None of Tadic, JWP, Rodriguez or Pelle was very good today. None of them were really crap, either. Just blah, all of them. How many seasons has it been now? This is a team that just has trouble breaking down disciplined defenses. Taking Pelle out will not make a difference.
Maybe it won't. But we'll never really know, because he starts every single match come hell or high water. I'd just like to try, because I'm not terribly enthused about the way we've looked in attack, and we've mixed and matched every piece but one. If Rickie could be dropped to switch things up, as he was from time to time, surely Pelle can.
Problem with having a big target man up front is that it so restricts our style of play? When Pelle is really on his game he complements the team with 2 wide men, but when he's out of touch its almost like playing with 10 players? I quite like Pelle, but I thought he was really poor today.
Giving the passes away sounds like the Newcastle game. Couldn't believe how poor the passing was then. What happened to the 20 passes a move team?
This is the type of team we struggle against...at least we didn't lose to a single late goal. We have only lost one out of five games (extremely positive hat on ), but we might have hoped for more points before we meet one of the big guns. I just can't emphasis enough how cheered I am by 3 clean sheets when you bear in mind we lost Morgan and Clyne and have temporarily lost Bertrand....all very important defensively.
Sounds like the Officials got most things right today, Mr Pulis says the penalty decision was called correctly, his player dived and he is going to have words with him, refreshingly honest it seems.
Three clean sheets in a row is a positive - albeit against Watford, Norwich and West Brom (no disrespect to these three, but they are no world beaters). We were in control of the game, but had no quality in the final third. Should've found a way through, but didn't. Van Dijk very assured.
Yeah, I guess I agree with that. I don't hink Pelle has been as bad as people say, but he certainly hasn't made a case for himself as a must-start either. I do not think Long is the answer but it's not like he's horrible either. There's not much risk in giving it a try since we are not scoring anyway, and If anything, Long probably offers a bit more on defense and general work rate... not that that's been a major issue. I think it is the 10 spot or false 9 or whatever is the real problem. Need to try Juanmi or maybe Mane as a creative attacker/second striker. Otherwise it is too easy to shunt us down the wing and pick off the crosses, which is what always happens. Having Bertrand back will help. We were even more predictable than usual today as everything went down the right. Which was compounded by the fact that Tadic is weaker on that side.
Which is why I sort of see it as scraping the barrel for positives. Obviously it's not a bad thing to be keeping clean sheets, but given the opposition I am not going to be jumping up and down about it. At the end of the day, we failed ourselves to score in two of those three games. And if you extend that back further, we have failed to score from open play in five of our last six games (and that one game where we did score from open play, the goals came against ten men). I'm not disappointed, I'm not having a go. I appreciate that a Pulis team will be difficult to beat, I appreciate that Mane didn't start today, and I appreciate that Pelle has his limitations (hence my desire for us to sign a top striker over the summer). But at the same time, I'm not going to see these three clean sheets as some positive to be talking about.
As I've stated before, Pellè is not likely to be on my Xmas card list this year. The issue for me is the Plan B or Plan C or lack of. Today seemed a good time to try one of these as the game was going nowhere fast. As someone stated above, when the team is being positive, Pellè quite often plays with a spring in his step and can be an extra half a player, but when things are against us and we aren't as positive going forward its like we're being hampered by half a player. It seemed fairly plain to be that the frustrating flicks weren't working today, so why not try a three pronged attacking midfield of Jay Rod, Mané with ShLong in the middle? This would mix it up and potentially get their clueless back 4 today looking less comfortable. Dusan could fill the creative role just behind the three, with VW or Romeu as an enforcer. It's only my opinion but would have been better than a blunted one pronged attack that we used today.
Clean sheet and balance of the team looks good. Same goal scoring issues as usual. Away point is good
With you on all of this, really. I wanted a number 10 type far more than a striker in this window, but absent such we're going to need to wring all we can out of our squad, and that means the occasional calculated gamble in the team setup. If we play a match with, I dunno, Jay or Long up top, Tadic on the left and Mane on the right, and we look toothless, that's very useful information. Same with Juanmi, as you say...I like him as a player though I'm not entirely sure how he fits in with our 4-3-3, but the only way to find out is with him on the pitch. The match against Man U might be a good place for such; we're probably not going to have the bulk of possession, because they're even more capable than us at spending a tonne of time in the opposition's half without accomplishing a thing, but Swansea wrecked them with quick passes and overlapping runs from Ayew and Gomis that turned their CBs into backpedaling puddles of goo. Curious whether we can do likewise.
I wanted to see this essentially this in the second half, the way WBA were approaching the game the situation was prefect for RK to overload the WBA with the movement of our dynamic fowards. Two DCMs, to lock Brom in their own half, using Romeu's passing vision, and have that front 3 and Tadic pressing and moving and shifting that Brom defence until overload.
