- Oct 19, 2004
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I wouldn't say that was due to anything we did. I still saw numerous times where Rose was left two vs. one. If I had to hazard a guess as to why he did a bit less I'd say it was a case of a kid new to the PL getting tired towards the end. Still wasn't properly sorted out though, as we saw for the winning goal...
I don't think we did too much wrong for the 3rd goal. Bit lazy from Chadli maybe. We have two guys (rose and bentaleb) covering Ibe, but Lallana makes a clever little run and Ibe slips the ball through the two players to him. We've pretty much got everything covered but a good ball and a clever bit movement by Ballotelli (he feints to go front then switches behind Dier).
I definitely noticed Eriksen doubling up on Ibe a couple of times and it looked like a conscious thing. Like Poch had seen what was happening first half and told Eriksen he's got to help Rose more.
Tactically we could have been more pragmatic perhaps, but I don't think we were shambolic tactically tonight, I just think we were, as ever, a bit careless, and that cost us dearly at times. As you pointed out elsewhere, we did get at them at times and create our own situations where we had overloads, but poor decisions and executions pissed them away.
I'm all for some well applied pragmatism, but invariably that just turns into a desperately insipid bus park where any momentum withers, so I'll take the type of frenetic effort we generally showed tonight, tactically imperfect as it possibly was, as a very good second. It definitely beats some of the insipid shit we've seen up there over the years.