But don't hold your breath waiting for a pundit to equate referees turning a blind eye to pretty much everything opposition teams get away with against us with Norbert mentioning the two red cards his blue-eyed boys got against us in the same breath as Diaz's disallowed goal I'd say he was a German Suella Braverman, but apparently they already had one of those ninety years ago
Completely expected result, better team on the day won, should have seen it our for the draw but was not to be.
And Hojbjerg for Maddison. No creativity and it looked like we were settling for the 1-0 until our late subs. Emerson was clearly struggling with the position a bit and had little cover. Our front 3 didn't do enough and the ref was... inconsistent, despite the punditry.
Midfielders all took the day off some reason, Son has had one of his bad days (we all know he has them). Davies and Emerson along with Porro were probably our best performers on the day, but too many were below par and we created very little.
Played with 10 men for 42mins and 9 men for another 39 mins on Monday night and lose another 2 key players to injury before ht and nearly snatch a draw, concede 2 very late goals away to a good wolves side while without 3 first choice defenders and our most creative player just 4 and 1/2 days later ... think you're over reacting tbh.
International break now. Everything calm down for a couple of weeks, come back stronger next time. When the dust settles, the progress we’ve made in 4 or 5 months is pretty remarkable. We were never going to sort out all the issues in one window. The media and pundits have built us up so much just to set the narrative at the time things don’t go so well that we need to see through the bullshit coming our way and see how far we’ve come.
The fourth change to the starting lineup had a lot to do with it Because we didn't have Maddison we didn't have the same momentum when going forward, so in the first half we had plenty of the ball but it wasn't getting to the frontline anything like it should have, and when Wolves were applying pressure we found ourselves lacking somebody who could relieve it The formation tweak probably didn't help in this regard, as instead of Bissouma and Sarr supporting the more advanced Maddison instead we had a more flat trio of Bissouma, Sarr and Hojbjerg meaning that, while the defence still had their usual out ball of Bissouma (or muscle memory for the last three season's out ball Hojbjerg) the midfield didn't have their regular out ball and we started to revert to last season's football of hoping the wide players would do everything Anyway, off to Twitter to see if anyone is suggesting we'd have kept a clean sheet with Phillips starting instead of Dier...
I mean the second goal. It’s like they completely forgot the basics. It was like a car crash I think the subs were poor by the manager and this insistence to keep being so open is naive at a best when you have players with limited quality
Partly that and partly responding to it by recreating last season's midfield, not in personnel but in how we had three players and not one of them was ever likely to send a single through ball to Sonny at any point This isn't a knock on Hojbjerg, just to be clear, as Bissouma was arguably one of our worst players today - mainly spared being considered the absolute worst by Dier sleepwalking for the winner
Scored a good goal then immediately resorted to Conte ball and seemingly were afraid to go and score a second goal, instead aimlessly passing the ball around to try and protect the lead. Perhaps that is no surprise with several of Conte`s players on the pitch and the game management was non existent. Our wafer thin squad was always going to be a problem and the next few weeks will likely be tough.
Balance of the midfield was way off, as hbic says. That was our main issue aside from the defence, which was always going to be a problem.
Saw only tiny bits...but we only had 6 attempts on goal...our worst all season. We build from the back with Porro, Udogie, Vdv and Romero pushing up and Maddison coming back to get the ball...with the last 3 and madderson missing we lost the spine of our team so we created little and conceded 17 attempts. IMHO if we had been offered 26 points from our first 12 matches we'd have been delighted. Today simply proves what we suspected, our squad is too weak to play Ange football style as we don't have like for like replacements. It also shows that our summer transfer business was as good as previous years were bad and that we need to buy in January
It did feel as though our main priority today was to shield the makeshift backline, but we overcompensated in doing so and that's why so much of our play gave us 'Nam flashbacks to last season In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Fulham cup match from August, where again we rejigged our lineup - and again overcompensated as our formation that night was closer to 4411
Better team won and the squad players showed no surprises really. Son was also abysmal, one of those days that we know he has. Felt like for the second game running though Ange’s game management was pretty poor. The whole “it was admirable” to play a high line vs Chelsea with 9 men didn’t sit right with me, it’s a loser’s mindset and we ended up getting gubbed because of it and whilst I love his attacking philosophy you’ve gotta have a plan b or at least some sense to make some different on-field instructions. A number of the team couldn’t play “Ange-ball” today, so we should’ve tried accommodating more to that, we looked a bit lost at times where less technical players weren’t going to be able to play a technical game, it then sort of reverted to the Conte mindset for some and we looked like a side that hasn’t played or trained together.
