Only read this last page of 29,because I knew what to expect!Nearly every post makes reference to R.H.
When in all honesty we should be looking for the reason our "players" cannot pass a football to each other.
Now whether R.H. is or is'nt the right man for our club,surely he,s not solely to blame for that shocking show,as it was'nt tactics to blame.
Can't wait to pop back later to read my castigation for speaking my mind.
We were crap yesterday end of.
nobody would disagree with you that we had quality players on the pitch who couldn't string some passes together, but i absolutely disagree with you about tactics not being to blame. tactics were the biggest reason (not the only but biggest) that we lost this game.
allow me to explain.
1 - i witnessed our 18 yard box bombarded on saturday. neither kenwyn jones nor fuller are fast, pacy players. why we played with our defence sitting so deep for the whole match, playing to their big guys' strenghts, i'll never know. it's such basic management observation, it beggars belief.
2 - this, also led to our midfield having to sit deep to protect the back four for long periods of the game, which put us into a situation where we could not build an attack. everytime we brought the ball out, there was hardly anyone up front or wide to pass to, so we had to keep going backwards or sideways. this allowed stoke to press us and force errors, hence you witnessed good passers of the ball like stevie, meireles and kuyt giving the ball away time and time again. not to mention average players like konchesky playing dangerous backpasses.
3 - stoke are not a good footballing team. we knew they would press us and try to force errors as well as play the long ball and hoofing game. we needed genuine wide players to be able to stretch them and make them work harder to press. we had options. why not start with maxi on the right and babel/jov on the left and ask them stay wide? instead, we saw a situation where our midfield was not only sitting too deep, they were also too narrow...made it childsplay for stoke to choke the midfield, press us and use their physicallity to overpower us. yet more basic tactics roy should have observed before and during the game.
4 - konchesky is a poor buy and offers nothing going forwards. put in a few decent tackles to be fair but still poor. coupled with the fact that roy, inexplicably decided to drop kelly for carra on rb. carra does a good job in the centre but he has no pace and no crossing ability as a rb. time and again i noticed both carra and konchesky making advances up the field only to give the ball away or put in poor crosses. konchesky's roy's buy and playing carra instead of kelly was roy's decision.
5 - torres, isolated again, was kicked all over the pitch, because he was having to come to half way line, with his back to defence to try to see some of the ball. when he recieved the ball, he had to try to hold onto it, surrounded by 2 or 3 players all the time kicking him, until the support arrived. the way we set out our team, this was always going to fail.
6 - all of the above, led to us losing the ball time and time again, made it difficult to get a passing game going, which demotivates players and a demotivated team.
i didn't see much wrong with the work rate. torres could have come off injured but decided to stay on. kuyt, as usual was fighting everywhere etc etc. it was bizarre selection and awful tactics that was our downfall.
