Not really pre season does not mean anything, we get this crap every year, people getting themselves all worked up over practise matches it's as predictable as it is pathetic and embarrassing
I'm not normally one for knee jerk reactions, but I'm sorry you cannot paper over that first 45 minutes, pre season or not.
It was worse than woeful, and with the exception of George Evans, that could well be most of the starting 11 for WBA.
Stuttgart aren't that great a side that we should find ourselves at 0-4 after 36 minutes, they narrowly (2points) avoided relegation from the Bundesliga, a league considered somewhat worse in general quality to the PL.
Now I understand that we had players missing, but the defensive show was from all 4 probable starters at WBA, and they were nothing short of a shambles, that we had to bring on a 19 year old to improve things says it all. The midfield were no better, none of them took any responsibility until Zuculini came on (and if we are thinking he's the second coming we'll be wrong). In that first half only 1 player did anything to think he deserves a start at WBA, and that was David Silva, the rest were just awful.
The second half saw us improve (I only saw the first 20 minutes), but we frankly couldn't have got any worse.
It should not be papered over it was abject, pre season or not. I hope it was a huge wake up call to the club, because this pre-season has been a disjointed mess, with too many key players missing/scattered across the world/on planes, with some pretty poor fixtures imho, I've no idea what the point of the Vietnam fixture was, and why were we playing a full strength Real Madrid 3rd game, when we knew we'd be missing half (or more) of the first team, goodness knows. Whoever planned this pre-season needs to answer some questions, and I doubt its Pellegrini.
