Great win, much better.. can not fault the efforts tonight.. Benarous my MoM, ODowda also did really well.
A good defensive display 2nd half, not something we have often been able to say this season. A big 3 points, and a clean sheet, hopefully both will inspire confidence going forward!
A fabulous 3 points against the statistics and it was good to hear we put up a brilliant defence for most of the match. It also sounds like some of the players who are regularly criticized stepped up their game tonight so well done everyone and let's move on to the next 3 pointer.
Don’t anybody say that the Players that NP puts out don’t give a damn. Tonight was bodies on the line-commitment-passion-aggression. Fans were fantastic hearing Dolman-South-Lansdown stand singing as one.That was special.Tonight was a great effort as was the Blackburn game. NP finally seeing players playing with commitment-aggression-flair and not giving up. Proud of the players tonight-all we ask off them is give your all win-Lose-Draw.
The players put in a shift tonight, we did ride a few scares and Stoke will be kicking themselves with the chances they had with poor finishing.. I'm not a fan of holding on to a 1-0 lead and feel we could have held on to a bit more possession in that 2nd half.....but 3 points should give the players a bit more confidence back....
So glad I was able to go tonight, so much better than watching from an armchair. Stoke could well have been 2 up in the first 10 minutes but to be there watching our kids along with senior players giving their all made my night. Weimann, you have to be there to see his running which was unbelievable. Martin also deserves a shout as well defending from the front. The kids in midfield marshalled by Williams were brilliant, ok they made mistakes, but gave their absolute all. There's no doubt Stoke are a better team than we are and we'll need 3 good signings in January to survive this season. However along with all fans at AG tonight I came away with a brilliant feeling within for the sheer guts and effort we saw tonight. Bloody well done boys.
Clearly, I'm happy with the win, but to again be 40/60% posession against at home is not good enough. Great we 'held on' for a change, but let's not start kidding ourselves here, the team have no real identity and appear to have plans, other than knock it long. They don't press in groups to make it effective, 1 or 2 press, then if the press gets beaten there's a massive hole in our midfield. I can't see us being top half;f as we just don't create many chances right now. Everyone keeps saying new players, but who would drop out from the starting 1 from the last 2 games? Pre-game, Sky showed our stats, we have one of the worst defensive records in the division, yet most on here think our best players are Kalas, Baker, Atkinson and Bentley.....
observed every 5 mins noted every 15, was 1 period where it went 42 -58 % in period around 23mins, the best for rest of game was last 15 mins when we "peaked" at 37% [ 60mins 75mins 90 mins & +6mins we had 36--35--37--36% second half they went from 5 shots 1 on target 2 corners to 13--4--5 we added 4 shots none on target and 2 corners 8--2--4 BACK TO BAD HABIT???
A cursory look at the next 10 games, after Sheff game, with just 8 points from top 6 puts us in with a chance! 30 points up for grabs and we could get 19 taking us very very close!
An unexpected 3 points perhaps, but I'll take them all day long ! Well done Nige and all the boys !! From the extended highlights on Quest it looked like they had all the skill and most of the possession, but we scored the only goal and that's all that matters. . It was a great one armed save from Bentley too before we scored. As Supcon says, to have such little possession in a home match is still not good enough and against better opposition we'd probably be well beaten. But a win is a win and as long as we get to 50 points and can rebuild during further transfer windows it's good enough for me.
Understand where you are coming from here but if anyone thinks Bentley is part of the problem, you are watching different games than I am!
