Top goalscorers: Archer - 4 Harwood-Bellis - 3 Bree - 2 I love Bree, by the way. Proper good lad init.
Just back from the game. **** me that was quite comfortably the worst 3-2 win I’ve ever seen. Pathetic to concede 2 goals and very nearly a 3rd in the manner we did and about the only 3 times they attacked. Pathetic aimless boring football from us. Utterly clueless, ridiculous management to be playing the last 15mins? with a back 4 of Sugawara, THB, Ugochukwu and Bree and a midfield of…just Aribo. And then just **** loads of attackers. Who lets face it, did very little attacking because all we ever do is stop, pass the ball across the pitch in as many slow passes as possible on repeat. Really was a dreadful night. Can’t wait to be back again on Saturday.
Oh come on. Who wants to support a team that wins easily and are bang on odds that they will win week on week? How tediously boring would that be?
I was looking at everyone else around you here we're through just move on lol. Cup games are the worst until it gets to the semi's onwards.
I think we try to pass tirelessly around the enemies box until the opponents fall into bored stupor. Then we pounce eventually
I am not sure what is more boring, our tippy tappy to nowhere or the continuous moaning, droning on this site.
I read somewhere that in the 67 minutes or whatever that he was on the pitch, despite our dominance on the ball with 80% possession, Archer had 6 touches... and I wouldn't put an ounce of blame on Archer for that. He was looking for space, and making runs...but that would involve the player on the ball taking a risk in the attacking third. We only take risks in possession at the back. Pep must really be learning a lot from us...like don't play football like that. I very much felt sorry for SAA when he came on because he had no idea where he was supposed to be playing or what his role was supposed to be amongst the team of no midfield, a makeshift back 4 and 16 attackers. In an attempt to not only moan because I gather that's not popular even if what we see from the players and manager justifies it. I thought Ugochukwu showed a lot of good things last night, and quite a few very good things. He's strong and a presence in there, and generally did a good job of mopping up. He also carried the ball forward very nicely in the first half with excellent close control. That said, a few times he was a bit slow, unaware of what was around him and got caught on the ball. Aribo was very good in spells. The CBs were largely very controlled and confident. Fernandes stood out as usual, very evident that he wanted to play the game at a faster pace than the rest of the team. He would break forward with the ball at pace, create a bit of space, play a ball at pace into feet, and then the receiving player would slow down the play again and pass it back inside and waste anything good that Fernandes had done. For large parts of that game it was incredibly comfortable, particularly in the first half. Problem is we did **** all with the ball for all our possession. Stoke clearly grew in confidence when they realised that despite having all of the ball, we posed zero threat. And then letting them back in with the few moments they had with shambolic defending was really, really discouraging. I think we played the 'strong' back 5 (- a RB at LB) because it was our best opportunity to get a clean sheet...I genuinely think a decent side would have won that game 4/5-0. I'll try and not moan anymore now (until Saturday).
Try and get the Everton fred up later today. Might be a struggle though as I'm so tired from all the fun we had last night.
Describes last night perfectly... It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere... Edit: Although it wasn't that cold. Quite a lovely temperature for late October in fact.
