Unforunate to lose in the sense we gave away a sloppy penalty and should have had 2 of our own potentially.. Looks of nice attractive football but...not too many efforts on goal. Forestieri was the best of the attacking players but we seemed to lack pace generally and didn't have a lot of width. Brighton were pretty dangerous on the break and certainly gave our defence problems (apart from Doyley - why was he dropped?)
I think Doyley was dropped because Cassetti is more of a threat from set pieces but also gives us more protection when defending them.
Firstly, in this game of all games Doyley should have played. He knows how dangerous Buckley is on his day, and we all know that ex-Hornets have a habit of performing at the Vic. And dropping someone who's considered a defensive one-trick pony, three days after he scores an absolute peach of a goal? It may or may not have been a fluke that he scored, but if it hadn't gone in Bolton would have been terrified about someone getting on the end of a ball like that. Agree with Hornette about not pretending that we were brilliant and it was all the ref's fault. Even if he gave us two of the penalties and we scored both, the result would have covered over the cracks of a team that still isn't getting a lot on target. Thing is, I would actually be less frustrated if we were looking crap, and there were no signs of things to come. If that were the case, I'd be able to resign myself to a relegation scrap and take anything above the drop zone as a bonus. What's frustrating is that a lot of the players are actually looking really good. Forestieri is a player all right, Almunia has hardly put a foot wrong, Vydra and Pudil have improved the team, Yeates has decided that he wants to try and be a Championship footballer, Hogg and Doyley are as reliable as ever, and deep down we all know that with the right guidance and some intensive English lessons, this squad has a good defensive pairing waiting to be discovered. And what's doubly frustrating is that Iwelumo is more or less undroppable at the moment. Who's going to start ahead of him at this point in time? The Swiss sicknote? A man who went to prison on the first day of pre-season and got released a few days ago? We're kidding ourselves if we think that Garner or Massey would have provided some sort of magic bullet, and beyond them we're pinning our hopes on teenagers or people playing in an unfamiliar position.
