I feel gutted,cheated and let-down!!Not by the lads,but by three clowns who wore black kit instead of clown outfits.We were robbed by some awful decisions.That,though,does not answer why we cannot defend corners,throw-ins and free-kicks.We should have been practising them all week.My week-end is in ruins...made even worse when Arsenal can't defend a four goal lead
When the ball is cleared we need to get out of our area quicker, to often some are left in leaving the attackers onside. When we have a corner or free kick we need to work on some subtlety, rather than just lumping it in.
Ditto, CalmC - just about getting over it now. Pulis gets credit for keeping Stoke in the PL. They seem to have the black art of "box work" down to a T. Football it ain't, that's for sure. Our guys, though, could learn a thing or two from those sort of tactics, and Nolan's antics. Although i would prefer that we could progress without adopting them. That kind of stuff will just grow more widespread. It's too easy nowadays to fool the officials. Technology is the only answer if we want to see the PL full of footballing teams rather than the Stokes of this world.
I've accepted the situation. Yes, we were robbed, but to be fair to the stewards the decisions were very difficult, as there were so many bodies in the box. I was disappointed with Flash, he should have learned from the first goal. However, we played well, and Gyan and Sessegnon look a real threat, as well as another from Richardson! Bring on the Spurs!
Dealing with Stoke isn't as simple as a lot of people make out. Stoke will put five or six men in the six yard box for set pieces, which makes movement difficult for the keeper. Then they deliver their set pieces hard and accurately. If it hits anything in that box, there's a good chance it will end up in the net. You can't organize your defence against it because there's no predicting what a ricocheting ball will do. They get a lot of very scrappy goals, but they all count - as they did today. Believe it or not, it works on a principle worked out by Stanley Matthews. Matthews would deliver corners hard, just out of reach of the goalkeeper and at chest height so that defenders had difficulty getting their heads down to it or their feet up to it. And if that ball just happened to hit any incoming attacker, it was in the net. O.k., Stoke City fall a million miles short of Sir Stanley Matthews' class. But they've learned the principle from him, and learned it very well. The only answer to Stoke is not to give them silly free kicks in the first place. Starve them of what they live by, and they can't live with a team as good as Sunderland. Unfortunately, today, we fell right into their trap.
Still feeling gutted......weekend in ruins.....and you can always bank on the craas to rub salt in the wound!
How do I feel tonight ? I answered that on an earlier thread which, unfortunately, was being infested with Mag wums. What I wrote has more its place on this thread perhaps so forgive me if I just copy-paste my remarks. "To come back from 4-0 down, come on, it's a hell of a performance. OK, you can talk about refs bottling it and Arsenal hitting the self-destroy button and all but even so, how many teams do that? No, credit where credit's due. However, which team would you rather be supporting when you look at the long term? There we were, playing the football at Stoke with two excellent new players,(and 5 or 6 injuries) and we get mugged in the last ten minutes, whereas Newcastle lose their talisman player in the transfer window, go down to 4-0 but then profit from an incredibly freakish day of football. If the two teams play the way they did today "under normal circumstances", I know which team's supporters will be wearing the bigger smiles most Monday mornings before the end of the season. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the season, though I do hope Newcastle stay up." "Just to add to the point I was making, who were the teams that got out of jail today? Newcastle and Stoke. Who were the teams that took a stumble? Manchester United, Arsenal and Sunderland. I know which group I would want to belong to. I wouldn't put Wolves today in the "got out of jail" league. I thought they werre terrific for 90 minutes. Loved the full back's reaction to scoring his first goal since playing for Colchester United. Hope they show it all on MOTD. Didn't think that at 3.30 (my time) I would want to watch MOTD tonight but you have to, haven't you? - especially that I've now got a better perspective on things. With my apologies for getting off the theme of this thread, I would like to support what Danny says about technology (and I trust my comments in the earlier thread will save me from any criticisms concerning sour grapes etc.). In my opinion, every referee should have the right to consult his fourth official, who is watching an immediate replay of the action, whenever a goal is scored or disallowed. It takes 10 seconds for an action replay to be shown to the tv audience, sometimes a whole minute for the referee to fight off protests from angry players and get the game underway again. We would be saving time and enforcing justice. I cannot see the argument against it. Goals are so important. Those two today could cost us a European place next year. You might argue that Saha scored an offside goal in midweek and had one wrongly chalked off today and that neither affected the final result. But Arsenal should have won 2-0 in midweek and Everton 6-3 today. It makes no difference for Everton. They finish the week with 3 points and a 6-5goal difference but Arsenal have one goal more against them and Blackpool one less, which might make a difference. But we lost THREE POINTS today! How long will it take for us to make that up with dodgy decisions going our way? Who knows? Maybe we'll react badly to this and go on a bad run whereas if we'd won, we'd be on a high and ready for the hard fixtures coming up. Confidence is everything in sport. No, for me, to be clear and to remove as much of the chanciness of human error from the game, technology must be used. Human error will always be there in the players - thank God - you can't (and don't want to) get rid of it, but when it is possible to reduce the level of chance in order to raise the level of JUSTICE, you have to do it. I feel sure that the referees themselves would be in favour of it as it would take one hell of a burden off their shoulders. To get back to the subject of this thread, I am none the less looking forward to the rest of the season (and especially the next 5 matches) as I think we have a really great team in the making.
I still feel gutted,but,after reading a lot of posts tonight,I have improved.Why?Because I've just looked at the class players that we have to come back from injury.Combine them with our new signings,we are a quality side.We have no need to play route-one football!
Having come to terms with loosing a point at the death i actually am optimistic for the team going forward. I thought we played some lovely stuff today when in possession but defended set pieces poorly, compounded by a very poor performance by the usually very good Gordon. Liked the look of both the new lads.
