I noticed with Newcastle so worked up, chopping down our players and the crowd complaining about everything we seemed to lack any bite to put them back in their place. Nobody to strong arm them them in midfield or really fight them, we seemed too passive and this allowed them to control large periods of the game.
The ref had lost control of the game when he allowed Newcastle to get away with so much and he directly caused Nasri's injury by allowing M'bia to take three swipes at him. I wondered if we had someone who could enforce midfield and not let a team resort to kicking us of the park a situation like this could have been avoided?
Kompany & Zaba never back down in Defence and Negredo up front will always battle, but battle fairly. In midfield our team seemed too nice almost. Silva in particular did not play well today and I am not sure if he was intimidated by the aggressiveness of Newcastle in the second half but he was giving the ball away too easily. Garcia is a bit of a fairy with his tackling and Fernandinho although very good at tackling and getting stuck in is not particularly strong and lost the ball a few times after being shrugged off. Yaya is a beast but never really gets into that side of the game.
I don't want us to go around fouling teams and putting the foot in but we were letting Newcastle take shots at us today without repercussion and it was almost inevitable that someone would get an injury. If we could have taken the sting out of Newcastle and the crowd somehow we would have cruised the rest of the game but with them worked up and the crowd behind them they were causing us problems.
Ideally we would just keep the ball but we are just not capable of doing that in the way Barca or Bayern can do yet and under pressure will resort to hoofing it up the pitch. Would a more aggressive midfielder have helped to curb Newcastles poor tackles? A Vidal, De Jong or De Rossi sort of player?
The ref had lost control of the game when he allowed Newcastle to get away with so much and he directly caused Nasri's injury by allowing M'bia to take three swipes at him. I wondered if we had someone who could enforce midfield and not let a team resort to kicking us of the park a situation like this could have been avoided?
Kompany & Zaba never back down in Defence and Negredo up front will always battle, but battle fairly. In midfield our team seemed too nice almost. Silva in particular did not play well today and I am not sure if he was intimidated by the aggressiveness of Newcastle in the second half but he was giving the ball away too easily. Garcia is a bit of a fairy with his tackling and Fernandinho although very good at tackling and getting stuck in is not particularly strong and lost the ball a few times after being shrugged off. Yaya is a beast but never really gets into that side of the game.
I don't want us to go around fouling teams and putting the foot in but we were letting Newcastle take shots at us today without repercussion and it was almost inevitable that someone would get an injury. If we could have taken the sting out of Newcastle and the crowd somehow we would have cruised the rest of the game but with them worked up and the crowd behind them they were causing us problems.
Ideally we would just keep the ball but we are just not capable of doing that in the way Barca or Bayern can do yet and under pressure will resort to hoofing it up the pitch. Would a more aggressive midfielder have helped to curb Newcastles poor tackles? A Vidal, De Jong or De Rossi sort of player?