A recurring problem we seem to have against 'car park' teams is that we get sucked into playing the game at their pace, i.e. strolling around looking for a through ball worthy of Xavi in his pomp. And it simply doesn't happen. We need to UP the tempo and force them to stray out of position and break out of their current line dance ranks.
Their holding midfielder Wertbloom or whatever his name is - very tidy player. There's a goal on the horizon and it looks like it's going to the home side. Not good enough.
More sloppiness at the back. We're dominating the ball, but not creating anything and it's produced some nerves.
Very poor. Wanyama is no Dier substitute (his ball distribution is terrible) . Eriksen and Lamela are their all too-often inconsistent selves.
0-0 HT. Meh. Loads of possession and territory, but created few chances and looked a bit ragged at the back at times. No width, pissing about around their box too much and Janssen's isolated.
We're playing like ****s. Get Winks on and send Alli forward. Poor Wanyama is a one man midfield with Alli joining the attacking players bombing forward.
Very impressed with this Wernbloom bloke, excellent anticipation and reading of the game. Too many key players off-colour at the moment for us to be doing anything more than passing sideways at walking pace. Perhaps introducing GKN would inject a bit of life into that front 4? And fully in agreement with the numerous posters who had no interest in seeing Alli playing deep. The player himself clearly has no interest either.
I've seen us start games when our arses are on fire. This is not one of them games so far. At times it feels like I'm watching a practice game. Urgency levels are poor. We will get chewed on Sunday if we don't up the tempo.
That's the worrying thing. Lots of huffing and puffing, but the supposed creative elements of Lamela and Eriksen particularly are not delivering. Lots of 'trying to be clever' passes and little substance. Poch needs to fire a few rockets at HT as we could easily let this game slip.
