Match Day Thread Watford v Saints. Saturday 13/1/2018 3pm

Cheers Doucoure for making a crap Monday a bit worse. Hope a jar of mayo tumbles out of the cupboard and on to your foot. Still, your hand will be okay, so no need to miss training........

 

Long can counter and shown on Saturday and IMO why Pellegrino used him instead of Gabbiadini but Long doesn't score many. I'm not sure I want to be relying on prowse's end product every match.

Redmond has good acceleration but not out and out pace so he needs to slow the play down in order to accelerate past somebody. He's also not got the strength to hold off defenders once he's got past them like some slower strikers can. That's not really what you want on the counter.

 

The first half was good, I wouldn't mind Pellegrino if we played like that for the full 90. But we collapse in the second half and there are no signs of improvement in that regard. It's obvious to everyone that we need to change our approach when taking the lead, but we need to change that soon or we'll be relegated for sure. Pellegrino can maybe turn that around with time, but he had plenty of time so far and did nothing to adress that, and the time is quickly running out. He's catching the last train.

 

The two best attacking sides in the league showed yesterday that playing with a front 3 can be devastating if they all work together. Tottenham showed the same on Saturday, and, in the first half against Watford, so did Southampton. Shane Long’s biggest strength is his pace, as he showed in *that* goal at Anfield a year ago, when he outstripped the whole Liverpool defence over 70 yards to collect Sims’ pass. He showed it for both our goals on Saturday, first down the right, then down the left, but both efforts would have been wasted if he hadn’t had players running inside him, JWP for the first, and then Tadic and JWP.

We should have been able to continue that same approach into the second half, Watford swapped a midfielder for an extra forward but unfortunately our advantage in midfield was negated by sloppy work from Davis and others giving the ball away too many times. That put paid to our front 3 working together, with the midfield triangle of Romeu, Højbjerg and Davis becoming compressed and JWP and Tadic being forced back to cover. If only MP had brought Lemina on for Davis straight away, it might have regained our advantage in midfield and allowed our front 3 to work together again.

Easy to say in hindsight I know, but my point is that even now, we have a squad that can attack in a meaningful way, provided the balance is right in midfield. I hate to point fingers, but Davis isn’t a 90 minute player any more. He did well in the first half but ran out of steam trying to defend in the second half.

 

This will be my last comment on this thread so it can drift off into oblivion along with the two points that were stolen from us.
Why weren't we more incandescent with anger? Where was the rage? Three (at least) of our players saw it, immediately signalled handball, but then we just kinda went along with the refs mistake. Can you imagine Utds players with that injustice, they would have gone crazy, I mean like riot crazy. I always liked the way we behave, but we should have been louder in our protests. But then, I suppose that would have landed us in trouble, so you really can't win. We do look a tad subordinate at times.

 

The problem is that once the goal is given, a ref will never, in 99.99999999% of cases, change his mind. The only outcome if our players had kicked off big time would have been multiple red cards and possible crowd trouble, neither of which would help us much. In calling for VAR in the understated way he did, Pellegrino has probably helped bring it closer, so I’ll take that as a small crumb of comfort from a sorry situation.

 

I said should, not can! I don't rate redmond at all, he should be sold at the first oppotunity. He's been given plenty of chances. Could do a job in the championship though...