In some ways that was a similar story to our other matches this season - plenty of possession, clearly the better side on the day, but didn't win.
However I saw a lot of encouraging signs in that performance. The big negative that carried on from recent games was our lack of cutting edge up front. Our lack of a striker is hurting us. Defensively, though, we played pretty well. In particular Lovren, who I was on the point of writing off completely, was excellent, and hopefuly will get some much needed confidence from that performance.
The biggest encouragement for me though was what I thought was a change to our game management. Since Brendan's time I feel we have had a real problem with this. We almost always have to play at a very high tempo to play well. We struggle to vary the pace, and when play slows down we seem to lose control and let the opposition back in. That has been a big concern for me this season. We tend to start off at 100 miles and hour, run the 1st half, but then fade in the second as we run out of legs. That didn't happen this time. We played more patiently from the start, looked more controlled, but still created chances. In the 2nd half we seemed to have a lot more left in the tank than usual this season, and totally bossed it. It was only a lack of cutting edge that stopped us winning this time - not defensive errors, nor that combination of naivety, nerves and tiredness that has been afflicting us in the latter part of games.
To me, that was a much more controlled, tactically smart performance than we have had all season. The lack of a goal scorer is an ongoing problem, but some of the other issues we have had I think Jürgen is maybe starting to get sorted ( albeit the 2 players subbed off was a bit surprising, and didn't help us). But, yeah, disappointed we didn't win, but actually I think we played well, and basically played off the park a side that are supposedly strong title contenders who were coming into the game bang in form.
Keep playing like that and we will win most games in my opinion.
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