by Daz » Oct 30, '16, 8:49 am
We were woeful. Looked awful going forward. Pritchard was the only bright spark in the entire game. Hoolahan is never good against well disciplined back fours, because he doesn't get the space or the time on the ball he likes. Jacob Murphy has looked tired and ineffective for weeks now, but Alex Neil won't drop him for some reason. How Cameron Jerome is still in the starting eleven is beyond me. Couldn't hit the side of a barn door half the time and doesn't contribute anything else. Oliveira in his brief playing time has looked much sharper, and better link up play.
Defensively, we just look inept, and it's been that way since Russell Martin came back into the team. He is just awful. Nice guy, passionate (there's an interview he did post-game where he looked close to tears trying to describe the performance) but good god, he's just not good enough. He doesn't have the pace to be effective going forward, his crossing is and always has been poor, he gets caught up too many times. He always puts us in difficult spots because he doesn't know how to deal with direct balls over the top.
Howson is injured and we're missing him. Dorrans is good and gets the ball moving for us but doesn't do a job defensively which leaves Tettey all alone. He can't cover 2-3 men at once.
Yesterday, McGovern made 3 errors which lead to three goals. We made it so simple for Brighton. They didn't even play particularly well. They scored their first 4 goals through mistakes and simple counter attacks. The problem is, we've had the same problems with the past 4 managers. People wanted to blame Hughton when he was here, and Neil Adams, but it's been increasingly clear over the past few years, that it isn't the managers, it's the players. They have no fucking bottle and there's no one in the team capable of picking people's heads up when we go behind, like Grant Holt used to do. Even when we were winning games all of two weeks ago, we looked bereft of confidence, and now we're playing better opposition, it's beginning to show all the more.
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