Ha bloody ha. Roll up roll up...need three points...easy come to Stoke. Once upon a time... Hey ho and people wonder why the ground is quiet!!! Hughes out
A very disappointing result, Nick, and that's Villa, Leicester and Burnley at home and zero points. The defence is conceding too many 'soft' goals and early on in games which makes it tough to turn these games around. Home form has kept us in the prem so far but it certainly seems like the fortress is crumbling. We could yet be involved in a scrap at the bottom this season. I sincerely hope not and Hughes has to sort it out but not scoring enough and defending sloppily is worrying. Everyone thinks we have enough quality in the squad but have we?
Good post PP. Have a dollip of rep Problem is...too many questions and not enough answers. BTW...did Huth start ??
Is it because your midfield does not shield your defence so effectively this year the reason for conceding more goals. I know under Pulis the midfield was set-up more defensively and now that Hughes has been tasked with making the team more open and attacking perhaps you have lost some of your solidity. After all you spent very little money in the summer too.
You may have a point (which is more than we got today). We do seem weaker defensively this season and TP did play 2 lines of 4 with the midfield in front of the back four. Whelan has been missing for the last few games and he shows defensive qualities, and we have been without Huth for almost a year. That said we seem to be creating chances to score, we are just not taking them.
Yup...one of the best CB pairings in the PL and for some reason our esteemed (not by me) leader refuses to play Huth. Shades of QPR when he was there...pretty football no goals and a crap defence. How in earth did we win at City and Spurs ?
Huth is still injured, calf I think. I would say though that even when he comes back, he is likely to need a bit of time to get back up to match speed. Re the atmosphere. I would agree that the crowd is quieter. I think it's because our expectations, as fans, have increased. For the first couple of years we were the plucky under dogs, sticking it to the big teams. We as fans responded to that by roaring them on accordingly. We are not the under dogs any more. We're not just happy being in the prem anymore (as a collective) we want to see great football too. When the team isn't performing, we're pretty quiet. In that way we're similar to other prem teams, aside from the newly promoted teams. I'm not saying that we shouldn't want entertaining football and obviously this is just my opinion. I think this is one of the things that lead to Pulis leaving (a necessary event to move us on) too. Also, I hate that away fans sing Delilah at us at a volume reminiscent of how we used to be. Adds salt to the wound, so to speak.
Huth hasn't been injured for the whole period of his absence though. My point was more aimed at the fact that we had arguably one of the best central defensive partnerships, emphasis on the word - had.
Certainly DID. As I said before, Huth suffered his injury from sitting on the bench for so long...splinters in his bum
I'm concerned as well about the deterioration of the defending. Shawcross looks better on the ball now that he ever has and it's more noticeable this season that we are trying to play out from the back. I've not heard any updates re Huth for a while. So if anyone has, info much appreciated! I've said before too, re the atmosphere, we need more songs. Are different songs sang at away games? The away fans at the Brit seem to sing loads of different songs. Even 'We'll be with you' seems quieter.
