The happy clappers can point to 14th place in the league and four points between us and the third relegation place, a clean sheet, and another six-pointer won. All this despite an injury list that must be among the worse in the league. The pant wetters (and I'm firmly in their camp now) can point to what looked like very flaky confidence, the usual lack of movement and fluidity, not many chances created, and scraping a win against a team which is clearly Championship quality. When the bell sounds, which round is it by now?
We won with a depleted team at home and kept a clean sheet, Hooper scored from open play and we have a 4 point cushion on Fulham..... A good day all round in my eyes VC
I don't care how we play as long as we win to be fair. If we play good football then that's all well and good, but winning is vital!
Exactly zog - It´s always been a results-orientated industry, but it is even more so today, with the colossal amounts of money involved, that it matters really not, how you win, just as long as you do win. And the more often you do, the more likely the chances are, that good football will be more and more a part.
A win is a win. Attractive attacking football doesn't guarantee wins. Currently, we've won more than West Bromwich Albion who seem to be getting the plaudits. I'm sick of people saying we were lucky at times but conveniently forget when we don't get the luck.
Nope, we deserved the points on our first half performance. Don't forget that our squad is depleted and we still managed to win. That's a good sign. When the injured players come back into contention we should be able to kick on, hopefully anyway.
You were very quick to come back, just making a general observation that´s all, not particularly pointing the finger at anyone here, although sometimes some comments do make you wonder. Very glad if some of the Hughton Out´ers were also gladdened by the win.
I'm not a happy clapper, but neither am I an 'outer'. City dominated the first half, and had Elmander's shot against the bar been 2 inches lower, it would have been much more comfortable. The new manager bounce was apparent in the second half as Palace played much better without many real chances to score other than the one Olsson deflected up on to the bar and out. I thought it was Hooper's best game to date, with more movement up front and more guile through Wes. Liverpool losing 3-1 to Hull today shows just how difficult these games can be. Good to see Becchio get on, demonstrating that CH isn't one to hold a grudge. Very happy with the 3 points though.
Hooper's was the kind of finish that Celtic fans were used to seeing. If the Villa game had been yesterday, he'd have drawn it for us by converting that Garrido cross.
I thought the first half was brilliant we played some positive stuff, Palace didn't have the quality on the pitch but I thought they were difficult to beat like a typical Pulis team. Second half was a disappointing but a new manager and is always going to get their players to work hard, once again we didn't make the changes quick enough. Was glad Hoolahan played well his become the forgotten man at the club, It'll be good to see how he links with new players once everyone is fit.
People keep saying this sort of thing, but there is an interesting statistic which is relevant. In depth analysis of the timing of substitutions shows that timing makes a difference to outcomes when the team is losing, but makes no difference to outcomes otherwise. For example, the most productive substitution strategy for the manager of a losing team is to make his first substitution no later than the 58th minute, his second no later than the 73rd minute, and his third no later than the 79th minute. There is a proviso to this, namely that the substitutes have enough quality to out-perform the players substituted at the time of substitution; e.g. if one of your first choice midfielders has run himself into the ground and can no longer track back effectively when the ball is lost, it makes sense to replace him with a fresh pair of legs even if the replacement isn't considered good enough to start; but if the replacement will be no better tracking back than the starter, there is no point in making the substitution. More generally, the objective of substitutions is to "up-grade" the weakest link in the team at the time (whether the "weakness" is due to injury, tiredness, being outplayed by a marker, being superfluous because of a formation mis-match between the teams, or whatever). You can have a lot of fun "testing" this best strategy hypothesis by applying it to our games, or any games you happen to be watching, and looking out for why substitutions were or weren't made at particular times. The substitutions people remember are the ones that "work" in terms of coming from a losing position to draw or win a game. The majority though are not in that category.
