Watch their 3rd goal. Sums it up for me, we have literally no one that would even have tried that last night. If we'd managed to keep the ball in at all it would have gone backwards...just don't have the quality
A bit selective focusing on his tackling, which is plainly not his game. Some other stats from last night, ignored above..... 1 Shots 1 Shots on target 1 Key Passes 49 Touches 40 Passes 85% Passing accuracy He set up Celar for a good chance and nearly scored himself, both good saves by Dieng. He also made some good linking passes. I'm not going to pretend that he shouldn't be doing more, but I do think he gets too much stick.
The problem Strolls is that because we are so light weight in midfield he should be getting hold of the game by the scruff of the neck and dictating play.... he's 6'3" and should have a physical presence.... I'm sure he's a lovely footballer and can play, but at the moment he's just not imposing himself on the game and we need that as we lack physicality in the middle..... We do miss Colback, Varane is improving but still not gamewise for the Championship.....
Main problem last night....Chair. No-one has picked up on his unprofessionalism on carrying on when injured and tapping the ball up the line with his left foot as his right was shot. That started the debacle from which we never recovered. How he stayed on until half time is beyond me, I'm not picking on him, just livid he got away without a mention. Also no-one was warming up ready to replace him. you could argue he was 'heroic' on carrying on, but I'd say unprofessional and sums us up at the moment.
We seem to be conditioned AGAIN to not take a risk. "If a killer pass or run is not on ...don't do it. Take the safe option, don't take a risk". Yes obviously we don't want to be gungho...but we are so "safe"...and you can never be....after 20 or 30 passes...we make a mistake...and bang ...we are 1 down
I was going to say the same Stroller, I thought Madsen did well going forward, had a good shot well saved by Seny and made Celar's big chance also well saved. Plus some great passing. Celar also looks like he's getting there. Varane ok as well. They were 3 positives for me from a bad result. The mistake I thought Marti made was not playing Seito at LB 1st half instead of Santos who clearly struggled played left side, or at least on the left side of midfield where he does so much better than down the right, even at LB. Santos at LB cost us the 2-0 lead they had. I guess Marti played Chair left side thinking he'd give Santos more help, but Doak was too good which he should have known.
Think that might have been that subbing Chair right before HT would have reduced the number of subs we were allowed to make. Not sure of the rules but subbing Ashby with his injury right before HT last game apparently meant we could only make 3 subs that game.
Oh he's definitely the whipping boy. He's just maybe not what we need in this situation, if we were buzzing with confidence and movement he'd been a real asset but when the team are like statues around him it just doesn't work.
Kind of wondering why we released Osman Kakay now, he's cheap, we know he works hard and I've seen nothing to suggest Santos or Ashby are any better than him.
I'm not arguing about your points as it's all just opinions but in my eyes, dieng did what he's paid to do, Celar and Madsen didn't and that's the long and short of it. Celar has some sympathy from me, he has a thankless task, just as Frey does when he starts. There's no team press, or hunting the ball in packs, it's just a lone striker chasing down 3 or 4 defenders. Madsen, doesn't get any sympathy from me apart from the fact it's not his fault that he's been brought in to this level of football. He doesn't influence a game in any way, shape or form, infact, at times it's like playing with 10 men. Someone once classed him as a luxury player, he's anything but, he's a passenger for the majority of the match. Santos is being played out of position and that's his only saving grace as he doesn't look up to this level either. Saito is being played in a position he wasn't brought in to play but is adapting quite well. I believe he's our biggest attacking threat, along with Jimmy Dunne (which sounds silly writing). Dembele started like one hell of a player but got moved from left to centre, to right, to left and back again. Varane is starting to find his feet and looks decent at cleaning up people's mess, still quite unproven though.
The bloke looks like Apollo Creed going in against Ivan Drago every week. Absolute ponce. Celar’s issue is that he’s slow and ****. Madsen along with that is yet to demonstrate he owns a set of bollocks. We did sign a good goalkeeper though thankfully. Imagine Begovic in this team.
More pissed off than obsessed. I don't blame the guy for not being good enough, I blame our recruitment department. Marti said this earlier, “The club has a clear (recruitment) model and then my job is to work with the players that we have,” Cifuentes said. It reads like he has to work with the players that someone else chooses to sign. A recipe for disaster if ever there was one.
