Caught Napping After Scoring

Our pre-season overall has been very impressive, unbeaten in 8, a couple of mini-routs against Rangers & Valerenga, and some good performances from the new lads, most notably Ngog.

The one thing that has concerned me slightly though is how we've reacted after scoring. Last night after Voronin got his goal we switched off & let Lazio come at us, with only an offside decision keeping our victory intact. Against Lucerne we conceded an equaliser 2 minutes after scoring, and Wisla Krakow's equaliser came just 6 minutes after we'd scored. Also in one of our other games (can't recall which one) I remember the opposition going very close just after we'd scored.

I'm hoping this is just down to the rustiness of pre-season and the fact that they weren't competitive games, but it's certainly worrying that we seem to be taking our eye off the ball as soon as we get a goal. I'm sure Rafa will have noticed the same thing & it's something he will be drilling the players on, but let's hope we don't carry this trend into the new season.

This is definitely not a new phenomenon.

On more than one occassion last season did we get a goal ahead only to fail to press the advantage and get the second decisive goal.

Chelsea at home in the Champions League semi, and the absolute debacle that was the Aston Villa home league game.

I am convinced it is a confidence issue and if we start the season well then this problem may disappear. 

Yes as the saying goes, "Your always the most venerable just after you have scored", Lets hope that this glitch will be sorted out before Wednesday. Plus the defence hopfully be more secure as it will be the 1st 11 playing, with no choping and changeing, (or is that rotaion?)

Better hope Rafa - at least someone who can tell Rafa - is reading your post Eddie!

I think the main reasons i've noticed are we seem to score then either get over ambitious looking for another and get caught on the break or we lay off a bit too much at times and kind of take our foot off the pedal.

I think rafa has picked up on it though, the solution is to just do what i saw some of the players doing last season most notably stevie, and just give the other players a signal to kind of not calm down but you know what i mean, keep their heads in the game and when the ball is back in play when we get it just keep the game at our tempo and pass the ball around.