Man, we were lucky. Thank goodness the Ref was blind, and we got our point. Otherwise I don't know what would've happened. Either way....... We came banging out at the beginning, and we scored! That Cissé is magic. I hope he can keep that up. But then we had absolutely no control in the midfield and no idea how to pass to each other in the middle. Overall, Joey made 7 giveaway passes in the match, 5 in the first half that were completely stupid passes right at Villa. 2nd half, the defense actually looked weaker than it had all season. I would never play that Taiwo again. He's absolutely shambolic in defense. In fact, I don't think he's a defender. He needs to be given an attacking role down the left. As simple as that. Yes, they were all handballs, Derry's was the one that should've been given, the others were just marginal as the Ref couldn't see directly. Derry's he stared at but must have been so quick during the play he missed it. But, seeing as we have so many injured, we did OK to get a point, luckily.
This a hardly wumming, we were lucky (but about time something went in our favour), Barton's passing did leave something to be desired and we would all have been screaming for a penalty had Derry's handball been at the other end! I would argue with "they were all handballs", but otherwise a fair, if sensationalistic, assessment.
The Derry - hands up - was a cracking save and def a pen, but it still had to be scored, paddy was sharp last night. As roller says, about time we got a bit of luck. Time will tell with taiwo, we can't judge him on that alone, but maybe you're right. Maybe armand left back and taiwo ahead of him. Maybe they can develop a beautiful understanding. A great point all in all. Roll on Saturday.
christ give taiwo a chance he's had one game & couple of training sessions, got to get to know back four yappy FFS get a life, would have settled for a point before match so happy.
Respecting your posts significantly more than yappys my point is give the guys a chance! We had 3 new players so of course they're not going to gel. 2 of them have only been in the country 5 mins and all are lacking match fitness in a high intensity game. Yes JB made some wayward passes but so did others. He also ran his socks off and if the stats at the end mirrored half time he did more than anyone! As for binning Taiwo after 1 game..... Don't disagree we were lucky with some decisions but look at all the injuries. Give people time let MH establish his first eleven and see how they all fit together before we start slagging them off! Who knows we might see an improvement on Saturday once they've all had a chance to introduce themselves and train together! ;-)
Yeah Yappy, and Cisse only scored one goal, what a waste of money! That idiot Onuoha cleared the ball with his face - clearly not up to it. Taiwo - just because he has played 48 times for his country and for Olympique Marseilles and AC Milan what made Sparky think he was good enough for the R's????? Zamora's name begins with as Z, bound to be rubbish. Why don't you jog on and support Barcelona, you may find they are closer to the standard you seem to expect.
Can't moan about the Newcastle result earlier in the season now. We should have won that one ... and should have lost yesterday. Hardly surprising since the team included three newcomers who won't have trained with the team much - if at all - and two fringe players who haven't played more than a few minutes between them in the last 10 months. (Doesn't help when players give the ball away so often or when every clearance - under pressure or not - ends up on the halfway line with not a QPR player in sight. But that's another story.)
How can you know they were 'all handballs'? Derry's probably was and the Villa players didn't appeal for any others. The fact we got three free-kicks all night against the dirtiest defence in the league suggests the ref was hardly on our side. SWP got scythed down and he just looked at it and ran away.
This is like the good old/bad old days of ABITB who Yappy may very well be in disguise (hello again if that is the case): some reasonable observations couched in totally unreasonable terms. Joey Barton does indeed seem to be less and less effective and given the nature of his core task delivering so many poor passes is unacceptable. Hopefully MH will review once the cavalry arrives. Our defending did indeed look shambolic towards the end and we undoubtedly lucked out to come away with a point. MH will put this down to 'bedding-in' at his peril as there were some serious individual lapses among the poor organization in the 2nd half. Nothing that can't be fixed however IMO.
I thought Onuoha and Anton played better together as the game went on, also Taiwo. The new guys need time to get used to the PlL and their new team mates. I thought the signs were good for the back 4, though I'm not so sure about Young. Perhaps Onuoha to RB and Gabbi in with Anton, maybe better. But it s the ball winning and holding defensive central midfield that worries me - Villa were all over us because we lost the battle there totally after 20/30 minutes. We are putting a lot on Diakite being able to shore us up there, but the PL will be a big new test for him. And he's still in Africa!
Radio 5 live reporter for the match was not impressed with Barton at all, reckoned he should stick to Tweeting and leave the football to the rest of the team. Is his position as captain under threat? If Diakite turns out to be the wonderboy Sparky claims will Barton be sidelined? If so how long do you think a "character" like Barton could stick being left on the bench week in week out?
I have no idea whether you saw the same match or not, but I saw what I saw, so you should respect that instead of immaturely going around calling people WUMs, you're never going to learn anything like that. Watch the match again and you will see. THAT's a left-back? We bought him for THAT? That's all I'm asking. I'm not going to be a child and be completely biased. I'm going to give everything a fair assessment, to be a good sportsman.
That post made no sense, negative sarcasm will get you nowhere, you're only winding yourself up. Cissé was a worthwhile investment, obviously, and he wanted to come back and play in England again. He showed that he is far and above better than rest of the team in pace, creativity, passing and skills. Taiwo, for a player who has played that many times for his country and has that much experience playing in that position played like he no longer wanted to play defender as he made no real tackles in that left-corner, but he certainly did make forays ahead to attack. He definitely did not want to make any tackles on the ground. Who would want a left-back who doesn't want to make tackles? I said, put him in a more attacking position. Just not at left-back.
Because all the replays showed that the ball hit the hand. All of them. The Ref saw none of them, obviously. Who said anything about the Ref being on anybody's side?
We were lucky/dogged/determined etc to draw. I really do hope that signifies a change in 'luck' though I believe people make their own luck a lot of the time. Don't forget we shoud have had two penalities when Villa came to us and we are always banging on about swings and roundabouts and it seems to have equalled out on this (rare) occasion. Let's face it guys, the future is stilll far from certain but with the way we played yesterday ie badly and still got a point, we have a fighting chance, especially if the team matures, integrates and improves.
