At the moment the back up players are obviously to large a step down in quality. I'm talking about full backs, keeper and Jos I guess. Saying this, Chambers looks pretty competent, less worried about him. But until we have 'good enough' cover either through the academy or by a purchase; and the sounds on this coming from MP aren't positive, then we are going to continually stutter when we have injuries aren't we? This is obviously quite frustrating as I feel that our 1st eleven can give anyone a game as we've all seen. Edit: OK, this should be on the should we break the bank thread where these thoughts are already being covered!
We scored two very good goals and created some other good chances. Going forward is not the issue. You can talk at length about Wanyama/Cork or is Morgan fully fit, but it's no more complicated than Boruc in goal or a semi competent keeper and we would have won today.
I spent the whole of the championship season defending fox and last season trying to get people to give him a break. Today I just sat shaking my head. The only slight mitigation he had today was that when he had the ball in the first half, no-one gave an option wide left. That however doesn't explain the inexplicable display of non-defending.
Well, if its not Cork, it has to be Davis and actually I think he's a bit of an unsung hero at the moment, never does anything wrong and very steady.
I think this is probably right apart from the fact that we couldn't keep Adebayor quiet and Soldado could have had a hat trick with better finishing.
I agree, however I think we clearly have missed his dominating presence and that means someone has to go.
Tricky conundrum. We haven't even mentioned Ward-Prowse who's also been consistent. Maybe Lallana pushes forward a bit more and one of Lambert or Rodriguez misses out (and Osvaldo obviously). Glad I'm not a manager!
Nowhere have I said it was Fox's fault and on another thread I said I felt sorry for him as unlike Chambers on the right he had no one ahead of him because Rodriguez was drifting. I felt sorry for Fox as a lot of the players were getting at him when I think he was ok for the most part. He is not the quickest so cannot dash up the wing like a Clyne or Shaw and therefore we needed someone else ahead of him to overlap.
It was very hard to apportion blame directly at one player as there is a knock on effect when players are absent. Would take a Gary Neville with his gizmos to sort it out. Fox has been out for a long time and he wasn't introduced to our normal side but to a severely depleted defence. I will blame Jos for that goal though
I just did a calculation and we are actually scoring at about the same rate as last season 1.3 goals per game so perhaps I was deceived. However, I don't think we create as many chances as we have done in the past and as a result our strikers are not scoring as regularly. Yesterday we did not create that much. It may be partly down to form or partly down to formation.
not easy is it.... you should the scribbles and scrapped balls of paper when I'm picking my under 13s team.
Lambert is bigger and taller EDIT: apparently he isn't but he sure looks it in the team photo from the hull game: please log in to view this image
