Does he have blistering pace? You hardly ever see him get up a head of steam so it's hard to say. I don't see him as an explosive winger though, for me his big strength is his crossing.
As Marie (get your gun) Antoinette once postulated... " You can't have your coke and eat it". Is old king Coyle burning the cakes again ? It can't be king Alfie !
Are you genuinely grumbling about there being two phrases to describe the same thing? The English language must wind you up on an hourly basis if so.
Overall, I thought first half we did okay, but 2nd half PNE upped the tempo and to a large degree we didn't match it. I can certainly see a better structure to our play, but as Ruben said in his presser, when chances appear, our opponents more often or not take their chance whereas we don't. That really is the difference, we are not being blown away by most sides, we just fail to take our chances and give away a sloppy goal. Clearly, Regan is lacking confidence, in fairness he gets into some great positions in the box, but just panics. On the plus side, Alzate is starting to play like the player we expected, Burstow was a plus in the game and Puerta had an okay games. Coyle looks as if he needs a rest, I would bring Drameh in for Blackburn. We really need to try and get something from this next game, or things will start to get a bit desperate. I still feel there are 3 teams worse than us, but nevertheless, we need to start picking up points.
Despite the supposed reports from Portsmouth, to the contrary, I actually think he looked better for us on the right and put some very decent crosses in. Since he’s been moved to the left wing, it’s obvious that he’s no confidence in his ability to put a ball in with his right foot, so has to come back every time and then runs into traffic, where he has to pass it back to Coyle. Having said all of that, I still think he’s just very low on confidence at the moment, as with a few others. The injuries to some of our better players and the additional loss of Zambrano have severely damaged our chances of getting out of this hole but I’m hopeful that Sellés, along with a few solid additions, will give us enough to survive.
I didn’t see the majority of the first half because we were late leaving my sister’s and then the fog on the M62 slowed everything down significantly. I’d already swapped seats with the wife, so I could watch it on my phone while we were travelling but couldn’t get the vpn to work, which has never let me down before. It eventually kicked in about 10 minutes before we got home and I managed to catch the tail end of the first half but sounds like I missed the better part of our performance. What I did see wasn’t great but we certainly were still in it and as in so many games, the opposition just seem to take their chances where our overall lack of confidence seems to severely affect our ability to take ours, even with players like Slater, who’s previously proved to be pretty adept at it. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s going to be a significant improvement whilst we have the current injury situation and before we get some new recruits on the pitch.
Point 1 - Slater is dog ****. Point 2 - coyle is also dog ****. Both league 1 players. The latter is looked at through ber tinted glasses. Was carried last season by better players, but now shown for the level he is at. Gives everything for the shirt...but costing so many goals.
Slater was quite good other than his shocking miss. His drive and carry with the ball got us moving forward quickly on the counter and his distribution was good.
It's a bit of an emotional rollercoaster supporting City at the moment. After Swansea I was thinking 'Yep, we'll be alright now. Passion was there, effort was there, intelligence was there, good shape, playing as a team, game plan implemented and Ryan Giles is possibly a good player'. Then yesterday: sluggish, timid, thoughtless, no cohesion, players not on the same wavelength and Ryan Giles hooked at halftime. Hughes being injured is a blow but may be managable. Giles and McLoughlin kind of look ok but we probably do need a cover option bringing in. A much bigger worry is still our lack of goals. Missing open goals when you score as few as we do is obviously bound to cost you dearly. What do you say to Slater? He's getting into those great positions where the goal in literally undefended. How does he miss them so badly? Burstow was disappointing yesterday. He wasn't shocking by any means but he does seem to have more impact coming on for the last 30 minutes against a tiring defence. Yesterday bringing Bedia on changed nothing. We desperately need someone to come in upfront who's able to score 10 goals before the end of the season. I'm not going to slate anyone but Coyle needs benching and Drameh starting at right back. Left back? Actually, thinking about it, put Coyle there. He's got to be a better option than Giles or Jacob. Alzate, Puerta and Slater is sort of working but we need a big, ugly, hardman in that midfield to snarl and snipe and spoil. Longman and Kamara should both be on the bench; so I guess a new winger is needed for half a session. A Premier League loan would be good. What's Philogene up to at the moment?
Fair enough but the scariest bit of a rollercoaster is the terrifying steep drop, which puts you into freefall. We're in one of those at the moment and we don't know yet if we've reached the bottom.
It's an interesting one as I think for us, most of the good he's done has been on the left, trying to think of the assists he's got this year and were all of them from the left wing? I can also recall a number of 'nearly' moments where he's put good balls in from the left but someone either spazzed it up or (live vs Norwich) we had one disallowed....
Story of the season. We go a goal down and that's it...GAME OVER....Seems as if are doomed the instant we go behind. Is it a lack of concentration, doggedness, determination, desire?...or simply we're Dogtod...Probably all five. Here is the tale of woe: Played 23 thus far...ie halfway in season. Gone behind in 11 and LOST ..... 47.8% Gone behind in 2 and DRAW Bristol (h) Plymouth (a) .... 8.5% Gone behind in 2 and WON Cardiff (h) Stoke (a).... 8.5% Gone ahead in 4 and DRAW Burnley (h) Derby (a) Ports (h) Watford (h) ...17.3% Gone ahead in 1 and LOST Coventry (a) 4.35% Gone ahead, conceded an eqauliser but WON in 2 QPR (a) Swansea (h) 8.5% 0-0 draw in 1 Millwall (h) 4.35% Lack of bouncebackability is the key reason why we're where we are...In the relegation mere. No great surprise. If truth be told. Plus conceding when ahead. That's 11 points jettisoned.
I think the fundamental problem we have is that we have a serious lack of pace and no one at the moment with the obvious ability to go past a player. Losing Millar and Belloumi has been so so massive, both of them had an ability to go past a player, on the outside or inside, and to create doubt in their full backs' minds, both had a level of pace and dribbling that caused problems that Longman, Kamara and Burstow so far don't obviously have. Where the full backs are concerned, I don't think any of them are 'top 6' full backs, think 3 of them are good enough for a team looking to stay up and putting any 2 of the 3 of them in the side will have as many negatives as positives. I think Coyle needs a break because he's out of form - not that he's a bad player - and Drameh has been patient in waiting for his chance at RB. At LB, sadly Jacob is a couple of leagues out of his depth, it's a sad reality, he's a real trier but it's just not going to happen for him here.
Think it's typical of teams that lack a cutting edge that when they go behind they become easy to play against - we're prime candidates for this lacking pace or dribbling ability across the front 3 or a massive ****er up top, teams can sit back let us pass the ball around without ever hurting them and look to exploit us on the break, when you think back to most of our losses this year - few have been absolute tankings - they've mostly followed this pattern where teams once 1 up are comfortable and don't need to risk going for the kill
Do you need pace to score goals? seen the highlights of yesterdays games and plenty of goals were scored by a player casually making his way to the edge of the penalty area and kicking the ball into the goal.
