Forget the Man United game, and this is our third very ordinary performance in a row. Wigan have been pretty good in fairness, but we need to sort this out now. And this idiot ref isn't helping... Hoolahan is fouled but let's play go on. Drury makes a good challenge and Wigan get the free-kick... oh, and he books him. What a clown.
Why in the last few game have we only raised our game against Man Utd? Think the players started to believe we were already safe, and that they had done enough, or has Lambert just got the tactics wrong? We can't always blame the ref. We must be doing something to encourage his decision making.
I'm 99% sure we haven't, but its almost like we concentrated all our efforts on the Man U game and forgot about the other games.
These subs have made a difference - starting to threaten to now. Don't know why some of our idiot fans think that should be red though...
Today's game just seems like if we had put sustained pressure on them, we could of got the three points relatively easily. But as soon as we took our foot off the pedal, Wigan gained the confidence they needed. 442 formation has certainly made us look much more dangerous.
I dont get how since our superb showing away at swansea where we out passed them at there own game, we cant get 2 passes in a row for toffee!
What a shocking performance! Lucky lucky boys to get a draw. Our next home game has to be 100% better than this cos were going to get spanked next week at newcastle and weve got to beat wolves!
But for the end of the match, during which we battered Wigan, we were second best today. I don't think we played terribly, just Wigan were very good today, and a few of our players were average at best. Ruddy - 7 - A few spills, but some decent saves. The Ruddy for England campaign can only gather momentum. Naughton - 7 - A normal game by Kyle's standards. Ward - 6 - Had problems with Rodagella (Or however it is spelt, he should be losing headers to this guy) Very nearly scored. Whitbred - 6 - Ok, nothing else. Drury - 6.5 - Attacked well, defended well enough. Fox - 6.5 - Pretty ordinary. Surman - 5 - Very quiet, quite disappointing. Crofts - 5 - See Surman. Hoolahan - 8 - Amazing first half. Extremely sharp for his goal and what a finish! Really defended well too that half. Second half was a little disappointing. Holt - 5.5 - Not great to be honest, didn't make anything happen. Jackson - 6.5 - Lively, but couldn't match Wigan's threat. Made some good chances, but a little wasteful. Subs: Bennett - 7.5 - Changed the game. Prior to his/Pilkington's introduction, we made very little, but we gave it a proper go when they came on. Pilkington - 7.5 - See Bennett Morrison - 8.0 - Should have started based on what we saw today. Was it not for Al-Habsi, he would have scored. Today was a vintage Morrison performance, poor form, what poor form?
When we went 1-0 up I thought we could of pressured them and really took the game to them and gone on to win by 2 or 3 goals. No idea why we sat back and invited pressure on to us before finally waking up again in the last 10 minutes. Been pretty poor recently and my Mrs is a Newcastle fan...great.
