Yes. Personally I thought he had a poor game. He couldn't hold the ball up and was easily smothered by the Sunderland CB's
Not one of DG's better games but he wasn't alone and I think most of it was due to Sunderland's well organised defence. We have no right to expect to win games in this League and MON is a canny manager.
I disagree, he had 2 very good games before this, and scored as well. so to risk untried players at this level because of one bad game is frankly daft.
DG is not guaranteed a position. We have Michu who is consistently in the right place at the right time scoring with foot or head. We have an abundance of talented, creative midfield players. I wouldn't be surprised if our Plan A morphs into a false 9 with Michu in that role backed up by two from Hernandez, Dyer, Routledge and a midfield 3 of Britton, DeG and Ki. Or maybe no Leon but Routledge! Hernandez and Dyer. The permutations are not endless but very flexible and we are developing the means to play through the opposition. The way we play in April will not be the way we play now.
I think we can finish 6th-8th. I'd be very disappointed if we finished bottom half of the table. We were't far off that last season and I'd like think that we can improve on that.
Yankee makes a good point, over the next few weeks I think we might see very different permutations which might not be imagined. Yesterday`s game is a sneak preview of quite a few games this coming season, much the same as last! I`ll be happy to survive again, although I would like to think we can do a bit better than last season.
Musty - one bad game shouldn't mean Graham is dropped but be honest you've never liked the guy. YJ is right, things might change soon. But have a look at the game again. You're not giving enough credit to Sunderland who were efficient in smothering all our forward play. As soon as Graham or Dyer in particular got the ball they had three defenders on them. The two goals we scored had to be really good ones.
sorry guys but i didnt see a bad game, imo we did well against a good premier lge side who tried to close the back door on us. they scored two lucky goals in the first half against the run of play imo. come the second half we were all over them our attacking game was spot on. even after the sending, off we slowed a little shure but i for one thought we were going to nick it back. we are not going to score 3,4,5, goals in every game this season you can forget that, when teams come with a tight defence we will struggle to score and so will any other team in this lge inc the big boys. so given the circumstances i think we played a very good game yesterday and was happy with the result.
I thought the lads did really well. We conceded a set piece (nothing new there) and a bad mistake. In contrast we scored two superb goals and Michu was unlucky not to add another when his header went down and over with the keeper beaten. In the second half we absolutely mullered them and still had most of the play when we were "Chicoless". I agree with an observation made on another thread that we only seem to get into our stride in the second half. If we put two halves together on a consistent basis, I can see a top half finish for us but I still want to see how we perform against high energy teams like Norwich, Everton and others. We tended to get over run last season against these type of teams......
Maybe DG should be subbed off if plays like he did against sunderland...just to give him a kick up the backside. He's a good player but Sunderland had his number. To be fair though if he wasn't keeping sunderlands CB's occupied then Michu wouldn't have had the space to cause problems. Trust Laudrup to make the big calls and trust the swans to push on from last season. 8th/9th place finish I reckon.
Steve there was a post here a few days ago about graham and michu swapping attacking positions, meaning changing who was the man up front, this is Laudrup's doing to confuse defenders and oppo teams. They are both going to help each other score at least 35-40 goals between them this season, I'm convinced of it. I watched them playing yesterday and they were doing the same as in the west ham game
