A stat on the concourse on the way out showed we have 798 passes to Palace’s 300. Of those, we had 166 ‘attacking passes’ and Palace had 106. Sums it up. Gash, meandering borefest.
Gundogan brought control, decisiveness, leadership and goals. Today we had Lewis in his place who gave it away every time he tried something other than a 5 yard pass. Good goal, mind, but an anomaly than regular.
The team lacks leaders at the moment which is strange given we have Rodri, Walker and Dias in there. Rodri’s head goes too easily, Dias is too busy fighting to do the most basic defending and Walker is Walker. He’s lost his pace and the ability to do anything progressive. He stands out like a sore thumb, his drop off has been staggering. But we’ve got him for the foreseeable because he’s on a new contract. He should be nowhere near the captaincy either - football aside, he’s not the personality I’d want captaining my football team.
That game today was essentially watching 11 players stroll about the pitch doing fuck all to make things happen. First goal was nice, second goal was a few lucky deflections and other than that it was a team somehow void of any attacking confidence or intent and instead rolling the ball to one another at a snail’s pace. Put some fucking umph on a pass, speed things up a bit, make things happen, go forward, commit a defender, do something other than pass it backwards, sideways, run forward 5 yards then turn around and start the process again. Fucking painful.
All while you’ve got a manager sat there on the side not making substitutions other than John fucking Stones in the 94th minute! Yes the bench is light but it’s not as shit as what was out there today. Pep seems to pride himself on not making subs when the team isn’t winning because they need to get themselves out the mess, what’s today’s excuse while we were winning? There isn’t one. It’s just shit game management when you’re watching the team self implode on the pitch.
It’s shit. Has been for weeks, if not months, and needs sorting. Needs an injection of some sort of energy from somebody and Pep needs to grow some bollocks and go out of his comfort zone to make it happen. His tactic today was push an already-makeshift full back up to be a winger. If you’re going to do that then make use of Gomez who that role would’ve suited down to a tee!
Pissed off. Should be doing better and Palace gave us exactly what we deserved today.
