I was on the Morgan's last night albeit with Malibu & Pineapple juice so I've gone with the brandy shandy option. Happy days. We lose again, decent performance. Are the Allams still at the helm? Then the result & performance are irrelevant. Until the go, nothing else matters.
Didn't deserve that. What was Robertson thinking? What was Phelan thinking with his subs (again) killing us again? What are the club thinking with the pre-match build-up? It's so poor. We shouldn't be reading the opposition's team out right before kick off and shouldn't bother welcoming them back out onto the pitch either. Other clubs don't. The build up should be all about us. Lack of music when the players are on the pitch doesn't help either as the whole place feels flat. First twenty minutes of the second half was our best atmosphere all season at home.
The team isn't in free fall. Huddlestone came off when they scored from the penalty. Hopefully he'll be fresh for a bruising battle against Everton on Friday. Livermore came off when they scored their second. Hopefully he'll be fresh for Everton as well. A few individual mistakes cost us at least a point but we were playing one of the best teams in the world. Both players and supporters showed what we are capable of.
We looked ok-ish for 70 min, we held & matched them.... nothing more. Never looked dangerous, never looked like scoring. Decent effort with players that just aren't good enough I'm afraid
I did'nt say the team was in free fall, I said the club was in free fall regarding leadership from the top.
Huddlestone came off BEFORE the penalty. Livermore came off BEFORE the second goal. We started "resting" players for the next game when we were still very much in this one.
Hudds came off in the 64th minute, over 5 minutes before the penalty. We looked very composed until he went off.
Beat me to it. Hudds is in some of his best form for years. Needs to be on the pitch. First sub for me should have been Maloney for snodders. He was all effort, little end product today.
I agree we are not in free fall. The disgraceful substitutions by an incompetent manager have cost us points in each of the past three games. Without them, and bad luck (posts and disgraceful reffing) we could well have had wins against Palace, West Ham, and the Mancs, and been well clear of the relegation zone with 9 more points . Something however needs to be done about Mason. Phelan appears blind to his weakness and we got taken to the cleaners by Levy yet again. The only solution is to leave him on the bench or loan him out as currently he is a massive weak link and must be disruptive to team morale. Clearly none of the others will pass to him and he tackles/marks nobody. I'd be interested to see how many goals we've conceded when he's on the field!!!!
Thought we were really unlucky today, the score line really doesn't reflect how close the game was as a contest. The pivotal point for me was when Phelan decided to take off Huddlestone for Mason, quite why he decided that was a good idea is somewhat confusing. We seemed to lose shape a little after that and our defensive shield was missing. A truly mind boggling management gaffe. If Huddlestone had stayed on the pitch I think we'd have got a point our performance richly deserved. Huddlestone had up until that point been playing really well.
Should have left the midfield alone. I think the game was screaming for Diamonde to replace snodders. They couldn't handle one big striker, two may have undone them.
An individual error cost us today. Once a decade freakish bad luck cost us last week. Maybe time to give Mike Phelan credit for getting this skeleton of a PL squad playing at the top of their game against opposition established in the PL with bigger squads, better players and better owners?
Basically going to be echoing the thoughts of most of you, but yes I was happy with the performance again up until a point. Bad substitutions again, silly tackle for the penalty, couldn't score again, etc. Ah well, maybe our luck will change against Everton and we can pinch something, providing the substitutions aren't total ****.
Or how about acknowledging that the only time Phelans got it right was when we had 11 players and he had zero options? Since he's had options, every single time he's made the wrong decision at the wrong time, before and during the games.
Everything changed when Huddlestone came off, up till then our shape was good, De Bruyne tried all over the place to unsettle us without really succeeding. After that we looked open and didn't surprise me we conceded. Mbokani was my MOTM with Harry and Hudd close behind.
I like Phelan, he's done a half decent job in ****ty circumstances, but there's no doubt that his substitutions today were appalling. I keep wanting Mason to come good, but sadly, we seem to have paid £13m for a player who's not much better than me and I'm ****ing terrible.
