Do we need to be more aggressive?

[BlueTG]

Enough aggression to battle it out, but the aggression displayed against us is simply because the opposing team is more than often not good enough to compete with some of our play, so they kick us out of our play in order to try and prevent us playing.

 

[Burtonblue]

It may be that against more physical sides away from home we should look to fight fire with a bit more fire.
Maybe worth putting the likes of Jimmy in as he will scrap to the death instead of playing two creative midfielders like we did today.

 

[Uptop]

Think a 2-0 win today says we were aggressive enough.

We won but were under pressure for large amounts of the game which I felt was because of Newcastles aggressiveness and the worked up crowd. On another day if our defence wasn't playing so well and without some good saves from Hart it might not have ended so well.

If we could have taken the wind of our newcastles sails the game would have been more more comfortable for us and we would have avoided a possibly nasty injury to Nasri.

I thought the best thing was the way we reacted. They lost their heads and tried to wind us up and put us off our game and we remained calm.

I am happy we didn't resort to the same dirty tactics they did but I think we lost the fluidity we usually show, we didn't control the game as well as we could have, losing possession cheaply on occasions.

Just something I thought we might need to work. I remember in the past teams resorted to kicking Arsenal of the park and resulted in some bad injuries for them. Maybe more aggressiveness is not what is needed but the ability to keep the ball under pressure better to not give teams encouragement.

 

[Vae Victis22]

Yes, if the refs and the League won't protect skilled teams against thug teams, then you have to exercise some self-help. Not saying dirty play but you can't get pushed around. There were some who said after the West Ham game that they shouldn't have taken it sitting down. If that's going to be the attitude and the ref puts the whistle away, you have to do something.

 

[dctid]

Aggressive nio but the front 4 or whatever must improve their work rate without the ball

 

[inbetween]

We don't need aggression, we just need calmness and composure. Let them lose the plot, it really doesn't matter. As long as they didn't score in their periods of pressure that was the most important thing.

 

[cleavers]

No, not for me.

 

[warpig]

Newcastle were the first team this season to bully us a bit in the middle of the park. But the ref didn't help and our poor passing made it look a lot worse than it was.

wouldn't say the first dd. Agree with the rest. Silva must have misplaced 5/6 passes today. Very unlike him.

 

[kunaguero10]

Barcelona didn't become the best team in Europe over the last decade by 'chopping down players'

 

[East Level 2]

We can't become more aggressive when our players are already being booked for minor infringements. Five yellows for Spanish Dave tells you all you need to know about the crap refs and therefore we have to keep our cool.
We were bullied out of it today because Jones lost his nerve after disallowing their goal. We were picking up cards without significant aggression yet they got away with murder.
Perhaps Vincent Tan had other reasons for changing the shirts to red: They attract far fewer cards.