My point being that it gave them confidence and grew into the game. There was only one team playing on the park. That was their first attack. Then they missed a hatful.
Basically, we have been passing the ball around keeping possession - 60% in recent games - often aimlessly and sideways and backwards. Our midfield as others have said was ineffective, not surprising with 3 changes. What we lack is the dynamic thrust to goal. Opposition have got it and sit back and swiftly counter attack. And we give so many soft goals. Often because we mess about at the back around the area, and lose concentration. As I have said Wednesday were feeble until that goal. Our pace and too slow build up play offers no threat up front. No real presence in the oppositions box until Norwood came on. And feeble crosses and hopeless corners. How many shots on goal? 2 or 3? Dreadful. IMO Wednesday weren’t actually very good - we gave them those points today. We need KM to change things around, scrape 2 wins next games, and kick on when Morsy & Evans come back. He also knows his weakest areas now, and will get new players in, and keeping building his team.
Not only do we miss Morsey from a defensive perspective but we miss his drives forwards. When fit I'd like to see Evans in the sitting role with Morsey and Fraser playing box to box. Also not sure why we've moved away from playing Norwood and Bonne together .... sounds like they did a job on Burns and lo and behold look at the the number of times we tested the keeper.
Morsy was a huge miss for us. Burns did a job on himself. He wasn’t really marked particularly, had loads of the ball. Won a few corners but for the most part conspired to run into trouble, pass to no-one, even missed the penalty box altogether with a cross. It was a theme of yesterday throughout the side that we kept taking too many touches and making terrible final balls. I think it might be that McKenna is encouraging them to be braver and try hard things rather than keeping it simple to get quick results. There were a lot of difficult cross field passes that I haven’t seen from us for a long time.
The biggest issue in our forward play was the sheer number of times we got caught offside. If we’d have had 10 men and no Bonne we’d have got in more often!
Sheffield had the game plan to stifle us yesterday. Just like Stanley on Tuesday, they sat back a lot knowing that we would have trouble creating anything in a congested final third. We didn't win the Accrington match until they actually came out and attacked us and it was similar on Saturday. We'll need to find a way to score goals from these types of matches if we are to reach the play offs. I feel we actually do better when the other team attacks us and leaves space behind.
Up to a point that’s very true, but there were opportunities to get in behind. We just kept getting caught offside or lacked composure.
Thompson made several good forward runs in the first half but never got the ball sent his way. I think he gave up making those runs after a while.
