transferred, what would happen then?  I just think that we played  better in the spell when we were without him than we did than he was playing as more or less a solo striker.  Anyone is entitled to have a different opinion, but it's hardly an outrageous point of view.

[rebel]

We are in a similar position with Mitro, that we were with the 'brilliant but nonchalant' Berbatov, remember his T Shirt, 'Keep Calm And Pass Me The Ball'. Mitro doesn't need such a request, the players do it because the managers only option seems to be to do that.

[Matt10]

It's very simple, we did not use Mitro's strengths that lead up to goals, we assumed his strengths of how he scores goals. There's a big difference there. Our ball movement was more direct to the sidelines than it has ever been. It was route-one football, and we crossed balls into Mitro as if he was Peter Crouch. If you are going to cross the ball that many times, you need to have the wingers to drag defenders out of position, so the striker isn't just jumping straight up in the air or facing so much of a physical contest between two centre-backs. The strength of Mitro that leads to goals is passing the ball to his feet in advanced positions, in which he can lay off to either our wingers or our central midfielders. We have all the creativity in the world with Cairney and Anguissa, yet all they were asked to do was send balls to the sidelines, then play mop up on clearances. It's absolutely exhausting. We just played a man-marking Leeds United, and we were much more up for that physically than we were against Villa. It's absolutely no surprise that players lost track of runners. Our own attack was used against us for crying out loud.

[FFC In Oz]

Sorry, not buying.  Rationalization.  And I do like Mitro.  That said, everyone could see he was on a bad wheel.  Yes, credit to him on the give and go with Bryan.  But I'm looking at the overall picture, and FFC played without his services for most of that final run playoff push.

Are you joking?
We scored a few goals without Mitro against crap teams.  Whoopie doo.

Whoopie doo?  Crap teams?  Wow!  Guess what.....FFC had to beat those 'crap teams' with or without Mitro, and in this case without, to have a sniff at promotion.  As we all know, this is a tough league (Champ), even against 'crap teams'.  Credit to FFC for playing on even without their top goal scorer and earning a top 6 finish.  FFC I thought played very well indeed without Mitro for quite a few games last season with mostly good results.

Of course we had to beat them, but we were EXPECTING to beat them.

On paper, we had one of the best squads in the Championship last season.  And the gap between the top 4 teams in the Championship and the rest was much larger than it has been in previous seasons.

I'm not the only one that was actually slightly underwhelmed by many of our performances last season, but I think that reflects more so on the management/coaching team than the players (with or without Mitro)

[WindyCity]

Sorry, not buying.  Rationalization.  And I do like Mitro.  That said, everyone could see he was on a bad wheel.  Yes, credit to him on the give and go with Bryan.  But I'm looking at the overall picture, and FFC played without his services for most of that final run playoff push.

Are you joking?
We scored a few goals without Mitro against crap teams.  Whoopie doo.

Whoopie doo?  Crap teams?  Wow!  Guess what.....FFC had to beat those 'crap teams' with or without Mitro, and in this case without, to have a sniff at promotion.  As we all know, this is a tough league (Champ), even against 'crap teams'.  Credit to FFC for playing on even without their top goal scorer and earning a top 6 finish.  FFC I thought played very well indeed without Mitro for quite a few games last season with mostly good results.

Of course we had to beat them, but we were EXPECTING to beat them.
On paper, we had one of the best squads in the Championship last season.  And the gap between the top 4 teams in the Championship and the rest was much larger than it has been in previous seasons.
I'm not the only one that was actually slightly underwhelmed by many of our performances last season, but I think that reflects more so on the management/coaching team than the players (with or without Mitro)

See, that's the problem with 'on paper'.  Doesn't mean sheet!  And I'll be honest, I don't think many in this forum, including myself, ever really 'expects' FFC to beat any particular team, at any time, in any league, over the past 3-4 seasons, in which, for the most part, they have underwhelmed.  Even during promotion seasons, they have been very inconsistent in their performances, oft times losing to teams fans would 'expect' them to beat, including bottom table sides. 

Regards Mitro, I like him and he has been a big reason for the promotion seasons in general.  But in EPL he can't be the sole target for goal scoring.  When he hasn't played, FFC last season had much success, freeing up others to contribute and leaving defenses unsure of who to focus on in the FFC attack.  All I have simply posted is that when Mitro is in the team, FFC has to develop other/better schemes to produce goals.  Other players, other setups, something.  He is usually double or triple teamed, someone else has got to be open, one would think.  My critique hasn't been so much of Mitro, but rather the plan.  Now with the addition of forward Lookman maybe we can see a more engaging offense.  Of course, our backline defense is dreadful.