Refs never have the balls to second yellow card 'keepers for time wasting. Begovic should be off by now.
Poor game, kind of expected with the number of changes to the team and the lack of match minutes for some that started. Southampton closing in on us now.
At least we didn’t lose, but that performance really highlights the drop off from our regular starting eleven and the rest of the squad players. Southampton closing that gap to second pretty quickly now. Hopefully we can grind out a win away to Stoke, then the players have got a long overdue chance for some rest days.
That shows how much investment is needed, lose 3 or 4 starters and we are in trouble!! Williams not good enough Humphreys not good enough Hutchinson not good enough Ladapo not good enough Jackass not good enough Taylor not good enough Aluko not good enough
Morning, busy day with family yesterday. Was driving back to in laws so listening to game in car.as Nuggets said earlier, it had 0 0 written all over it at half time. It was disappointing, but we are 2nd going into 2024. Hope everyone has a great New Year's Eve, Roll on to Stoke to renew our battle with Mr Schumacher.
KM was really tested and lets hope one or two key players are back. He had no time to prep or plan as many of those changes had to be made very last minute. As others have said, it confirms that several are just not up to the level needed for a bid for promotion. It will be interesting to see his selection fo New Years Day. Then, a decent break thank goodness with new hope and optimism with some much needed new faces.
That was awful, worst performance I've seen in a while but I guess understandable in the circumstances, I was worried when the lineup was announced but I didn't think we'd be as bad as we were. We can say we don't have good enough strength in depth but I can't think of any team who wouldn't have struggled losing 6 first team players. Apart from Williams and maybe Ladapo there weren't really any awful individual performances but as a team collectively we weren't very good and lacked so much. The players who came in obviously weren't as good as the players we lost however we also played them in exactly the same way as those players even though they had a completely different skill set. Collectively we lacked players with the pace and drive to move into the space on the pitch, we lacked pace and lacked players willing to take risks. I don't know what the answer is but perhaps if we're going to have to change that many players we might need to look at changing the system we play to get these best out of those players rather than putting them into a system which suits our first team players. I thought Woolfy was man of the match, his reading of the game was just impeccable, perhaps the competition with Tuanzebe has upped his game because I think the last 2 games he has really upped it. I thought Burgess was pretty solid but on the ball he gave it away alot but this was a symptom of a lack of movement and to be honest desperation to try and make something happen. Vladky had a decent game, did everything asked of him. Williams was awful, and to be honest Clarke wasn't much better, they both give the ball away in dangerous areas and a bit rash and don't offer too much going forwards. I thought Humphreys deserves some praise for how he played as he's not a LB and doesn't possess the same skill set as Davis, he stuck to his role well and didn't really do too much wrong but he didn't have the pace or power of Davis to drive into the space and this contributed to our very blunt attacking performance. Similarly Ball did okay but without the drive of Morsy again it was just keeping the ball neat and tidy, it wasn't until Taylor came on we looked a bit more progressive in midfield and Luongo started to look better. I get the majority of changes to the team were enforced ones but I am surprised Taylor didn't start this one. I thought Chaplin and Harness had mixed games. Some of Chaplins touches and passes were of really high quality but he didn't have as many runners around him, so wasn't as effective as normal. Having Harness and Humpreys down the left meant we lacked any real penetration. I thought our biggest threat was Hutchinson, however he lacked quality with his final pass/cross. Ladapo just isn't the same player as Hirst in this system, and doesn't drive into the space like Hirst, which often means he works in tight spaces and loses the ball. He had 2 good chances that I have to say towards the end of last season he probably would've buried. I thought the young lad Buabo came on and showed some decent movement and some nice touches. It is very concerning we've had an outstanding season so far but that team which played today isn't good enough especially if we want to achieve promotion but the reality is as I said at the start any team would struggle with that many players absent from the team and any team who wins things generally does it with their first choice 11, very rarely does a team acheive things without their best players.
What a great summary itfcptc,totally agree when you rip five of the best players out of a side it's not that surprising that the quality of football takes such a big dip.
