" It looked like a top-against-bottom clash." No **** Sherlock! I just don't get it, I really don't. More to follow. Too angry.
Nothing to disagree with here and indeed you’ve highlighted exactly our weak links SuperBri. Still, I haven’t simmered down from last night yet. So have to add my two-penneth. Rodellega Just as I went through the turnstile it was announced that Hugo was playing. The guy in front of me echoed precisely the comment made in the 'Kit Out' thread by FI, “why can’t he (Kit) see what we can?“. A sentiment repeated throughout the first half by everyone around me when all we did was lump the ball forward only to see it come straight back. By replacing Hugo at half time Kit publicly announced his horrible and huge mistake. The game had gone by then though. Tunnicliffe “Cruise control” is the kindest under-statement of all time. More important for me however, was his lack of any kind of positional play; compounded by the mystery why he randomly and persistently insisted on swapping sides with Kavanagh. In many, many ways this illustrated our poor organisation and the poor positional discipline throughout the team. Hoogland and Amorbieta I do not believe for one second the stuff Kit put out about injuries to Richards and Stafylidis being his reason why H & A came in at fullback. Rather, he fooled himself into believing that their ‘experience’ and height was what our back four had been missing. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Hoogland is, and always has been, poor defensively because he is short in pace. Last night only amplified his failings as a right back. Amorebieta was not fit; as the chap next me said, “he was blowing air out of his a**e after half-an-hour”. I’m not saying our ‘normal’ back four are the bees knees but in the last 3 or 4 games they have shown a degree of coherence/understanding. Why would you want to break that group up? Okay Richards may have been injured but Grimmer wasn’t and he’s not let us down when playing at RB. [As an aside I’m bemused why it was Voser, who has only played a handful of U21 games, that was on the bench.] And Stafyidis injured?? He came on when Nando got sent off, didn’t he? If anything, the selection of H & A at full back was by and far Kit’s biggest error of the evening. While I’d agree with SuperBri that Bodurov and Hutchinson struggled, I’d contend it was in no small part because they never knew where this pair would be, or more significantly, not be. Can’t finish this rant without a final, separate, point about how deprived of organisation we were. The best example I can provide was simply the fact that I lost count of the number of times two, sometimes three, of our players went for the same ball … and lost it to the opposition! Which also brings me back to the unanimous cry around the ground, “why can’t he see what we can?”. We lose to teams like Wolves and Watford (sticking to the most recent games) not because they have better players but because they are better organised. End of … well, for now …
Im not buying the tiredness, 3 games in a week excuse. Utter tosh. These are the games that they should be up for. How can a team play so well against Derby and then deliver that spineless, disinterested and unpassionate performance 6 days later? Flattering to deceive springs to mind. Why play so submissively when the times we play highbtempo pressing it always works? Baffled!
To emphasise our lack of organisation and positional indiscipline, here is a still of our back four (ringed in red) just before Nando got sent off - please log in to view this image
