I thought McShane was decent until injured and don't disagree with the obvious form of Bruce, but, and I think OLM said it somewhere else, he gets a good tackle in, he gets his head on the ball, but his feet and distribution . . I'll take up some of the comments regarding headers - we have been ****e at them for a long time. I agree that getting power on that ball was difficult, but direction in that and others is always poor. Get it down when there's no power, make it difficult to deal with, make the GK have to decide hands, knees or bumps'a'daisy. We are talking top-flight footballers here and I expect to see better - alot of skills are poor.
For all the criticism of Graham, who has not been contributing much, he was at least working hard and involved in the game yesterday and getting into scoring positions. The same could not be said of Koren who was TOTALLY missing in mid-field in the second half when he replaced Meyler (I assume he was injured), one reason why they started to dominate possession. Koren made no runs, no tackles, no shots on goal, dithered on the ball every time he had it, and his short passes were almost always to players already covered. A SHOCKING performance. Compared to that Graham was not bad.
Yes Meyler was injured and will miss the game against Fulham. Koren was terrible, completely agree. Boyd should have come on for Meyler, and then Fryatt, not Koren. Need to sell him in January while we can get any sort of value for him.
Having to sub McG dictated the available options to Brucie. Koren was, and has been pretty dire and needs to go. Graham wasn't at fault for not scoring from that header imo, he'd need some type of steam powered neck to have scored from there. I like him, and think he just needs another goal and he'll be fine, he runs a lot, and seems a decent passer of the ball and is happy to pass it. He seems to be involved in most of our goals at some point. We scored 2 against Man U, so, all things considered, I think we did ok scoring wise. Obviously apart from them scoring 1 more than us... We're basically missing Aluko of course, and the old version of Brady, who I hope recovers both physically and mentally. The main reason we lost though was that ****e ref, who seems to favour any team playing in white. Rooney shoulda been on a yellow card in the first half which mighta shut him up for the rest of the game, and every single big decision Oliver bottled. How he is allowed to ref these games is beyond me. Man U basically played him like a twat. He has cost us 6 points this season so far.
Koren wasn't even in midfield for most of the time. Even though he was tracking back he was playing off Graham when he came on as Sagbo got moved to play on the left. Can't remember when Boyd came on timewise, but Koren also then spent the last 10 minutes or so playing as the only defender (perched on the half way line to return the ball with the bigger players in their box). Graham was constantly behind the play though. There was even one incident when Elmo picked up the ball in his own half from a misplaced Man U pass, he ran down the right to his usual crossing position, and Graham had ended up 10 or 15 yards behind him on the pitch.
What? Did you watch the game? Koren was pulling the strings for us in the 2nd half. I'd have him in te starting line up tomorrow.
I thought we looked way better after Koren came on. He steps out of everything, which is annoying, but he's very good on the ball.
Just what I said, we looked more balanced when he came on. Though you have to take into account that he was fresh, when other had half a game behind them. Whether starting with him is the right decision is up for debate.
So Koren can pass the ball, when he gets it, but pulls outa tackles, Bruce Jnr can't always pass the ball but puts in some huge tackles, and totally removes players like Suarez from a game. RoKo's time is over.
Good point, actually I have been quite impressed with Elmo's heading, he seem to win more than loses, and his header, I think it was against Newcastle, was a peach.
Er, he's cost us 2 points. We would have drawn with Spurs and United if not for him, which is 2 points, not 6.
I'd argue 4 points. 1 at Spurs, and 3 yesterday. If he'd done his job right they wouldn't have had the freekick for their first goal, or the player who crossed for the third.
You do realise they play in different positions and have different responsibilities, right? By your logic you may as well drop Jimmy Anderson because he can't bat as well as Alastair Cook.
Not really, should both be capable of tackling and I don't think Brucies passing is that bad. I'd drop almost all of the current England cricket team, buncha coonts.
Whilst we can analyse very position, the simple fact (which has been the same for too many years) is that we do not have a goalscorer. If SB can conjure one up in January we will start scoring goals and presumably getting more points..
It's that simple, although some folk would like to make it a deeper problem. A striker who scores goals when he is gifted golden opportunities. If only . . . .
When was the last time he exhibited his skill on the ball? I mean, even with Proschwitz who suffers from the same bravery issue, the technical skill is obvious when he plays but with Koren it seems to be just a memory. I can't remember seeing him do anything particularly skillful in ages. I agree with you about Koren and I'm not a big Bruce-hater, but you can't possibly argue his passing isn't bad. He puts it halfway up the stand more often than not. Against Liverpool he received it direct from the kickoff and under no pressure just planted it into Row M of the East stand. I think it's composure more than passing in fact. He just ****s himself and clears everything. Regarding a 'goalscorer', we've got two strikers who can shoot but neither of them have a striker's instinct to get into the right positions to score. We didn't lose yesterday for any one single reason. Airlie Tiger's early post summed it up well.
We lost because we failed to score enough goals to equal or exceed the number of goals they scored. The officials were ****e, but we made too many daft mistakes and we could not take our chances. There was a bit of bad luck (all teams have it) but we lack that player who just does it in front of goal, as if he were born to it. Confidence and arrogance, we just don't have.
