I came away from the game today feeling quite up beat considering we'd just lost. There were several positives today, hughton didn't use his negative approach at 1-1 I was pleasantly surprised to see the team bombing forward against a good Chelsea team which had quality all over including the bench. He also managed to spot & sub our weakest player today, snoddy, and Redmonds introduction almost brought instant reward. I can't work out what's up with snoddy at present but IMO he needs to sit a game out just to get his head right. Nice to see Redmond & pilks working on there natural flanks when both on, the wolf worked his socks off again, did the dirty work well I thought. I would love to see wolf & Hoops on together at some point, just not sure how or who would make way? But over all much better, I'm still not converted as most of you all are but today was a step in the right direction.
Hah! Chippy recognising a step in the right direction is -- er, a step in the right direction! You'll be a convert soon Chippy! Re. RvW and Hooper, there are only two ways to do it IMO. One would be to remove one of Tettey, Fer and Howson and go 4:4:1:1 (which Chris Hughton mentioned as a possibility in his interview on Sky. But he also mentioned the downside, which is to leave ourselves light in centre midfield where so many of the opposition are so strong. And since the three of them are just beginning to work well I doubt if anyone would like to see that. The other is to drop one of Pilkington or Snoddy and play 4:3:3. I think that might work (I'd drop Snoddy myself, even though I thought he actually had a much better game today). But for the moment I would expect it to stay RvW or Hooper.
Sorry - superman and everyone, but he had one 'proper' save to make today, which he parried into the path of a Chelsea player. He flapped at two long balls first half - (maybe a cap would have helped,) and let a fairly orthodox drive squirm through him for their second goal. He got two lucky breaks against Stoke last week where he failed to collect the ball cleanly when jumping and fortunately managed to dive on the rebounding ball first. Fortunate to be in the England squad, based on recent performances. Just saying.
I think big mention has to go to the Howson/Fer/Tettey combination. It does seem to be getting the best out of our midfield. Fer and Howson were all over the pitch today and Tettey had a great game until his mis-kick. Snoddy certainly improved on recent performances but still not at his best. Too many deliveries going wayward. Pilkington seems to be getting classier by the game, he loves to go at the defender and usually does pretty well, he and Olsson looked very good on the left. Bassong didn't look 100% but then he was up against Ba and he was knocking everybody about today. RvW worked his socks off and has that nice touch of skill, I actually thought he put in the best cross of the match which got just cleared at the Chelsea near post, and a good assist, for a slight striker he really knows how to head the ball! Chelsea's best player for a lot of the match was the ref, after their bright start it definitely evened out. We were getting into good positions and actually making chances, as were they. Second half was a great performances from us until the Chelsea goals. Ruddy could have done better with Hazard's shot but there was nothing we could do about Willian's goal. Anyone who says that Hughton is negative must have watched a different game, and someone did on canary call. after our goal it levelled out a bit, Chelsea brought on tens of millions of pounds of talent from their bench, but we looked the more likely before they caught us on the break. Overall, good game, unlucky to not get a point, but I got the CPL predictions pretty much spot on so there's my silver lining!
Certainly a lot of positives to take from today, even if the result wasn't one of them! The midfield trio, with the exception of a single mistake, were excellent once again today, really impressed with their contribution. I also felt Pilks and Snoddy had a lot more freedom than usual, they were both popping up on either flank regularly, and making it very hard for Chelsea to pick them up. It's certainly something I'd like to see more of. RvW ran himself into the ground today. I hope it's not just me seeing things, but every game I'm sure he's having a bigger impact, getting involved more and sooner rather than later hopefully that'll turn into goals. I think we're getting more used to where to find him too, early on there was a couple of attempted through balls that would have given him excellent opportunities, but for some excellent defence in cutting them out. We're not going to be playing world-class defenders every week, those balls will start to get through eventually! I actually felt we missed him after he was subbed, Hooper wasn't working half as hard as RvW was up front, and it gave Chelsea far more time to play out from the back. Personally, I felt that was RvW's best game since he's joined. The role Redmond had today was perfect for him, and hopefully (if Snoddy's form improves) it'll be the role he has in plenty more matches this season. Coming on late against tiring defenders really emphasises his key attributes, and in terms of pressure, he's already made a name for himself at Carrow Road, and he'll have to do less to maintain that if he's a regular sub, which should help his confidence.
It's late so I'm not going to go into too much detail but I thought we were fantastic today. Chelsea were definitely the better side in the first half but I thought we completely controlled the second half and the Chelsea fans I was watching the game with (being a Uni student now, I was unable to attend Carrow Road for the first time in years) agreed with me, and said a draw would have been fair. What I will say is we would have got a draw today had, in the 85th minute: A) Pilkington not taken a terrible corner. B) Our midfield not allowed Willian two free headers on the halfway line. C) Tettey (who was excellent) not played Hazard in. I THINK that, had he just left it, the ball would have run out of danger. D) Ruddy made a very simple save. Had any one of those four things happened, we would have drawn or even won the game. We may have lost today, but our progress is obvious to see.
I agree that the performance was better today, we were great in the second half. However, the table doesn't lie and we are where we are which is disappointing, the 2 horrific defensive errors against Villa and Chelsea at home have definitely cost us points which may have seen us in 10th place at the moment, but I bet all teams are saying similar things. As I said the table doesn't lie. We now need the purple patch we had last season to happen after the Arsenal game or things will be looking rather grim for us. I do see signs of improvement though and the side is looking more settled and the performances in midfield and attack are improving, just a shame our defense has gone AWOL at the moment. Fingers crossed we take something from Arsenal although I doubt it, so it's Cardiff at home where we NEED to take points and go for the win it will be no good praising the performance if we lose to Cardiff at home. We need to start putting points up on the board as others around us are. This weekend, results wise was bad for us with Fulham and West Ham picking up good results and I can't see us getting anything at the Emirates whilst: Fulham are playing Palace and Southampton Stoke are playing West Brom and Man Utd Swansea have got home games against Sunderland and West Ham We really need the points against teams like Cardiff at home, if not we are well into the season now and it will be a hard slog with our run in.
kemp, seriously, if there were 7 games of the season remaining then you might have a point, but after 7 games... it's an incredibly compact league at the moment - not seen it like this since the premier league first started. one win and we sit mid table. i find it a bit embarrassing to see people getting worried that we sit in the relegation zone based on alphabetical order! i expected us to have 9 points at this stage - we have 7 - hardly a disaster. even sunderland have plenty of time to get moving and they are already being tipped by some as 'doomed'. it's all a bit ridiculous.
I think the team at times outplayed Chelsea and that's something to be extremely proud of. Personally I would have kept RVW and Snoddy on, we needed Snoddys experience against Chelsea, and RVW had an amazing game. That aside it's really promising considering it's the start of the season, now we have a set up that works we will get better and better.
It was a bit early and it may have come across a bit negative when I was bleary eyed! I am seeing signs that we are improving but I would like to see the good performances translate into getting points. I am not predicting doom but I think we need to start getting it together and there are signs that we are which is great. As or Sunderland, they have the players to get out of dodge all they need is a decent manager to make a real go of it.
Right on the money with that one, the second goal was atrociously sloppy it was a catalogue of mistakes, I don't think it would happened if the players were fresher they'd given it 100% and didn't have anything left in the tank, for an example at one point my Dad was shouting to take Howson off because at one point we thought he picked up a knock, he looked like he was waving over the physio he certainly had cramp but decided to continued on, I know Howson would of disrupted though two free headers Willian had but he looked drained of all energy.
V unlucky, on another day you could have got 3 points. Loads of positives for you boys to take into the next few games.
did we not convert a good performance at stoke into three points? i'm not sure we can expect to take all three points from chelsea although we were pretty close on this occasion. what i'm saying is that teams are still trying to get up to speed and some teams have had harder fixtures than others. even at this early stage we can see that there is little to chose between a dozen or so teams who all keep beating each other - we will probably spend much of the season fairly close, in terms of points, to the drop zone but equally we will probably be close to the top 8 too, much like last season
