Dani gone and Gallagher on compassionate leave = no spare striker. I presume that Mauricio was happy with what he was watching and/or he didn't want to upset the apple cart and lose. Our best team was out there (apart from Dejan and Gaston)...Gaston would probably have got a run out if fit.
Should always be looking to win home games like that where we have a clear advantage in quality, but realistically Stoke were value for their point and considering we are on a decent unbeaten win a point is always good. Providing we get at least 4 points from Hull and West Ham (and finally doing the job over Sunderland in between) I'll be a happy bunny. I agree that of course we were lacking options, but sometimes you can have all the firepower in the world but if a team is strong and organised and gets men behind the ball you just can't get through them. I mean Chelsea have the kind of squad we could only dream of and dominated their game against West Ham to an incredible degree but couldn't break through. That's just football.
Well, if we get something at Hull on Tuesday and Spurs beat Newcastle on the Wednesday... we go 8th. Positive.
Congratulations to Stoke on a fair point, they defended well and made the job hard for us. We were unimaginative and one-dimensional in attack. In the second half we haven't got a faintest idea how to break them, but we scored two goals prior to that and maybe we should be more annoyed by concieding two goals to a team with such an appaling away record.
Lambert & Jay Rod were poor today. Allowed Shawcross to dominate all challenges in the air and we were never smart enough to put more pressure on the young centre half playing alongside Shawcross. Talking of Shaw-cross.... LUKE SHAW.... GET TO THE BYLINE AND CROSS!!! Only did it once. Today showed what a tiny squad we have. No attacking options on the bench.
I don't think Stoke came out in the second half looking for a draw. They were playing pretty well. So I give Saints some credit for picking up their game in the first part of the second half enough to force Stoke to play for the draw. But then it was just to easy for them to go with Plan B and shut us down. I give them credit for defending well, and for basically dictating how the game was played. But we also didn't play very well. The same two problems have plagued us all season, and did again today. We don't respond well when others press us back, and we don't quite have enough quality in attack to beat a team that parks the bus. It's frustrating, but also that's why we are 9th. We play well enough, but we just lack that bit of cutting edge and/or depth to steal points when teams play well against us.
Ridiculous...we are 9th in supposedly the best league in the world by playing nice football. We also have several players linked with England. We drew at home to Stoke...get over it.
We weren't that great. Stoke did well, fair play to Charlie Adam. Weather was literally ****. We did that thing where we pass it around in front of their flat 9 and never look like scoring, so maybe a bit of a rethink there. Not a lot of options on the bench unfortunately, we'll just have to manage for the rest of the season. I thought we liked Crouch, not sure why all the abuse, maybe I missed the memo. We'll keep learning. Never mind.
Radio Solent is the home for the mentally deranged. Anyone who even listens to it, needs their ****ing head testing.
Interesting that Hull are one place behind us (admittedly by 9 points). Would have expected them to be well adrift of us if we'd considered this fixture a few weeks back.
The guy has now got in touch and said that a friend took his phone and though it'd be funny as they're listening to the radio. Relief.
