Yes I can just imagine Phelan now. "Hmm, Clucas is on a yellow already and is getting torn a new one at will. They keep getting into incredibly dangerous positions down his side. Ha ha, my god the lad really is struggling isn't he. Meh, **** it, they haven't scored yet"
Because if Hernandez had finished it we'd probably have won the game and we'd be talking about how wonderful Phelan is and how he'd got it spot on going to 3-5-2 and putting Hernandez back in the team. If it was easy as "He's a threat, let's just stop him" then football wouldn't be a very interesting game. Sometimes it's hard to stop the obvious threats. Is it really any surprise that with no left backs available, the stand-in on that side gets beaten often? The likelihood is that if he'd brought Tymon on he'd have had the exact same problem Clucas had. Surely you can see that when we're talking about throwing on a 17-year old with 0 league appearances to solve all of our problems, the manager clearly doesn't have a very easy job? Last week it was Hernandez. Apparently it was the most scandalous decision ever heard of to leave him on the bench and that's why we lost. This week he did what everyone wanted and it still didn't work. But somehow that's still Phelan's fault for missing the totally obvious best option of playing Tymon. Oh and obviously Jak would have saved it too.
I don't think they were incredibly dangerous positions. He regularly beat Clucas and did sweet fa with the ball when he got there. The header and the shot that hit the post came from the same corner. Why would you waste another man doubling up on Amrabat?
Maybe we should have changed system, maybe we should have moved personel about, maybe doubling up on their danger man, whatever. I don't think doing nothing was the only option. 'Yeah but they didn't get any on target' doesnt wash. Just because they were **** at shooting doesn't mean everything was rosy.
Given his total domination all game he got in one decent cross which Deeney missed. I'd say that wasn't a very good return seeing he had Clucas in his pocket.
Everything isn't rosy. We have a weak squad and injuries to our two recognised full backs. He wasn't a very good danger man if he only produced one cross of any quality.
But the THREAT was there and pretty much only there. Why not try and counter what appeared to be their best (and was) main chance of scoring? I don't get your reasoning at all.
Interesting how people are saying we limited them to no shots on target, but how many shots off target did we let them have? What's the margin in football that an off target shot becomes an on target one?
Aye strange we were so good against Burnley and hit the bar and post, showing our superiority. But now these are not on target...
I know you don't get it. Unless we had a player doing nothing, doubling up on Amrabat would have weakened us in another area of the pitch and allowed them to fill the gap.
Wing backs getting exposed by opposition wide players is an inevitable consequence of 352. We did the same to Watford at times.
Is it? If you hit the post it's not on target is it? The ball has to have been going in and saved for it to be on target doesn't it?
Whether a shot is on target or not, in terms of statistics, is irrelevant. It's the quality of the chance that you should think about.
