I'd say scoring more goals than the opposition does, but that's what we did in the end and went through. How many games over the past two years have we dominated only to lose to a deflected shot against the run of play? Ultimately he who scores has done their job. At 0-1, they scored theirs (I know it was unfairly given) but by then we should have buried the game anyways. Our problem stemmed from two problems today: The referee, who should undergo a performance review and never referee a game involving a prem side again, and our tactics, which were slow and laboured because of the Gerrard/Allen duo + Skrtel playing it back and forth.
Made hard work of that but won in the end. I never want to see Borini, Gerrard and Allen on the pitch at the same time again.
to be honest i felt that at least the 1st goal if not the 2nd as well could have been scored even if it was 11v11 and before that we weren't playing cleverly enough for a team that had a man advantage. We kept trying tricky through balls w/o looking to go wide and create space for such through balls to work
Problem is... who do you replace him with at the back? I'd rather have him back there helping keep clean sheets than move him forward and go back being a shambles at the back! Now Sturridge is back we can move Sterling back into midfield and keep Hendo/Lucas as that base. Mig Can Skrtel Sakho Markovic Lucas Hendo Moreno Coutinho Sterling Sturridge If you move Can forward, you'd lose Lucas/Hendo and you'd have to play Johnson or Lovren
Got to say, I thought Gerrard had a proper stinker tonight. Almost anonymous bar couple of long range efforts.
The team that scores the most wins, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's deserved. Of course, we only had ourselves to blame for not taking the chances, but it's not like they took theirs either (with the excpetion of the penalty, which would have been poor had Mignolet gone the right way). I don't think that we can blame the ref to be honest. Apart from the penalty and the trip on Sterling (and the two offsides, which was the linesman), I didn't think he did too bad. The Gerrard/Allen duo looked problematic though, have to hope Lucas is back at the weekend and that Henderson's niggle is ok.
Very honest! Bolton boss Neil Lennon: "I'm not happy with the referee tonight at all. Neil Danns' first yellow card was not a booking and I'm not convinced that our penalty was a penalty either."
Yup, mentioned halfway though first half, him and Allen were very poor, both bypassed and not in the game at all. Most useful thing Allen did was get fouled for the 2nd yellow Shows how much Hendo and Lucas provide to the team, just add that bit of balance
