Daiswan: "Burnley never looked like getting a draw" I have to question whether you watched this game. Seriously. Don't you pride yourself on being a realist? Have to say you seem detached from reality at times.
I think most "neutral" observers thought that Burnley deserved something from the game. "Only" having a 1-0 lead at half time meant that Burnley were still very much in the game and Dyche identified that we should be attacked throughout the middle - our lack of a DM left us open. If Burnley had a more experienced strike force, they would probably have equalised. That said, a win is a win!
Dai a couple of things , if there were words to be said by the manager regarding the second half performance it's highly unlikely and not very professional to name culprits of in the press . Theres nothing that he said there which you wouldn't expect him to say .We all saw what we saw yesterday and to quote a favoured response of yours when questioning someones viewpoint of a game " you weren't there so how can you comment "
I do think Burnley played extremely well especially in the second half. But we must start taking our chances, we had to other very scorable chances in the first half and when watching back we should have taken either of them. Bony - header and the Siggy chance. In know it is only ifs and buts, but if we had taken those very good opportunities. we would have been out of sight by half time. For all that we didnt and we heaped pressure on ourselves and only just managed to hold on for the win. Bony has to do better with the great chance that was presented to him by the Burnley back header in the second half though. After the Man U win I knew this would be a tricky game, they are fighting for their first point and also they were always going to be flat out closing down with it still only being their second game back in the PL. Yes they did produce a couple of chances and maybe should have taken one. But that will be their problem this year as lots of teams have found out and that is being able to score enough goals to stay up. But as disappointed as i was with our second half performance they do say good sides manage to win when they have an off day. Lets hope that is what it was. On the plus side QPR got beat 4 - 0 and are bottom.
While Burnley had a really good second half and put us under a lot of pressure, creating a few great chances that we did very well to throw blocks at, we should have been out of sight at half time. That can be the telling point in matches. If we'd gone in at 3-0, which we quite easily could have done, Burnley would have been in damage limitation mode during the second half. Scoring a couple more goals when we're on top in matches can make our lives much easier. Our lads would have done much less running/defending if they'd had a more comfortable cushion. Pretty much everyone I've spoken to since the match has agreed that we'd have drawn or lost that game in the second half last season. Both under Laudrup and Monk. I think it's testament to Monk's pre-season training that we had the fitness to see this game out and come away with the 3 points.
A team as limited as Burnley would not have got that close to a draw last season under Laudrup or Monk. Their finishing was awful and they will struggle if they can't put away their chances. But I agree, a better team given that much opportunity would probably have taken a point maybe 3. As far as our defence is concerned we saw how easily a decent team can take us apart in the Villarrreal game (many said that was just a friendly but the second half v Burnley was a re-run). This is not the fault of the keeper and back 4 but more a deficit in our midfield defence. Our midfield disappears as soon as opponents start gaining an upper hand and Amat and Ash (Angel and Taylor to a lesser extent) have been making some last ditch block. A couple of excellent saves from Fabie too. Unless midfield keeps possession, challenges to regain possession when lost and tracks back I can see our 100% success rate wilting.
It is an unanimous opinion that we need a strong tackling midfielder and I am sure that the management are well aware of this as well. Hopefully someone will turn up this week.
The second half slump is really a Monk phenomenon. Under Laudrup we were generally stronger in the second half. I don't want to start a M v L chain of comments, but this is a true statement and since it appears to have carried over into this season deserves discussion - not in the the M v L sense but in terms of football and the team and what is causing the "slump". Monk's got to be as concerned as anybody. Saturday's match was literally a game of two halves. Ki and Sig are practically "new" players for us this season .... so last season should have no impact on them.
The numbers suggest otherwise. Being bored, sitting in the office trying to avoid doing any actual work I went through the BBC PL results for Swansea since 25th August 2013. The BBC very kindly and decently miss off the 1-4 surrender to Moyes by Laudrup ("We can't expect to win against the big teams, so we'll just bend over"), Laudrup, 1st half goals against 13, 2nd half goals against 17 Monk, 1st half goals against 8, 2nd half goals against 4 So the numbers suggest the opposite of what you say. Apologies for any minor errors in the counting, I am rotten at clerking. This does not surprise me, because under Monk the back triangle (CBs + GK) is already looking very solid, whereas under Laudrup, there just wasn't one much of the time. It is the keystone of any defence, and when the team is pushed they will pull back and stand off the triangle which then needs to be very solid. It would have been better at the end of last season, neither Vorm nor Tremmel were up to it. Hardly surprising as Vorm has gone as 3rd choice keeper at Spurs. Having said that, Tremmel will fit in better when it is properly extablished (IMO of course). BTW Was I the only person to be amused at MU fans complaining that Swansea are a big physical team and their players were being bullied off the ball?
If you're going to use goals as a metric then you should look at net goals per half (for - against), which would be a better indicator. For example, a team could concede 3 goals in a second half, but score 4 .... so who had the better half using your measure of goals. Scoring doesn't indicate a team's dominance or how a game was played. For example, against Fulham two seasons ago, we kept hammering away at them and couldn't score, but conceded three goals on a mix of quick breaks and sloppy defending. By your measure we "slumped" but that's not a good reflection of how the game was played. Burnley didn't score and so by your measure we didn't slump. I'm not sure of the best objective measure or whether it is easily obtainable to examine our first half / second half shifts in effectiveness. Looking at the Burnley match, despite the second half slump we still retained an overall possession advantage 55 to 45. However, in terms of territory we were 39 to 61 for Burnley. Now in the first half we dominated possession on a 65/35 split (or thereabouts from memory) ... so based on those numbers Burnley literally owned the second half and their territory numbers on a game basis suggest that in the second half they practically camped out in our half of the field.
I suppose the argument isn't just about conceding goals - it's the way we can retreat into our shells second half rather than push on to put the game to bed.
YJ, you can't say you don't want to start another ML/GM debate when you make posts like this! The reason we had to play better in the 2nd half under ML is because very often the 1st half was *****.
YJ can post a valid observation without wanting to kick off a MvL debate imo. It's just an observation and as he rightly says Monk has already recognised it. I remember last season Monk said on TV that he was unable to explain half time slumps. But I agree with Aswan: "....it's the way we can retreat into our shells second half rather than push on to put the game to bed." That, and that fact that teams seem to come at us more second half without us being able to deal with it.
