If there was a league for playing slow side to side and backwards football we would be the European champions.
Against Fulham we finished the final quarter of the game well. Today JFH decides to drop our player of the month and our two goalscorers from the Fulham game as well as our motm Washington. If you keep chopping and changing the side it prohibits continuity and establishing your best Xl. He split up our midfield and our centre back pairings when he should be trying to fashion the spine and core of the team which we don't have.
I really don't get the resting of Luongo after being on International duty, it's not as if he's travelling cattle class. Tennis players travel the globe all year and compete in intense matches in arduous conditions every two days or so. I'm beginning to wonder if it's the club doctor and medical team picking the side such is the supposed advancement in sports science.
As for the game, we started slowly and finished slowly. You could swap slowly for negatively in that last sentence, the players didn't appear to have the correct mindset to compete in a professional football match. We hardly strung three passes together in the first half as ball retention was forsaken for the tactic of pump it up to Polter and the ball spent 50% of the first half in the air. Some positive points were Shodipo's pass to Wszolek which was sublime as was the finish. Smithies had a good game and did a good impression of Manuel Neuer as he played sweeper for most of it. And that's it! The rest of the game and its points have been well documented above so it's pointless me reiterating.
The only other thing I'd like to mention is the substitutions. The Caulker for Hall was enforced due to injury so fair enough, as was bringing on Sylla and Washington. But he replaced them at the expense of our width, and as our full backs can't get forward because they're not full backs so we had zero width, but we had two holding midfielders on the pitch. So with three forwards on we had to resort to medieval football. Bang it forward and hope Sylla or Polter can knock it down for each other or for Washington or Chery. The problem with that was we were sat so deep we couldn't get any possession to try and create anything half decent. In fact we were worse after the subs and there was only one team who looked like they were going to win all three points and it wasn't us. Henry who had a poor game should've made way as should've Perch who didn't do one single thing right all game.
We can't be as poor as this on Tuesday night surely? I've yet to see us win at home this season.
Against Fulham we finished the final quarter of the game well. Today JFH decides to drop our player of the month and our two goalscorers from the Fulham game as well as our motm Washington. If you keep chopping and changing the side it prohibits continuity and establishing your best Xl. He split up our midfield and our centre back pairings when he should be trying to fashion the spine and core of the team which we don't have.
I really don't get the resting of Luongo after being on International duty, it's not as if he's travelling cattle class. Tennis players travel the globe all year and compete in intense matches in arduous conditions every two days or so. I'm beginning to wonder if it's the club doctor and medical team picking the side such is the supposed advancement in sports science.
As for the game, we started slowly and finished slowly. You could swap slowly for negatively in that last sentence, the players didn't appear to have the correct mindset to compete in a professional football match. We hardly strung three passes together in the first half as ball retention was forsaken for the tactic of pump it up to Polter and the ball spent 50% of the first half in the air. Some positive points were Shodipo's pass to Wszolek which was sublime as was the finish. Smithies had a good game and did a good impression of Manuel Neuer as he played sweeper for most of it. And that's it! The rest of the game and its points have been well documented above so it's pointless me reiterating.
The only other thing I'd like to mention is the substitutions. The Caulker for Hall was enforced due to injury so fair enough, as was bringing on Sylla and Washington. But he replaced them at the expense of our width, and as our full backs can't get forward because they're not full backs so we had zero width, but we had two holding midfielders on the pitch. So with three forwards on we had to resort to medieval football. Bang it forward and hope Sylla or Polter can knock it down for each other or for Washington or Chery. The problem with that was we were sat so deep we couldn't get any possession to try and create anything half decent. In fact we were worse after the subs and there was only one team who looked like they were going to win all three points and it wasn't us. Henry who had a poor game should've made way as should've Perch who didn't do one single thing right all game.
We can't be as poor as this on Tuesday night surely? I've yet to see us win at home this season.
...
I think most have worked it out by now.