Not at all, why would he mark a centre half? Pretty sure it was Evan's who should of being picking him up and when Bruce saw him unmarked in the box he should have maybe covered him, i don't think we can blame Hobbs for not picking up someone he can't see and someone who he shouldn't be marking. After checking Darren Pratley scored it who was playing fairly deep and i am certain Bruce would need a CM to pick him up, whether thats Evan's or one of the others, but Evan's did just let him run past him.
Couple of points: 1) Why do always start with an unchanged team when we've won the last game? Surely you pick your best team to win the game regardless of sentiment or rewarding good performances. It just seems stupid to me that so many managers prioritise being polite to players who played in a good performance higher than actually giving themselves the best chance of winning the next game. We played well on Tuesday but we've got one of the division's best players on the bench in Boyd, and when he came on he inevitably looked like our best player by all accounts, so surely by 'politely' not starting him we didn't give our best towards winning the game. That team was obviously going to be knackered fter playing 5 games in 16 days with pretty much the same XI, Bruce identified that after the match so why not ****ing change the team if they're tired?! He hasn't got the excuse Barmby had, we actually have quite a strong bench now so ****ing use it! 2) Stockdale: is he that good? I don't think he's stood out to me at all yet. The only outstanding goalkeeping performance I've seen from us this season was Amos at Leicester. Stockdale generally does well and he makes a good save now and then but I don't think he's as great as people make out, it sounded like he made a bit of an error with one of the goals yesterday. Thinking about it I'm probably being harsh on him but I guess my point is just that he's a good keeper rather than a great one.
100% agree again. I am stunned that anyone could vote Brady. He was given the freedom of the pitch as they seemed to play without a right back yet every time he got the ball he was ****ing woeful. Boyd was our only player who looked like he'd played the game before. Simpson was probably our second best.
I was going to say Brady, but the more I thought about it the more I realised that was just because he had the ball a lot, didn't really do anything with it though. The votes for Quinn are distorting this whole thing IMO, he seems the "go to guy" when people don't really know who the vote for. I'm not going to vote in this one, Boyd and Simpson looked good when they came on, but didn't really play long enough to be considered MOTM contenders. Poor performance all round, we move on.
Precisely. Im actually wondering if it was a deliberate ploy. Did Freedman discover something - let him have the ball as much as you want cos he wont do anything with it? And even if he did have a good game - which he definitely didn't - then THAT freekick was enough to see him lose the MotM vote alone. For those that didn't see it, I don't think Ive got the words but here goes... Picture a scene of hope as a Boyd inspired City finally start to ask questions and pull their defence around a little. A neat bit of play by Gorgeous George sees him bear down on the opposition goal before he is mercilessly hacked down on the very edge of the box. All players crowd in there, just any kind of touch on the right delivery could see a way back into the game and the absolute minimum is to make the keeper work. Thus young Robert strides up confidently to whip a barnstormer into no-mans-land between defence and keeper when BOOM he instead hits the director's box positioned 90 degrees to the goal and 80 foot up into the stand.
I'm glad people are starting to realise that Brady's ****. I'm boycotting this week's vote, no-one played well and I'm including Boyd in that.
How can you say Brady is ****, he is one of the main reasons we are sitting joint second in the table!
I've said numerous times that Brady's crossing isn't brilliant and that he's not as good at going past opponents as some like to think. If I see him try another fancy ****ing trick near our area I'll smack somebody
He's not a **** player, he's a **** LWB. He cannot defend at all, he loses the ball more than any other City player and 80% of the time his shots & crosses are absolutely wild.
Boyd Stockdale was ****e, as was Chester and Bruce, Hobbs was okay but still poor, they just panicked and were all over the place. Elmo was abysmal, as was Meyler and Evans. Quinn and Brady were okay but poor for their standards. Koren **** and Gedo did nowt. Boyd looked decent, Cariney okay and Simpson showed some decent touches but no end product.
Maybe he should try crossing with his "weaker" foot more often, the one he put in for Elmo to score on Tuesday was spot on!
Brady has assisted 5 of our last 6 goals (I'm counting yesterday's as an assist rather than a goal, it sounded like a huge deflection). There's no way we should be singling him out for criticism.
Evans is probably our most inconsistent player. Playing as our holding midfielder, which is such an important position, he can't afford to have an off day once every two games.
1) As I've said elsewhere, I cannot understand signing Boyd, who was his teams MOM by a country mile the last time out, only to start him from the bench.........and if you do decide do that and have a disastrous first 8 minutes then bring him on SHARPISH FFS! 2) Regarding Stockdale, I thought it was just me who thought along those lines. From what I've seen of him up until this point I have to say that I'm far from convinced.
Not hindsight, Ive said it all along on this very board. Im not saying he's terrible and he's an improvement on some we've had but he's plain average and we can certainly get someone better.