We missed Barton when he went off, but I thought Fer stepped up in the second half. Henry is a good honest pro and has never let us down, but I think his abilities are somewhat exaggerated in some quarters. Krancjar was superb imo.
Ask Stan about Forest away. He was there and Henry was dreadful. Still, he'll do a job for us now and then this season
We were very narrow until Barton went off, and I'm afraid I didn't see him contributing much, especially in comparison to his excellent game against Sunderland. There was one hysterical moment on the wing when he received the ball on his left foot and in order to move it on to his right so he could cross it he had to try to actually beat a player on the ground. Lost it instantly. Once he had gone Niko had more space and began to shine. Philips gave us more width and actually got a couple of decent crosses in for a change. Fer got better as the game went on. But actually don't want to be too critical as Stoke were very good, lightning fast on the break. Austin was taught a lesson by their CBs, I worry for him, actually hope he he is carrying an injury because he was very easily managed yesterday. As Beth said at the game, Stoke didn't deserve to win because of the fouling and time wasting. But they were set up very well to play away from home, will cause a lot of teams problems. I was trying to forget that. To be fair, they all had dreadful games that day, not just Henry (actually I have to take your word for it he was playing, my mind is a blank)
Fer improved after Henry came on because that allowed fer to play further forward whilst Henry sat in front of the back four.
What I meant was it seemed to me he played as a regular CM rather than the 'sitting' role that you describe.
absolutely. we looked much better when he came on. he had energy and purpose i thought at a time in the game when we were doing absolutely nothing.
I agree about the lack of width before Phillips came on, but Barton's tackling and commitment is something that is important to the side imo.
Don't people find that when we have a bad performance we look for a chink of light with a player that maybe hastnt performed that we'll in the past then all of a sudden we've found a new hero for a week until the next game then we're slating them again!
We are all human you know..... About the only position that we have covered is DCM...Henry and Sandro...but we do not seem to use them as such (perhaps when Sandro is fit, we will always have a DCM on the field), we need to as we really need to sure up the defence. For some reason I began to think yesterday, that there were glimmers of light about scoring (perhaps it was the pure elation of seeing us score twice, perhaps I am just deluded) But if we could get some sort of stability at the back...a bit like Burnley have....I do think that we could squeeze a goal out of Krankjar, Fer, Vargas, Isla, Mutch and even Charlie and OBZ. Ok..daft I know
