bondsman said:
Didsbury Dave said:
It's obvious how few centre halves we had available, but the lesson I want Pellegrini to have learnt is that yaya is ineffective in a holding role against a team with any kind of midfield pace amd aggression. People go past him like he's not there, and when he spends the game lobbing over-ambitious balls to their keeper like he did yesterday he becomes a liability. He can play there in the 'easy' home games but he needs to be part of a 433 or left on the bench for other games. This was accentuated yesterday because without vinny stepping forward with the ball everyone just kept giving it to yaya who was far too immobile and who's passing was either negative poor. I think rodwell's time could be coming.
Apart from that it was a freak result caused exclusively by bad defending. I think pants might be close to a call up now and I also think Micah plays instead of zab when he's fit. Not only is zab making errors but he's running into navas's space then wasting possession.
Overall it was a bad day at the office. The time to judge Pellegrini is after we have seen how he reacts to these results and problems. I saw some positives too. I thought our attitude was very good and we didn't let them boss the game. We got all over them and used our width to stretch them and open them up. The game was fucking won, they were tiring and I could only see us getting a bagful. Then we let them back into the game with the most schoolboy of errors.
Mate they out thought us. They sat back let us have the ball in areas we couldn't hurt them and punished us when they got chances. They also out fought us. At no point did we look like getting a bagful. Surely you'd have to blame pellers as well for taking off our width, I don't think we ever really did stretch them but when he took navas off he definitely took away our ability to stretch them.
Of course they didn't outthink us. We absolutely bombed them. They defended well and had three Christmases come at once through our defending. When the manager removed navas we had gone a goal up and were totally in command. I would imagine the manager assumed they would come at us, holes would open up and nasri would assist us playing through them on the break. When they equalised he needed the width again as they retreated back behind the ball so introduced Milner.
If there's a criticism of the manager, its why didn't he address the weakness that was yaya at the base of the midfield. I will give him the benefit of the doubt on the centre halves he picked.
Time to start passing judgment is if he fails to address these weaknesses .
This was a freak result in lots of ways rather than a dreadful performance. There were good things on there as well as bad. Most of the 'bad' was invividual errors rather than system errors. We will bounce back, I'm sure. Don't underestimate what a big loss vinny is and how unlucky we have been to lose three defenders so early in the season at a time when we are surely shopping for another.
