I thought the duel between Armstrong and Bednarak finished about 50/50 in the end. They both had one job to do in the game. Armstrong was decent at holding up, but there wasn’t a quick enough teammate to then layoff to. Whether a fit and interested Willock could be that player remains to be seen, but we could do with someone that’ll charge in through the middle from the layoff, not afraid to take people on and carve an opportunity. I agree with other posters that we looked good when on the front foot and taking the initiative; not sure why it was only the case for around 15 minutes. I thought Field again looked quality and the experience of Cook, Fox and Colback very important. If the substitution answer is Uncle Albert then I’m not sure what the question was.
He’s just painful to watch now. Bad enough as a right midfielder but at wing-back it’s like watching your beloved 15-year-old dog stumbling around blind and incontinent. Not many options off the bench but he’s genuinely the worst one.
I like it when you go to games Ubes. You get all engaged and stuff. Field has now been booked 4 times in 5 games. Not sure if they were all deserved (the one I saw against Ipswich certainly was) but clearly we are going to have to find a way to do without him.
I get it...and almost 70.... It told us that under Beale, we were lucky. At moment, we are a bit unlucky. Usually it just tells you what you know from the score line
Brighton had 26 attempts on goal yesterday, 10 of which were on target and producing 4 or 5 worldie saves from Areola, yet their 'expected goals' stat is 1.42. It's nonsense, Beth.
You’re given a % of a goal based on the likelihood of scoring from that position based on research covering endless thousands of similar shots/positions on the pitch. So a penalty is something like 0.8 because that’s the % of penalties that go in. A Kakay howler at home to Ipswich is 0.9 or whatever it is. Sinclair hitting both posts is 0.05 or whatever. Yesterday our goal would have been a miniscule xG. Something like 0.03 I’d guess. The Smyth one that hit the bar, Chair’s that the keeper saved well from before the disallowed goal and a couple of others would have given us around 1.5 in total (I’m guessing, can’t be arsed to look it up). Brighton create a lot of chances and until last season generally didn’t put enough away. That’s all it’s really saying but if you do that enough you’ll get the rewards.
Our xG was 0.81 to Southampton's 0.45, so we won. I didn't see our game, but I did see Brighton and their xG is ridiculous.
I’d like to see the Manning elbow again. Looked very deliberate to me. A small silver lining on the result is that he was dreadful defensively.
It looked deliberate to me from Thailand. With a chunk of help from QPR+. Manning deserved a direct red for it.
Yes, the Rack & Manager on the corner by the Kings Somborne turnoff, spent quite a bit of time there, including 6th form "graduation" booze-up. Dad let me take his Ford Escort Mexico on that occasion, with instructions, as always,not to drink more than 2½ pints of beer, the 100mg alcohol/100ml blood limit. Not too far away, near IBM Hurley there was also a nice little pub we often visited too.
