Zzzzzzzzzzz. Two solid defences and a lack of flair. We rarely troubled their goalie. Palace looked more likely to score but a draw was a fair result. We were very slow and ponderous going forward at times. Stewart had a disappointing game again. Koren was fairly anonymous too. Mckenna was great as usual. McLean got stuck in but never looked like scoring. King was ok, and Brady looked good when he came on. I was most impressed with TC - when he came on we looked a lot better, perhaps he is just fresher than the other players? The boys looked tired today. At the beginning of the match there was an eagle perched on one of the crossbars. Two trainers got it to fly from one end of the pitch to the other, which in today's health and safety days was amazing. Quite a spectacle - we should bring a live tiger onto the pitch for our home games.
I think their really small pitch didn't suit us at all, at Cardiff the pitch was pretty big which left plenty of space between their midfield and defence for us to cause trouble in, today as soon as we got on the ball palaces defence and midfield morphed into an 8-0-2 formation with the 8 sitting on the edge of the box which was too difficult for us to break down.
Yeah we didn't use what width there was though. Stewart's positioning was odd, when Rosenior got forward he seemed reluctant to move ahead of him and get behind their defence. The Palace defence was excellent though, Gardener had a solid game. We could have done with them playing McShane I think!
Trust Gardner to have his first ever good game against us. Burnsy said he even won a header at one point. ****er.
I would be very upset if I was a Palace supporter. Right from the start it looked like they had already settled on a draw. Chamging McLean to a wide role in the second half just messed up a reasonable formation. Koren, looked lost. Thankfully Vito was great today. One last point, The support today was ****e. It strikes me that there are too many London based supporters who rather like the idea of supporting Hull, but actually have forgotten that just sitting down with the occasional clap is reserved for the theatre not the football ground.
Echo on the fans thing, 300 of us made more noise in a modern ground at Cardiff than the sheer amount of us today, I was rather let down our fans didn't seem up for it
I've said it before and I'll say it again: we find it way too hard to beat a defensive team. Once teams sit back against us we simply can't score.
I agree. Very quiet today. The fare on the pitch wasn't anything to get excited about but if we had show a bit more maybe it would have cajoled the team into playing with a bit more passion. One chap next to me said it has the air and commitment of a preseason friendly. total contrast to Cardiff. On tuesday we faced a team prepared to attack. Yesterday we had a team that threw 8-9 behind the ball at the first sniff of us threatening and we didn't have the wits or the players to break it down. sometimes you need a sledgehammer to crack the nut.
Yer perhaps it could eat some of the oppostion give us a better chance of getting a goal and as side issue its crap could be used to fertilize the ground improve the playing surface
Palace have only lost 2 games at home all season (I think). 0-0 isn't a bad result. Sets up a very tasty encounter on Tuesday with the Saints.
Despite what I'm about to say about the opposition tactics preventing them getting behind, it's not just Stewart. I've seen Stewart doing it a few times with Dawson, mainly when the opposition have a pacey winger, so I assumed it was specifically to counter the threat of them running at the gap left by Dawson, or Dawson being behind them pulling them back and giving away free kicks. But then against Ipswich Brady was doing it with Rosenior as well. It must be an instruction they've been given, although I don't know why we would do it on both sides of the pitch. The result is fine, especially as if you'd said on Monday we'd get 4 points from the two games we'd all have taken it, and this way round Cardiff are a point worse off than they would have been. I think it's more the predictability of how it would happen that's frustrating. There's no deterrent in our team to stop the opposition sitting back on the edge of their area once we get the ball. If they're playing 442 (for simiplicity) we're easily contained. The big centre back marks Fryatt removing the chances of us winning it in the air (and threatening to score from the header) and the defensive midfielder picks up Koren. That leaves the other centre back free to basically act as a sweeper if one of the other two loses their marker. Their full backs drop level with the centre backs to stop the wingers being able to get behind, whilst leaving the actual defending to the wingers in front of them. Our 4 attacking players are then marked and there's 3 players covering their markers so the chances of a break through are minimal. It's why in these games Rosenior seems to be more involved in the attacking than he does in others (at least from commentary he seemed to be seeing a lot of the ball yesterday, he has in other games where the opposition have sat back against us that I've seen)
