Yeah, good idea... Pellegrini will be expecting Messi, Pedro and Sanchez to play against Man City, so maybe Martino should drop Messi...
Looking forward to seeing Long play. I don't buy this crap that he can't finish. Look at his goals against Villa this season, brilliant strikes. He's not an out-and-out poacher but that doesn't mean he can't finish when he gets the chance. Bit like Sagbo (although hopefully he won't be quite so hesitant to get in the box as Sagbo is).
I'm sure we'll start Long and Jelavic. Brady is not being considered for a start, but will be on the bench.
That's disappointing, would very much have liked to see him replace Figueroa and his pace down the left will be missed.
Jelly started but then again one of our forwards hadn't just scored 2 goals. Brucey could keep everyone happy by starting Fryatt,who knows if he doesn't produce then Long will replace him as early as half time. And when Long appears he will be determined to prove he is worth starting. Do it the other way round and it will knock Longs confidence and if Fryatt comes on and is crap then you have just wasted an opportunity to get the best out of your players. To drop a player after scoring 2 goals, even though they were against the Blind Institute, isn't good for morale.
It's not really dropping him though because it was a cup game, he doesn't have a place in the 1st team at the moment.
Yeah of course he will................................. Fryatt is up and running and looks sharp. Nobody even considered Danny Graham being able to play @ Southend yet he did. Dont rule anything out. Shock horror. Lawro is still crying after we beat Liverpool 3-1. Lol. Correct.
A 4-2-3-1 looks pretty exciting to me ---Livermore, Huddlestone Long, ---Aluko, ----Brady --------Jelavic However, judging by Bruce's quotes today: http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/Crys...ruce-unleash/story-20507024-detail/story.html It looks like it'll be 2 up front, so either 3-5-2 or 4-4-2. 3-5-2 will play to Jelavic's strengths I think - I read Elmo has sent in the second highest amount of accurate crosses in the premiership this season (I was surprised too), which Jelavic will prosper from.
You poor bastard, that must mean you missed seeing Billy Whitehurst bundle ball, keeper and centre half into the net
Interesting stat from that Palace blog that has been mentioned previously: Palace still enjoy less possession than our opponents in league matches, and currently have an average total of 44% possession for the season, creating 181 goal scoring chances. To contextualise this figure, the rest of the bottom half of the table have created the following number of chances: Cardiff 163 Sunderland 193 West Ham 197 Fulham 180 Swansea 223 Stoke 183 West Brom 204 Norwich 207 Hull 170 Aston Villa 198 http://www.rednbluearmy.co.uk/crystal-ball/27-01-14-look-palace-vs-hull-suddenly-six-pointer? ....so only Cardiff create less chances than us?
I've been saying this for weeks. City fans love to moan about strikers and invent chances that they've been missing but the fact is we create **** all. We don't dominate games enough to get our attacking players on the ball in good positions. We've been lucky to score as many as we have to be honest, our chance conversion must be pretty high. We play on the back foot most games. We're playing in the PL so we've no right to be dominating games against established sides, I'm under no illusions there but if we're going to stick around we need to get a grip of games more. The Fulham game demonstrated what our attacking players can do if we control the game and give them the ball, but they're not getting it often enough.
