Ratings v Man City (A)

Vulcan10 said:

Walker again played well. All the rest were below par.[/quote

Walker played well? Lol he was shocking, he gave away the ball for one of the goals and couldn't get back

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Vulcan10 said:

Walker again played well. All the rest were below par.

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jair1970 said:

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Lloris 2 Saved nearly nothing
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BorisTM said:

Actually Lloris saved the first shot for the first goal, he couldn't save the follow up. He also blocked the first shot for the second goal, and couldn't do much to prevent the follow up. I can't blame him for the other 4 goals, he did what he was supposed to as a goal keeper. As for the first two goals that some would argue that Lloris started by miskicking the ball, I would argue that the ball shouldn't have been passed to him in the first place and that a lot happened between his kicks and the goals and other players made mistakes worse than that of Lloris.

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OiOiDrUnkYiD2 said:

Walker played well? Lol he was shocking, he gave away the ball for one of the goals and couldn't get back

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jair1970 said:

So how hard is everybody's knee jerking right now?
My ACL has just gone and i'm working on the other knee now. Should be out for about 9/10 months, which is about the length of time that Holtby has been at the club during which he's had one good game.

Man City were good, clinical and lethal: we signed the wrong Spanish forward.
Lloris, more of a sweeper than a keeper, and showed that today.
Dawson, had one of his 'not good enough for this any more' days, which comes round all too frequently.
My good feelings towards Kaboul have reduced somewhat, to a degree that I don't feel he can cut it any more. To be fair, this was hardly the game to blood him back into the Prem, but hey.
Walker- totally found out against quality. Vertonghen- I dunno no one is blameless in that defence. We seriously missed Chiriches.

Time and again, Man City waltzed through our midfield via very simple passing. The run from Toure for Aguero was totally indicative of what a bad defensive team does against good opposition. It was as if we hadn't trained for the game, merely turned up clueless.

Paulinho and Soldado: talismanic? The passion is hard to locate for it seems to be buried deep inside. Their sustitution should be a reflection of their ineffective play, not for this game, but for weeks and even months.
Lennon, amazingly in that short period at 1-0 seemed to be doing OK?

Lamela, again being blooded at the best team in the league away, probably wasn't the best idea.

Sandro; tried bless him.

Adebayor: at least showed what a forward looks like & what we've been missing..

Dembele and Sigurdsson; run out, Dembele looked quite sprightly.

The coach must take the brunt though.

6 changes from our last match was too many, bearing in mind we actually played well that day, I can only hope Chiriches was deemed injured otherwise his non-selection is madness (he played in the week, no?)
The idea to start Lamela on the right and Lennon on the left was... oh wait! He's gone and played Lamela on the left and Lennon on the right!
I just don't get the thinking here: we're playing 4-2-3-1 with traditional wingers now?

And then 4-4-2 after half time? Let's regress!

Andre has got serious problems in understanding the rudimentary requirements of the players in our squad. So rarely a team starts that makes logical sense, usually quite the opposite.

Where is Capoue? Where is our defensive cover?
Why are Defoe and Adebayor on the bench?
Losing this game wouldn't have been a crime, City were clinical, but conceding 6 and looking like park footballers is a crime and some kind of confidence needs to be found from somewhere.

Man Utd next, who luckily are quite poor this year, something that i'd not wanted to lay at our door but today, we were.

Lloris 2 Saved nearly nothing
Walker 2 Nope
Dawson 1 Torn apart
Kaboul 2 Yesterday's man
Vertonghen 4
Paulinho 2 Wake up man!
Sandro 6 Tried
Lennon 5 Happier on right
Lamela 3 Loose in possession
Soldado 2 It's not great
Holtby 1 You are allowed to have more than one touch when in space.

Adebayor 7 This is what forwards do
Sigurdsson 5 some life
Dembele 6 involved a bit

AVB: Hope his balance is good cos his tightrope appears to be wobbling.

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Bus-Conductor said:

Well, that was fun.

Isn't football wonderful. When you're top of the league opposing goalies and referees just fall over themselves to gift you games. When things aren't going so well and you'e under pressure, away to one of the best teams around your only world class player gifts the opposition a goal in 14 seconds. Also, the mistake is punished in the most sublime fashion by a player who doesn't score much, yet manages to lob a bobbling ball over the keeper from an acute angle. Off a post. You then miraculously save a 1v1, miraculously block the rebound only to ricochet it in off a friendly shin.

We fucked ourselves for sure, but the fickle hand of fate was definitely providing the lube.

So after the first cluster fuck, you gather yourself, start to control the game, get into a few half decent positions, and guess what, that's right, you shoot yourself up the arse again. And again. And then three more times for good measure.

I've said on several occasions that as a team we are good defensively, we have become much better without the ball, but individually I worry about our defenders. Today all those worries were exposed. Most worrying was how awkward Kaboul looked at times. It's his first league start for over a year and playing against Aguero, Negrado, Nasri and Co away is not ideal comeback, with the dopeyclusterfuck that is Dawson one side, Vertonghen having one of his rare shoddy games the other side, Lloris committing harry carry behind you, but he looked really uncomfortable today and I just hope it's rustiness and not a case of the Ledley's.

That game could have been so different. We were playing against a team who should have had more ambition than to just park a bus and hope for a break for the first time in weeks. They also lined up with a kind of 442/4411 which meant we got more space between the lines. And in between the first and second goals you could see this, but once that second went in, shortly followed by a third, the game was over for us. And what followed was just that horrible netherworld of a team knowing it has to do something but knowing that that will almost certainly make things worse not better.

I still stand by what AVb is generally doing. I don't feel all that is wrong can be laid at his door. What mistakes he's making shouldn't always be costing what they are. Individuals aren't exactly helping him at times. And fate sure as shit isn't. It's not like he's leaving world class players on the bench. But he isn't getting every tactical team selection right that's for sure.

If Lamela bangs in that cross, the game is completely different. But where Navas scores an almost impossible goal at one end, Lamela can't even send a much simpler chance goal bound. I'm not saying it's all shit luck, but it sure as shit isn't helping AVB's cause. As much as AVB needs to get some of his decisions sorted out, a little hand from lady luck would go a long way right now.

The simple truth is we have replaced Modric, VDV and Bale with players that are very young and at a completely different stage of their development. We are virtually a completely new team.

People will in hindsight say Paulinho and Sandro as the 2 were too pedestrian, but if you're going to play a 2 (which I wish we wouldn't) then, away at ManC, you can understand wanting two disciplined fuckers in there and Paulinho still gets into the box more than any other cm we have. And we've all seen Dembele have stinkers too.

I am assuming Capoue has suffered a reaction to his injury ?

Sandro is wonderful defensively but needs to take three touches to see the simplest of passes. Paulino isn't as good off the ball, does play it slightly quicker but again, there is no vision or incision to his passing. Even if you play Dembele you are not going to get rapier metronomic performance.

The only player who might have given us that was packed off on loan. Maybe Eriksen could do it in a middle 3, with Lamela shifting to the middle of an attacking 3 ? Holtby has some good qualities but he's no VDV and a couple of times today he went backwards instead of turning forwards, which was annoying.

And therein possibly lies the answer. We need to try a 433. This would give both Paulinho and Dembele (or Holtby or Eriksen if played there) less responsibility and more licence to roam forward. It would give us a midfielder that could inject some urgency of ball movement. It would mean agains bus parkers we had more players coming from deeper, unmarked positions.

The reluctance for AVB is, I guess, that in a team not scoring goals, that last thing he wants to be seen to be doing is taking a "forward" player out of the equation for another middle row player.

I would have preferred Lamela right or central. Today proved that just playing players who can go wide instead of coming inside makes no difference. Lennon was ok for about 20 minutes, but still created fuck all.

The defence were largely all shambolic, Walker the least so. Vertonghen seemed to have the hump, and played like it.

Individual

Lloris - Howler for the first, made some great saves after.

Walker - Was reasonably good defensively, put in one great cross.

Dawson - Fucking awful.

Kaboul - Also pretty awful. Not a great place to play a comeback game.

Vertonghen - Piss poor mostly.

Sandro - Like Michael Kane at Rourke's Drift at times.

Paulinho - Good dynamism, not so good head using….ism

Lennon - pfft.

Holtby - somewhere between ho hum and meh.

Lamela - Needs games and time. I hope that's what he needs anyway.

Soldado - meh.

Subs - Dembele looked proactive when he came on and did make a difference, of the options we have, I'd have him starting. Adebayor showed for the ball quite well, hard to judge having your first start in tough away game that you are already losing 0-3.

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jair1970 said:

Agree that we had a good period between the first and second goals, indeed we looked to have more of the game...

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