Positives. Good performance. Good win. Solomon looks like he is a cheat code in the Championship. Ramazani looks neat and tidy without really opening up yet. Tanaka looks good on the ball. Piroe and Joseph both off the mark for the season. Gnonto and Aaronson causing problems behind Joseph. Negatives. Meslier. Defence look nervous when called upon. When we do lose the ball we look horrifically outnumbered at the back. Ref was about as biased towards Hull as I've seen. He gave them every chance in that game.
Decent second half. Two quality finishes. That’s what you get with proper strikers. Like the cut of solomans jib too
Afternoon all, I only got to watch from when the first goal went in. Hull were pressing us intensely but we seemed to deal with it very well. When we pressed them we caused problems. Looked like a very mobile and energetic forward line. There's no way Bamford would have got to that ball Joseph did and great ball from Firpo for the 2nd. Reading the thread I didn't miss much. Was Firpo better in this game? Newbies looked good. MOT
Three points, third consecutive clean sheet, unbeaten, International break so time to work with the new ones, good day
Meslier - 6. Clean sheet. Doesn't seem to want to command his own 6 yard box never-ending the 18 yard box. Defenders look nervous with him behind them. He did come out quickly and tackle well to stop a 1v1 second half. Bogle - 5. Easily 2nd best against Millar. Turned inside out. A bit sloppy going forward too. Tough day at the office but he won't be playing Millar every week. Rodon - 7. Still not the commanding presence of last season but is playing in to form. Some important headers. Struijk - 8. Another good performance by Struijk. His positioning is very good, doesn't go to ground easily and has a knack of blocking crosses and shots. Firpo - 7. Great assist for Piroe late on after covering every blade of grass down his wing all game. He'll always switch off in defence and get caught too far forward. Too many of his crosses hit the first man but the link up with Solomon looked promising. Ampadu - 7. Solid as ever. Always at least a 7 out of 10 and that's how the team builds consistency. Couple of heavy touches but read the game well and snuffed out danger before it developed in to full attacks by Hull. Gruev - 7. Covered alot of ground and pressed really high at times. Kept things nice and tidy and just went about the game quietly keeping the ball ticking over by doing the basics well. Aaronson - 8. His good form continues. Holds the ball up well and kept possession high up the pitch. Great ball to Gnonto 2nd half to put him through but the Italian was offside. Fantastic pressing and energy throughout. Man of the match. Gnonto - 8. Steadily became the dominant influence on the game after a steady start in his new inverted role next to Aaronson. Needs to learn the offside rule. Solomon - 8. Fantastic debut. Was fouled alot without getting the free kick but persevered and has shown that he could easily be our most influential player this season. Great assist for Joseph. Dipped in and out of the game and stopped tracking his man when Meslier saved him. Scarily, he will get better after a run of games. Joseph - 8. Good movement, good strength, stuck at it and got across his man well to open his account for the season. He should kick on from here. Subs. Piroe - 7. Came on at 10 and finished at 9. Linked up well at 10 and a lovely finish as the 9. That's what he does when you give him the right service in front of goal. Ramazani - 7. Lovely cameo. The most impressive thing was his game management. Must have been enticing to come on and try and score but he quietly went about with the pass and move to finish the game. Still showed enough touch, pace and skill to suggest more to come from him. Byram - n/a. On for Bogle who had a knock. Rothwell - n/a. Steady away. It's a credit to him that Gruev wasn't noted by his absence. Tanaka - n/a. Confident, kept the ball, tried to play forward. Nice cameo. Prolly got the best crowd song now too if I heard it correct. Farke - 7. Sometimes a bit light at the back like we were against Pompey. We don't seem to pepper the goal when we are so dominant. Credit for throwing caution to the wind at home but sometimes we are too open to the counter. It wasn't as good as Sheff Wed.
Tactically inept again as Farke leaves no protection at the back and panic sets in. We defend too high and Mes makes my pants turn brown. We can look devastating going forward but when we lose the ball it’s all hands to the pump and it shouldn’t be like that. This team is way too good to look sexy at the back. Yes play these tactics if you are confident of never losing the ball, but Miller gave Bogle nightmares today
Good day all round.....with the toffees coming unstuck big time after being 2-0 up with minutes to go and losing 2-3.... especially nice with 2 ex Leeds on the score sheet ....
I think we just need to be more disciplined at times. If Firpo goes flying forward then Bogle should hang back and vise versa. Too many times they were caught too far forward. Same with Gruev and Ampadu. They both found themselves on the edge of the Hull area a couple of times and we are susceptible to the counter. If one goes, the other stays. As good as Solomon was going forward, he ain't tracking back like a Dan James does. If he goes with Tanaka with Ampadu then the roles are naturally defined. I don't think it's tactically inept. Ultimately we have done pretty well points wise but it will evolve as we play more games. Against Pompey we were hung ho and nearly lost it somehow. Against Boro, we were sat deeper and played more patient and we got stuffed. At West Brom we tightened up and played deep and narrow and got a good point but we offered nothing going forward. I thought we nailed it at Sheff Wed and today we were slightly too much hung ho again. It's a new set of players, it will get sorted.
Hull came for a point, like their last three matches. It was their park the bus and hope to score a breakaway goal that made the game look poor. At least we tried to play football. A very good result in the end. So ****ing cheer up and stop over analysing the game.
****ing hell Bucks. I gave him a 7. That's decent. To break it down further, he would be a solid 8 in attack and an average 6 in defence. Overall is 7. He wasn't poor, he just switched off a couple of times.
I don't think any team tires significantly these days, due to the 5 subs. Teams with little skill & a lot of energy can hold their own these days, just by running about daft. In the past, before the 5 subs, they would have tired & get humped. To me, it's only duff teams that have truly benefitted from the 5 subs rule.
I still think there are games where we can play 3 CBs and have both wing backs flying. Our Achilles heel last season was watching all the hard work in attack be undone by being caught out at the back, Archie and Firpo caught out a lot. We were undone last season by a mixture of players jaded by not using the squad, every poor team team knew how to park the bus and we couldn’t break it down and then got caught by defending too high. Today a big plus for me was a Solomon, Bogle, Firpo were actually crossing the ball for for Joseph and Aaronson was lurking too. Last season we just went sideways and back. Today we also saw a couple of shots from outside the box and Joseph around to feed on scraps. All much more positive than last season and as Solomon hasn't played much I thought he had a good excuse for tiring and not chasing back at the end. He did play 75mins. All positives from me except the open door at the back which is easy to sort
Most teams play one up front. If you play 3 centre backs and push the full backs on then we would have 3 defenders marking 1 man. That leaves us short somewhere else. How would you make it work?
