Take a breather with me Valley just for a couple of days, we deserve it We can rip into the woeful Fernandez, Fer; scored two and gave two back, Tinkerbob panicking, unlucky Cork, plastic fans leaving early and missing all the fun (**** them) next week. I thought Taylor had his best game for us yesterday. Defence would improve if Tinkerbob picked VDH ahead of the hapless Fernandez. Oh no, gone too soon....................
Enjoy it while we can lads. Not that I want to be a Debbie Downer or anything but we won't play another team that is as bad as Palace at defending again this season. Bob did all he can to lose us that game the guy is completely clueless with team selection and tactics and I can't see how that will change. Sorry for being so negative but it just goes to show how poor we are that after scoring 5 goals and winning I still feel depressed at how low we have sunk in quality of our play
I think most of us agreed with that in reading other peoples posts. As I said earlier, that win has papered of some very large cracks and that is it.
My season ticket is alongside the away fans and, let me tell you, with the lead changing hands as often as it did, by the end we were all just looking at each other not having a clue whether to laugh or cry. The banter-filled chants were replaced by confused looks. When Palace scored 3-2, most of their fans didn't even react. At 4-3 they were giving us some banter but some of their fans were telling us that we didn't deserve to be losing, but then we scored to go 4-4 and many of our fans didn't react. When we scored to go 5-4, most of their fans were applauding us. We spent a minute at the end shaking hands with a couple of their fans and wishing them a safe journey home, which is stark contrast to when we went 3-1 up when a Palace fan, clearly very unhappy with our banter, was seen punching the back wall numerous times. I've never seen or experienced that many emotions at football before! Those looking for the negatives...don't look too hard. This was a freak game - one that you can't legislate for in football. Swansea conceded just one late goal away to Everton last week having faced masses of corners and balls into the box and recently kept a clean sheet against Watford. Likewise, Palace only conceded two to City. You get freak games in football - games where game plans get thrown out the window and players' heads and knees go like jelly. This was one of them. You can't look at today and think that it will be this way every week. We won the game. We have Spurs away next week and then, at last, we have a clear run of 6 (SIX) winnable fixtures. It's not time to get on the boys' backs for a game where, ultimately, we won the 3 points. Sidenote: The manager? He did fine. It seems like he's got too many people speaking in his ear to me - Rangel's sub and the failure to use Montero reeked of Curtis' presence. He trusted the team that almost won at Goodison which was a good move in my book. We were the better team first half and had we seen the game out and won 3-1, that would have been a great win. I called for it at 3-1 for Montero to come on - we needed to keep their defence honest and putting on an attacker would have bought us some time before the inevitable late onslaught. I've seen some on here slating Routledge, but his long diagonal runs and some nifty play in the final third was super important to our all round play - was he as influential as Barrow? No, but he played his part well. Personally, I'd have taken off Cork for Llorente and dropped Siggy in behind. We got two quick goals when Llorente came on, yes, but when the dust settled, we missed Routledge's width. So a missed opportunity on the first sub, but when it went 3-2, I couldn't believe that we put on Rangel for our other winger. It had to be a straight swap of Barrow for Monty. Our wingers were the reason we were winning with their width and trickery pinning Palace back, as soon as we took them both off and put on a defender, we took the shackles off Palace and effectively told them to come and attack us. We've got to stop doing this to ourselves. Our team is so so nervous and fragile at the moment - they were going for their first home win of the season - the last thing we needed was to be defending. When you're nervous and going through the sort of run that we were going through, the last thing you want to do is defend for 20-30 mins to see a game out - it's nerve-wracking and you will make mistakes. We needed to do what comes most naturally to us, attack the wings and keep Palace pushed back. All said and done, Bradley did eventually make the right call and put Montero on (albeit too late for most games) and we won, so he must, must, must learn from this error in judgement and make positive substitutions to help his players out. We aren't a team able to sit on and defend leads even when we're confident, so when we're low on confidence we're always going to be even worse!
Extra note: I wore my Swansea City Lucky Match-Day Socks yesterday for the first time this season and we won. Will be getting them washed and ready for next week!
I actually thought bringing Angel on for Barrow was the right move at the time as an extra defender may have meant we held out and Naughton has the crossing ability to help the attack when we moved forward. If it hadn't been for the fluke own goal and awful defending AGAIN at a corner it would have been OK.. At least Bradley then had the tactical sense to make another change and bring Montero on. Note the first goal was another Fernandez/Taylor, as at Everton, cockup.
We were well on top and couldnt really argue with the Rangel sub. It went totally wrong when Fer played a 30 yard ball back to I think Benteke and despite good defending from Amat he gave a corner away and they scored their second, I know it sounds stupid but with out that poor pass that game would have ended with us winning 3 or more-1 but as soon as they got their second, we were in trouble and could see the players panicking.
"It seems like he's got too many people speaking in his ear to me - Rangel's sub and the failure to use Montero reeked of Curtis' presence." I tend to agree. Curtis has his favourites.
I agree with the point about Fer's back pass which spoilt for him what was a pretty good performance. We have got to be better defensively against Spurs and would hope that the concentration in training this week is defending as a unit and as individuals.
Great game in the end, but I still think we have a massive mountain to climb, we will have to do some serious building on this if we are to beat the drop, I still see us in the championship next season. We are not improving and our defence is crap, and we continue to play the hapless couple of Fernandez & Taylor, who both are no longer good enough at this level. Bob is way out of his depth, and is not learning fast enough, very worrying times on and off the pitch.
Phil. I actually thought Taylor had his best game for us in a long time yesterday and as always gave everything, he still however defends to far off his winger and more often than not fails to stop the cross and I am always scared he will give away a silly penalty or free kick.
Caused the first goal and was inept throughout apart from a couple of decent crosses up the other end. Just my opinion. Neither him nor Fernandez should be near this team.
I don't think he is good enough and would much rather Kingsley, but he put a shift in yesterday. My back 4 would be Naughton, Amat, VDH, Kingsley, and I would stick with it for 3 or 4 games barring injuries, suspensions and see if they can build a unit.
