- Nov 18, 2007
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I really don't think it's as simple as you make it out to be.I (politely) disagree, not about Lamela, the lad should be starting every game with the form he's shown over the last month or so.
Yes Lamela got us pushing back up the pitch, but he was the only one. And before he was doing it, it was NDombele & Dele doing it.
Bale was on a yellow & we're managing his minutes/fitness. So why not just replace him with Lamela, then leave Dele & NDombele on? Son had another off night & looked absolutely knackered. So why not replace him with Sissoko & just push Dele into Sons position?
That leaves a pretty strong midfield of Hojbjerg, NDombele & Sissoko, with Lamela still there to do what he does so well, while allowing Dele to build up match fitness & confidence after another good performance and completing 90 minutes, thus starting to believe his manager is beginning to trust him.
We do have the players to continue to worry the opposition for 90 minutes but, for whatever reason, our manager continues to not want to utilise our (blatant) biggest strength, our attacking players, and prefers to see us drop deeper and deeper whilst basically being under siege until the final whistle.
It's failed us multiple times already this season, and we were very lucky that it didn't fail us again last night. As others have pointed out, it's a worrying pattern & we will not keep getting away with it throughout the remainder of the season.
Lucas was clearly bought on to help out Doc on the right-hand side, and to an extent did a decent job of it. Could Sissoko have done that job? Perhaps. But his more central position helped, along with Hojbjerg, stem the flow of Fulham pressure that we saw in the first 20-25 minutes of the second half.
I actually felt that we played better once the subs were made. A second goal would have been great, and lets be honest Kane tucks that final chance away 9 times out of 10, but Fulham were hardly hammering our door down for 45 minutes like you've suggested with your final "under siege" comment. Also it's been pointed out by a number of posters on here that Fulham are in a false position, mainly due to the fact that they only picked up a point in their first 7 (possibly 8?) games before they had a more settled team. I'm not convinced continuing to push men forward would have benefitted us any more than what we did in the second half, as those long balls by Andersen could have been far more damaging had we been 20-30 yards further up the pitch.