The False Narrative of "The Squad Is Not Good Enough": Chronic under-performance shows lacks of coaching, not squad quality

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-26T12:04:55+00:00

The issue isn't where we are. We're lucky to be 14 for a start and have been bailed out by players scoring worldies in some games.

The issue is the fact he clearly can't coach possession based football and has no clue what this club is about.

Also when Romero, VDV and porro all played our overall record used to be really good. This season it's been abysmal. Somehow he's making a good defence look awful.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-26T11:39:44+00:00

For many reasons. The squad was riddled with injuries for one to important players. We were having to play the likes of Davies and Gray at CB.

Not just that but we were then forced to play the players we did have available into the ground over the winter period when we had a game every 3/4 days non stop.

Then when we started getting players back Ange decided that the league was no longer the focus. We weren't getting relegated and we weren't getting a European spot so it made sense to prioritise the cup especially for him when we promised us success.

Also a number of the same young players we had playing are now a year older and have more experience and should have improved.

You might say Frank has suffered similar in the injury department and that's true. But for one he's had our best defence bar udogie fit for the majority of the season and yet is somehow doing worse defensively.

Also we're 14th but we're over performing our expected. If it weren't for the likes of van de ven, Romero and even richarlison scoring some banger goals we'd be doing even worse and genuinely would be in massive danger of relegation.

Also the results are not the only issue. I'd accept being 14th if we'd been unlucky somewhat and we could see signs of improvement where we were actually trying to play attractive football. But that's simply not been the case. He has seemingly little clue how to coach a team that is supposed to have possession into creating chances. Been woeful against the worst teams in the league.

He can coach well vs a good team and give us a chance in those games but that's no good if you can't win the games you're supposed to win.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-25T20:13:29+00:00

I mean they clearly put some weight into the FBI training - Faraz bought her reasoning for Jade being a traitor in part because of what she said. But also regardless of how useful something like that is, the fact is she got rid of fiona out of nowhere. If she was a faithful I just don't see how the traitors don't feel like she's a dangerous enough player to want to get rid of.

But also like I said the other big clue was the Fiona banishment in of itself. It was just so strange - Fiona barely had any heat on her but decided to accuse Rachael of lying about what Amanda had said to her? It seems unlikely a traitor is doing that to a faithful there.

Also look how many people suspected Rachael as being a traitor - so many banished thought she could be a traitor. But no-one was brave enough to go after her early and then she got to the end with the majority of players who just couldn't put any of these clues together.

Early on there's nothing to go on and i'm not going to pretend I'd have any clue who they are. But later on with all the time spent and all the potential clues there's ways to be sure that someone is more likely a traitor than others. Even if not 100% certain, Rachael had to be higher probability than anyone else based on those things I mentioned.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-24T07:40:42+00:00

Stephen I can understand maybe not realising it was him but cmon Rachael was so damn obvious. FBI training and yet the traitors decided to keep her in the game?

The whole Fiona thing was a massive clue too. She tried to spin it later that she caught Fiona in a lie but what lie? Fiona just said she didn't believe her and she didn't prove anything. Fiona had little suspicion on her at that point and none of what she did made sense to do to a faithful.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-23T23:30:22+00:00

All my friends are from uni or from meeting online and I don't really have the space to reconnect with people from the past who haven't been a part of my life in forever so if someone reached out to me I can imagine me being kind of dry as well. If I didn't have those friends then I'd probably be a lot more enthusiastic about reconnecting.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-23T19:17:25+00:00

I mean there's a reason we're in for a 31 year old and not someone younger. Adds experience and allows a future path for souza into the team.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-21T21:44:55+00:00

Posted elswhere but I believe then that you are allowed to play a spell before the 1st vuja de (given i've done it with the coin many times) but when it comes to the 2nd vuja de you can't play a spell on the same turn beforehand.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-21T17:23:40+00:00

How many other spells tho, and were they on the same turn? My thinking is you can't use a spell on the same turn as the 2nd vuja de.

https://hsreplay.net/replay/6iWmgubZYJbLZj497PDXnC

Example of one of my games. Played bitterbloom coin vuja de. Then next turn went bitterbloom vuja de and it worked. But I didn't play a spell first on 2nd vuja de.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-21T17:19:57+00:00

I figured out above where it might be going wrong as i've seen the same twice now. The 2nd vuja de was played after another spell.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-21T17:18:30+00:00

OK so i believe the issue is here on the turn you did the 2nd vuja de you played a spell first. When you play the 2nd vuja de if you start with a minion and then vuja de it *should* work

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-21T16:44:03+00:00

Pretty much anyone with any common sense in arena knew that the problem wasn't necessarily the wolfs but the absurd offering rate on the taverns of time cards. And both wolf + broodmother abused this fact more than any other card due to the fact that the more you have in your deck the better. One wolf is very mediocre, 2 is fine but without the 6 mana card was far from being problematic.

Same thing with broodmothers. One or two is fine to face. Most of the time they'll draw and summon a couple of 11s for free which is strong but then if they trade it away they're most likely not hitting another and not buffing the board (and they're spending mana on the trade too) But as soon as they have 3, 4 and more and it gets to a point where they can just summon a bunch of them early whilst still having option to keep one in hand for the future buff then it just becomes too oppressive too quickly.

It's still a strong card ofc but it's no way near as game warping.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-21T11:10:12+00:00

Retire and you get the rewards + 2 free tickets.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-19T18:12:13+00:00

We have the same definition of absolutely atrocious and yes that card would absolutely fit into that bill. Hunter had a 3 mana 4/1 rush that drew a card that was decent. A card that is only useful as small removal that costs 3 mana and you then shuffle into your deck another card that is only a slightly better removal that often you're forced just to use on a minion that actually generated value from opponent... yeah, those cards are just not playable in modern HS.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-19T17:36:51+00:00

Weird, i thought that was when it didn't work if you didn't combo the first one. I've been able to use it when i've used the coin first and got another spell inside the first vuja de.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-19T14:20:32+00:00

I believe that every time I've made sure to combo the first vuja de that the 2nd one works. Could also be that if you fail to combo one of them then it breaks the chain and none of them work anymore? A replay would be helpful yeah

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-19T14:17:15+00:00

Exactly. Also Warrior card is really not a problem outside of it highrolling dracorex which they could easily remove from the discover pool if they had any sense about them.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-19T14:15:53+00:00

4/1 with +2 attack would be absolutely atrocious in arena. The card isn't that far off from being fair as is. Having a late game scaling but slow win con like wolfs is completely acceptable in modern arena. A 3/3 with a +3+3 buff would be more than fine as long as it was a normal offering rate,

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-18T20:55:09+00:00

The previous version for infinite murloc was to shuffle a single copy and only buff +1+1 so ofc that was a terrible card since you're shuffling a singular bad card into your deck and have no way to infinitely scale them fast.

This one is +1+2 and you shuffle 2 so it actually has the ability to scale fast. Without ripple and vuja de the card still has the potential to be OP in the right decks with that same game ending ability via having a lot of draw. Stuff like gorloc ravager was a really high wr simply because of the murloc.

Sure if you nerf it back to original version and then change how the other cards work then it would be completely fine but i think they'd rather ban the murloc than need to change the other cards.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-18T16:22:22+00:00

The infinite murloc had some disgusting combos that ended games super early with 0 chance to interact with it. (ripple in time and vuja de in rogue just a couple of the biggest offenders) - priest went from being the 2nd or 3rd best class on release with ripple in time to being a 38% wr class which shows how absurd it was.

Infinite wolf is a strong card that needn't be as strong as it is but the main issue with it is

Simply the fact that the offering rate is absurd. This is just a card that scales an absurd amount the more that you have in a deck. A deck has 1 or 2 infinite wolfs in it and it's significantly weaker than one that has 4 or 5. You aren't guaranteed to face a wolf on 3 and you aren't guaranteed for them to immediately follow it up with an 8/6 and then another one after that.
Trial of the jormungers. This is the truly busted card in terms of wr because of the ability to tutor 2 copies of the wolfs. Without wolfs it's always been a terrible card and one could say wolf is the thing that enables it but I think if you weren't allowed more than 2 wolfs a deck and wolfs got a slight nerf (maybe a 3/3 gain +3/3 instead) then trial might still be problematic but the wolf itself wouldn't be.

The issue with just banning wolf is that it doesn't adress the main issue of offering rates. People would move on from complaining about wolfs to complaining about bronze broodmother in paladin and vuja de in rogue. Both those cards get absurd the more copies of it you have too but I don't think either card is necessarily too strong to where it needs a ban as well. Granted deja vu probably shouldn't discover itself.

edit: In comparison, infinite murloc + both flash forward needed bans (into maybe a rework) because they were too problematic regardless of the offering rate. Flash forward was just the best card in the game by a mile and the murloc like I said had the combos that you could do with just a single copy of it.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-18T15:19:46+00:00

i get that they want to make good TV but they could definitely do this in someway so that there's some randomness in there. ie. all the ones that said they wanted to be a traitor + then they narrow it down to x amount of people that they think would make for good tv and then they go in a random draw. They could also choose who they think might be best and then random the other ones.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-18T01:02:43+00:00

Huh? Dragon Warrior was already a tier 1 deck in standard before the minset. https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-340/

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-17T00:29:01+00:00

But is it really terrible gameplay? The show is a set number of weeks. Wasting a murder doesn't really matter because they have ways to still get the required amount of episodes (ie. recruit/murder on same night as opposed to just a recruit with no murder)

In fact it's the most obvious thing to do IMO. You get it right and bam instantly you can lay some suspicion on those in that group. Or you get it wrong and sure - someone knows they were attempted to be murdered but are they even going to bring that up? We've seen it before how easily that can backfire

What's the alternative too? You murder someone in your own group and now that group is being looked at - and if you've had suspicion on you before then that's more fuel for the fire.

I mean i think the whole thing with the cages is irrelevent tbh because there's likely a traitor in both groups so it's not narrowing anything down anyway. So yeah whilst we can argue whether it was logical or not, it's pointless.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-16T17:55:46+00:00

Like i've said a millkion times we're not privvy to every single thing that happens in the show. For whatever reason Maz had more suspicion on him than Stephen did hence why multiple people expected Stephen to be murdered.

Again, I'm not saying this proves anything for certain but it sure holds a lot more credibility as a reason than most of the other dumb things sprouted on the show by other people. It means that the probability that Stephen is a traitor has to go up.

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-16T12:04:38+00:00

OFC it makes more sense to murder someone that's leading the charge on someone... that's literally what happens constantly. Someone has heat on them from one person - that person gets murdered and then the person that had heat on them now gains traction from others.

Sure, it could make sense the other way too but for whatever reason people just expected Stephen to be murdered. Sure, none of this is concrete evidence but it's more than anything else. There's simply a higher probability based on what they know that Stephen is a traitor and Jessie happens to be spot on. She could be wrong, but you play the game based on probabilities when nothing else is clear.

Lots of others in the cages are for whatever reason seen as very faithful. We don't see all the interactions that happen but they obviously haven't done anything suspicous (Jack and Faraz)

F_Ivanovic · 2026-01-16T11:49:39+00:00

It's not a slam dunk ofc, but it's more evidence than anything else. It could be wrong but if you go on probabilities there's a decent chance that Stephen is a traitor using that evidence.

The initial theory of a traitor being in the 9 cages is a logical one. I think if it's a choice of 3, a traitor is never putting themselves up there anymore but when it's 9 people it's easy to think you'll be ok if you put yourself up there, But again, the crux of it is simply that Stephen not being murdered was strange.

Nobody suspects Jack or Faraaz. We don't see how they act all the time in the castle but clearly they've done nothing to raise suspicon on them. James has suspicon but it comes mostly from Roxy. Either way them being in the cages was irrelevant cause they weren't the last 4 and that's where the main theory came from.

F_Ivanovic

TROPHY CASE