We should have been good enough to win last night, however from the outset I was concerned at the lack of pace in the side, only Elmo in the starting 11 who for me has the ability to drive forward with the ball. The tempo of the game from City was too slow; I know Brucey talks about patience but last night too many didn't step up to the plate. Aluko looked to be getting back to his best in Lokeren, last night he was awful and hardly did anything right. I also remember Huddlestone stating one of the reasons he left Spurs was to play football. He said something on the lines that you would play well one match, and in spite of that find yourself out the team come the next game! Based on that I wonder how MacGuire felt about being left out last night? He played on his debut in Lokeren I thought. Given Figgy was awful in Lokeren I was convinced we would start with a back 3 of Curtis, Chester and Harry. Brucey gets it right the vast majority of times, but for me last night was one of the times he didn't quite get it right. Anyway, looking forward to Dawson making his debut at Villa on Sunday, and heres hoping we can get Abel across the line, not forgetting Lenihan who sounds like another great prospect for the future.
We started off playing 442, and with Chester suspended this weekend, he was always gonna play. That leaves Maguire to fight for a place with Davies, and in a must win game we were always gonna go with Curtis.
Why does everyone keep forgetting that we won last night? We lost the tie with the 9 changes in the first leg.
As Bummy suggests, the tie was lost in Lokeren, but we still had the chance to turn it round last night, Huddlestone should have started, possibly also Quinn.
Only due to an individual cock up that no one could have predicted. Magregor will probably never do that again in his entire career
You're missing the point, Lokeren were terrible last week, our first team should have slaughtered them.
still gutted this morning about losing...Brucie picked all the out of form players....Livermores not had a good game since signing officially, Sagbo n Figo are crap anyway, Brady (yes he scored ) has being a shadow of himself since his last injury, Meyler n Livermore in midfield just doesnt work !, Quinn's being our best midfielder so far so leaving him and also Hudds out was just odd imho !
SB told Bunrsy last week and last night after both games that Quinn was left out of the 21 man squad named. Sadly we also lost Snodgrass due to injury. SB also said that we may have lost the Stoke game with 10 men IF he had played the first team @ Lokeren. Lokeren tie was lost due to missed chances and McGregors howler. Over the 2 legs we just did not do enough mind,
That team we put out last night had the experience to win against Lokeren. All of them played in the league last season, and were solid enough. Most of them played in the cup run. We just weren't good enough. Look at how wasteful we were in front of goal in the away leg.
Bruce didn't play the right team, formation or tactics. Nor did he have the ability to change anything when it wasn't going right. Last night especially the first half was once of the worst displays I have seen them play for a long time and there is absolutely no way we should play so poorly against teams like Trencin and Lokeren. Steve Bruce is the best manager we have ever had but he made massive mistakes both last night and last week in the European games.
Last night's starting 11 had enough quality in it to get us through - at least half of them just didn't perform. Sagbo caught offside too often, Aluko woeful, Meyler ineffective, Livermore had his worst game for us and Chester wasn't his usual composed self. All of them played their part last year and we all know they can do better than they showed last night - that is the frustrating thing for me and not the fact that they were the ones picked to start the game.
Indeed, but that being the case, why the hell did they stay on the pitch? Huddlestone should have been on in the first half, when it was obvious things weren't working.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I would have made changes at HT even though we were 1-0 up. Having said that I never thought we would start the 2nd half as badly as we did. That and Sagbo's red card meant that when the subs did get on we were chasing the game.
There's some truth on the poor performances. You can win with one or two underperforming but when it's 6 or 7 it won't be good enough without lady luck chipping in. Bruce got it wrong for me This was a chance to play the group stage and 6 more games Pick your BEST team vs Lokeren and then if he wants rotate for all 6 other games then go ahead These players would have gained ample european experience and the excuse that players get tired is bulls**t, pro footballers can play 2-3 times a week, they just need time off after the season for soft tissue dammage to recover
When Huddlestone doesn't play we have no one to control our play through the middle with decisive passing. Livermore is a good player but more for his energy and work rate, he's essentially an upgraded Marney, able to pass the ball to our own players but usually shorter, keeping possession. Huddlestone is the one who can split defences with a through ball or find the open winger on the opposite side of the pitch. Meyler is another who's useful for his work rate but he does not look anywhere near as comfortable when he's on the ball - we had a great opportunity to counterattack in the first half yesterday but he slowly shuffled a few yards before passing it backwards. Livermore works well alongside Huddlestone and Meyler can do a good job in a midfield trio but Livermore and Meyler together don't work as a central pairing. We had no one to really create chances.
Exactly they ran the middle field in the first half, and it needed Huddlestone to be in there to rectify this.
