Mason should have been wearing ****ing clown shoes, it wouldn't have mattered if he couldn't keep up with play because of them as the game would have been better if he'd stayed in the stands.
Two up...Tadic should have just shot. If he tried and missed, we'd understand, but no need to faff about. Thought I was off to bed, but Murray's match has just started.
Do have to commend Mane on his temperament. He has had some awful/tough decisions made against him, yet he takes it like a gentleman. Don't gain anything by protests.
If that red card is not overturned I will eat my hat and I've put it away as it's getting warmer so it would be a pain in the arse.
Ron's in-game changes get some stick sometimes but think he deserves credit today. How we set-up to begin with worked pretty well but the one main weakness is not having a true right sided midfielder, as often happens when we play with Long and Pelle up top, we play a kind of hybrid 4-3-3/4-4-2 with Davis doing two different jobs. Works alright going forwards but always offers the weakness of not having one player responsible for consistently tracking their left back. Stoke clearly tried to exploit this second half with the space being increased even more by Martina playing very narrow (Though to be fair he did have some reason a lot of the time, Arnautovic was quite deliberately playing off his inside shoulder and dragging him inside - also exacerbated by Van Dijk having to play a little further over when the ball was on the other side so he didn't let Diouf isolate Bertrand) and it gave them their goal and most of their threatening moments. Ron quickly switched Dusan over to the right and had Long play on the left and both outright man marked their fullbacks, then brought on the fresher Mane to do the same job. From that point on all the balls into the box came from the middle of the pitch, largely Imbula, and were simple straight lofted balls that Van Dijk ate for breakfast. Stoke were definitely giving us real trouble early in the first half but thought Ron did very well to neutralise it and really for the last 25 minutes we shut them out.
So sorry, Beefy. Small comfort at the moment but at least you know that he's at peace and no longer in any pain. RIP
