Thanks for all the comments. I can rest easy knowing that we lost because the Ref was bad . Onto the next game I thought we played really well.
Don’t get the reaction regarding Pandur. Goal 1 and 3 he couldn’t do anything about. He wasn’t great for the second though, too scared of getting clattered. Thats only 1 mistake though. Bit of an overreaction.
Not many positives to take from this game, it was clear to me that this bug certainly affected some players. If you are 5-10% down on normal performance levels, you are likely to be on the end of defeat, which proved to be the case. Lundstrum had an okay game, Ndala showed flashes of what he is about, and even though McBurnie was pretty well marshalled by McLoughlin, he did at least try to make something happen. As I said above not many positives, Belloumi getting a few minutes and looked lively when he came on and William's getting a cameo were at least a plus. McCarthy has a baptism of fire, struggled in the first half, but did improve in the 2nd.. He looks a talented boy, but needs to physically get stronger in order to start threatening a first team slot. On to Bristol, let hope Hughes is back and Crook's make a quicker recovery than expected.
Couldn’t do anything about the 3rd goal? He flapped at the cross and parried it directly to their player, it was entirely his fault.
While I think he's not yet ready to start at CB, I was very impressed by his attitude and the way he improved second half. He doesn't hide when things aren't going well for him.
While he fkd up with his 'flap' at the ball it shouldn't have even come across, poor challenge by Giles lead to the ball coming in, so don't think we can say it was his fault entirely. Unlike a lot here I'm not writing either Pandur or Giles off though, we have seen Pandur excell all last season, and Giles has shown enough in the first 2 games to suggest he is a better player under Serj.
Macca always did shine in the physical battles, his struggles come against the fast tricky players. Yesterday was made for him up against McBurnie.
He wasn't directly up against either, though and Blackburn's defence as a whole by and large neutralized what little threat we carried yesterday
Us being **** and the ref being **** can both happen at the same time. Didn’t help but we didn’t deserve anything from the game either. If one had gone in for us in the first 20mins it might have been different, but they didn’t and ultimately they were the better team.
I’m giving the team the benefit of the doubt for this game. In all previous games, inc pre season, they haven’t been so off the pace. Looked very much like a team recovering from illness.
Agreed... I'm not one to normally bang on about poor refereeing but he seemed to like the sound of his own whistle,particularly when one of theirs went down? It doesn't excuse our performance in any way,shape or form though.We were out-thought,out-muscled,out-passed and out-classed!! 3 league games in and we've been sussed,they've shown the rest of the League how to nullify us.Their pressing and disruptive breaking up of our play poses serious questions about our true quality,our passing fell to bits under pressure...Hopefully we learn from this game,we need to! On a slightly different subject,I noticed a lot wearing this new away top yesterday,seems popular, but having had the time to have a good look at the quality 'in the flesh'(someone I know had one on),I'm seriously chuffed that I didn't log on to Tiger Leisure and buy one for the lad or grandlad!!! Cheapest bit of high priced tat I've seen in many a year....
Lundstrum played some great passes and is clearly a very good technical player but we seemed to have no cover yesterday and I wasnt totally convinced that he doesnt need someone with legs with him going forward, also after he got booked we seemed to get miles worse. Williams looked much bigger than I imagined and he might be able to cover a few positions at the back. You could clearly see there was something not right about the team as they were very listless even though we did have a few purple patches up front in the first half. Hughes a huge miss like you say.
The virus affecting members of the squad over the last week, alongside Hughes’ absence and young McCarthy having to step in, does seem to provide some explanation for the poor performance yesterday, although they did set up very well to nullify our threat and create plenty of problems for our defence. Hopefully, back to normal next week but I’m not looking forward to my return to work on Tuesday at their Community Trust!
Regarding Mccarthy and the comments Ive seen, the kid was clearly raw and thrown in at the deep end he did as well as you could expect and he actually made a few clever tactical fouls. Hes not Mick Mccarthy just yet. Im not sure how much help he was getting from Egan or Lundstram and i wasnt impressed with Slater waving his arms about and moaning when really he wasnt playing that well, though im not sure he was directing it at Mccarthy, if he did then thats out of order.
