Marco Silva

[South Coast White]

Has to take full and total blame for that loss.
Quite simply the worst sub decitions I think he'sever made.
Smith Rowe's best game in a fulham shirt, chukka scareing the defence all day, Berge immense again as he was against City, and he takes them all off. Raul, hobbling and clearly not able to have any impact.
So annoyed, we could and should have won that one.

[Ara's bacon crisps]

I've just got home after the regular 180 mile round trip to the Cottage and am still seething at how we threw the match away, but reassured to see across several threads that I'm not the only one and that today's subs baffled many people.

How can you be controlling the game, an offside gnat's whisker from taking the lead and decide that the best way to ram home that advantage is to start taking off your best players on the day? And he's got form for this, regularly taking Josh off when he's our only bright spark.

In the end he subbed the entire midfield - all 5 of them. In what parallel universe does that ever end well? It was as if Marco wanted to be beaten just to make another point to the Board about signings.

And while I'm moaning, I believe my season ticket comes in at about £37 per match. What I'd prefer is not to see about £20 of that consist of Andersen to Bassey to Andersen sideways passing before one of them gets bored and chips an aimless 9 iron to the opposition. 1-2 down, 94th minute and they're still doing it. I guess I must have been particularly bad in a previous life to have suffered Parkerball and now be forced to sit through Parkerball 2.0 too.

I've always been Marco in, but today may have changed my mind. The individual players in our team are easily good enough to be comfortably top 10 or more, yet they're stifled by this stultifying set up and approach, not to mention subbed if they play too well. Oh, for a manager like Glasner, whose team can go from the keeper to bearing down on goal in 3 passes. Hopefully Mr Khan has his eye on one because at this rate your Christmas present is going to be a P45, Marco.

[ffc73]

The first half debacle against City followed by the second half self destruction by subbing off players who were beginning to turn the screw on Palace, both down to Marco.

He appears to be intent on leaving us when his contract runs out in the summer exactly where he found us. In the Championship.

[HV71]

Another good post. I almost can't believe I'm typing this but I am on the turn and think we need to consider Marco's position. His substitutions were either inept or spiteful ( trying to prove his point)
I cannot find any sound reason for the changes he made

[Woolly Mammoth]

The decisions Silva made today were not of a rational man.
We have seen signs of it before, but today's pantomime of substitutes I just could not comprehend.

[HobGoblin]

He needs to go, arrogant attitude, sorry, but thinks he's bigger than the club, well he isnt, not a patch on Roy

[ArcticOctopus]

He needs to go, arrogant attitude, sorry, but thinks he's bigger than the club, well he isnt, not a patch on Roy

100%, and too often his subs and strategy seem as much to make a statement about his frustration with the transfer strategy as it is with winning games.

I've said this before but he seems to think his only path to success is buying his way there. We have good players, a good team. This is on Marco, not them.

[C Block]

The Sunderland Echo are reporting tonight that we are one of the Club's interested in Le Bris, make of it as you will.

[demeant0r]

If we, the fans, could see how good ESR and Chucky were today and should not have been subbed and how much Raul needed to be taken off then clearly our manager should also be able to see it. He's clearly trying to throw the match.

[Twig]

The first half debacle against City followed by the second half self destruction by subbing off players who were beginning to turn the screw on Palace, both down to Marco.

He appears to be intent on leaving us when his contract runs out in the summer exactly where he found us. In the Championship.

But on your reasoning the second half recovery against City also down to Marco. Very selective criticism surely?

BTW I am also critical of the subs yesterday but just saying.

[JimOG]

He needs to go, arrogant attitude, sorry, but thinks he's bigger than the club, well he isnt, not a patch on Roy

Nor Glasner?

[H4usuallysitting]

Did JKA come on at all.... I turned off when palace scored the winner

[bog]

I have always supported Marco, however those three substitutions of ESR, Chuck and Berg defied logic. The young German lad whose name escapes me cos I am very old should have come on for a weary Jimenez with 20mins to go. So close to 2-1 when we were playing so well. Another very, very frustrating game. Harry's gem of a goal deserved to grace a win.

Have to say what a player is Adam Wharton and what a manager is Oliver Glasner.  Palace fans must be on fantasy island.     

As an aside on MOTD2 out of ten candidates for Goal of the Month no room was found for Harry's spontaneous effort at Spurs. Was I surprised? Er no.       

[ffc73]

The first half debacle against City followed by the second half self destruction by subbing off players who were beginning to turn the screw on Palace, both down to Marco.

He appears to be intent on leaving us when his contract runs out in the summer exactly where he found us. In the Championship.

But on your reasoning the second half recovery against City also down to Marco. Very selective criticism surely?

BTW I am also critical of the subs yesterday but just saying.

Yes, that is correct Twig.

If it's not working (Citeh) fix it. If it's working (Palace) leave it alone.

It's not just a Marco thing. We benefitted when Spurs were on top, had just scored & Thomas Frank inexplicably made substitutions that took all their momentum away.

Marco has a bench which he used to good effect on Tuesday to correct the, imo incorrect, starting lineup but yesterday he tinkered with wanton abandon that cost us.

[Twig]

The first half debacle against City followed by the second half self destruction by subbing off players who were beginning to turn the screw on Palace, both down to Marco.

He appears to be intent on leaving us when his contract runs out in the summer exactly where he found us. In the Championship.

But on your reasoning the second half recovery against City also down to Marco. Very selective criticism surely?

BTW I am also critical of the subs yesterday but just saying.

Yes, that is correct Twig.

If it's not working (Citeh) fix it. If it's working (Palace) leave it alone.

It's not just a Marco thing. We benefitted when Spurs were on top, had just scored & Thomas Frank inexplicably made substitutions that took all their momentum away.

Marco has a bench which he used to good effect on Tuesday to correct the, imo incorrect, starting lineup but yesterday he tinkered with wanton abandon that cost us.

Yes, he certainly got it spectacularly wrong yesterday. I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theorists who claim he threw the match on purpose, that's ridiculous in my opinion. However I don't have a clue what he was trying to achieve with those ill -considered substitutions. They made no sense at all.
I've never previously bought into the "Marco is way too stubborn" argument either, but I have to admit I'm starting to change my mind. Jimenez was clearly completely shot on the hour mark and yet he preferred to take off our best players. Bizarre.

[SerbianLad]

I think he kept Jimenez and Wilson on hoping they produce another moment of magic like they did for our first goal. I think Marco often does that with Wilson and Raul in particular,and sometimes it works out, like Wolves this season(Wilson) and Sunderland this season (Raul). But I think I'd rather sub ineffective players off, than keep them on and hope they can pull something off. Raul should have definitely come off first. Wilson, apart from one moment of incredible skill, was ineffective too, and he should have been subbed off around  70th minute too. To me, it seemed like ESR and Chukwueze were much more likely to cause Crystal Palace trouble, then Wilson and Raul were to come up with another moment of magic.

[Fulham 1879]

Yes, it was very odd that he substituted ESR and Chuk. Fulham were losing the midfield battle just before Berge came off, but Lukic didn't do any better. We need a complete refresh of our central midfield, as creating problems for the opposition is the best form of defence. Teams like Forest, Brighton and Palace slow that is possible to unearth excellent midfield players within our budget. Palhinha obviously is an example of that. Hopefully we'll buy someone in January, but I'm not optimistic.

[SerbianLad]

Yes, it was very odd that he substituted ESR and Chuk. Fulham were losing the midfield battle just before Berge came off, but Lukic didn't do any better. We need a complete refresh of our central midfield, as creating problems for the opposition is the best form of defence. Teams like Forest, Brighton and Palace slow that is possible to unearth excellent midfield players within our budget. Palhinha obviously is an example of that. Hopefully we'll buy someone in January, but I'm not optimistic.

Because the same problems remained. I've said it multiple times, I don't think Iwobi is the solution for the 8 role. Their first goal is a good example. I do think it's mostly Berge that's at fault, but Iwobi wasn't that good in the buildup of that goal either. In the second half, at one point Iwobi started giving the ball away in dangerous areas and his positioning was all over the place, Berge struggled to mop up his mistakes. I think Marco didn't want to make a defensive substitution, so he gave Lukic a go to see if he could do a better job than Berge from a defensive standpoint, but problems remained pretty much the same. Raul was a part of the problem in the second half too, as at times he was pretty static.

I think if that ESR goal wasn't offside, Lukic would have come on for Iwobi or one of the wingers(and then Iwobi would have been moved to the wing) and we would have seen something similar to the Spurs game. However, at 1-1, Marco kept Iwobi on, which doesn't work defensively, imo.

[SG]

I am glad it was not only me that was perplexed at the subs. Added to which when both Chuka and Kevin were on the pitch every move was down the left wing. Chuka having terrorised Palace was left twiddling his thumbs over on the right until he was subbed. Very bewildering

[SG]

After that performance from Raul what does JKA have to do to get on the pitch. Raul carried minimal goal threat all afternoon - i realise he set up our goal but did little else. I despair at times particularly as JKA looked ok for his 15-20 mins in the previous game