There was a lot for him to take in yesterday. He is sensibly being very diplomatic in what he said? However I believe (well at least I hope) that he will have seen the following: 1 There is no place in our team for One-size. I have never seen a player as big as that with as little heart for the fight. The yak may weigh as much as him but he is a good deal shorter and should not be causing Hall so much bother in the air. I agree with superdoopahoopsa that the better option would have been to paly Onuoha in the CB position with Hill and Taiwo as wing backs. 2 Our attacking play was too laboured and obvious yesterday. The time it took Blackburn to get from one penalty are to the next was less than half the time it took us in the first half The idea of playing possession football is to create a gap eventually because our forwards move around and create the gaps. Adel did so every so often but this is the Premier league. We cannot rely on him to create all our chances. 3 In the first half, nobody seemed to want to take a shot. I believe that Adel did not because it has been drummed into him that he has to be a team player and pass instead of shoot. For God's sake Sparky, unshackle him. He's got his mojo back. Buz, who had a nightmare yeserday, did not either and we know that on his day, he has a wicked shot. Why? Once again, SWP was the most prominent failure in this regard. The lack of self-belief is remarkable. 4 If you are going to play with a target man, you are going to have to: i) Give him the ball ii) Have players around him he can flick or nod the ball on to. 4-4-1-1 does not work. 4-4-2 might well have done. Failing that, why were our players failing to get up to support Zamora? 5 In the second half, the most noticeable difference was the way we fought and chased for the ball and, having got there, the crispness and speed of our attacks. 6 The wing play from both wing backs stretched the Blackburn defence? Why did we not do that from the start or even when we were 2-0 down? 7 Once again the most disappointing aspect of our team play was the performance of SWP. I have excused him all season because he plays like a man who has lost his confidence. "All he needs is a goal." However on yeserday's showing he simply does not have adequate ball control to play in the PL. He cannot pass instantly. Either because he does not have an awareness of where is tem mates are or because his first tough is always too heavy. Many of our attacks in the second half broke down and gave Blackburn a chance to regroup while he ran round in circles trying to control the ball before passing it sideways. His best position is on the wing. That means taking players on and putting in decent crosses. Eventually, he started to take defenders on and get past them. That must be the first time this season he has even tried to do. Good. About bloody time. The crossing needs to be better though. 8 We still need someone to fill the gap left by Ali Faurlin's injury. I hope that Diakite is the man because Joey Barton is not. JB played better yesterday than I have seen him play for some time but he does not have that creative spark.
I saw striking similarities with Wolves today and in the first half against us last week. Today Wolves were static in possession meaning they were often stuck for a pass and easily lost possession. Albion were much more mobile off the ball always moving and creating space to move the ball into. We were similar in possession to Wolves and the result is with a lack of movement the opposition easily close down forcing hurried passes to players who under pressure lose the ball. I don't know what has gone wrong since the Newcastle and Wolves games earlier this season when our passing and movement were slick and we were totally outplaying the opposition...
I should have added that he needs to watch his back. Tony Fernandes is already wavering in his support judging by his latest tweet. Back off you fool. You brought him in. Now give the guy a chance. No I did not mean one month. Have we now replaced the 4 year plan with the 4 week plan?
SWP has been hugely disappointing. Known as a flying winger, who took people on; where has all that gone??? Through two weeks of total despair, I think we will have a great pairing in Adel and Cisse; so whilst I know that we will need to get the next two games sorted, having Cisse back is going to be a huge lift for the team and Adel. Therein lays the 'spark' for a possible survival!
Sometimes i wonder if I see different games than some! Hall won some great tackles both in the air and on the ground, and looked far our best defender for me yesterday. We especially from Traore, sent in good crosses from the start yesterday, the commentator was saying that with Cisse on the park we would probably have been a goal up in the first 10 minutes! Problem was there was little or noone in the box to do anthing with the crosses. Both Zamora and Adel played like it was a no go area first half! It ddn't improve a lot until Mackie came on.
Why not? There is a reason why MH's nickname is Sparky. Conceivably, if we lose the next 2 matches, MH could be gone, if we had real bosses with ballz. And then it wouldn't be anybody's fault but TF's. So he wouldn't sack him until the end. So we have to wait and see what happens at the end. So we're stuck with what we have, so lets hope we win a couple and stay up.
