It doesn't matter who we drew from now on, if we want to be worthy winner we have to face them at some point in time. I was so frustrated with Downing that I could strangle him last week but he was superb in this game and credit to him. He just need to continue to have the confidence to beat defenders and to continue with the quality crosses. But Adam was hardly mentioned here and I thought he did well with his early pin-point passing to Downing, no dallying with another 2 short passes before it gets to Downing.
In hindsight, it may not be fair to place criticism on Downing on many of the previous games. The ball was released to him so slow and opposing defenders would have re-grouped and he's no Messi to beat 2, 3 or 4 defenders. Lesson learnt, release the ball early to Downing and we'll get to see the full effect of what he can do. Skrtel was superb and so is Enrique, players got bounced off from him and I didn't know he could cross the ball so well. Ok we were assisted by 3 own goals but it's a result of having enough bodies inside the box and appplying constant pressure. On most of the goals we had 4 or 5 players to force the ball over the line, never mind Brighton helped us on that, that's because we pressured them into doing it. I hope to see the same in future games.
On the whole, a good game and I thought the Brighton players were very sporting, swapping jerseys at the end of the game but can''t say the same for their fans. What needs to be said about Andy has already been said and we're beginning to see a Keegan Toshack combo here. We have to now remind ourselves that he is also good with his feet.
Next Stoke, we really need to practice in training how to go round this bus, I'm sure they're going to park that bloody irritating bus again, but no rules to say they can't. Again we must put enough bodies inside their box, the goals will come, instead of trying to break through a parked bus.
Logged