Hart’s been dropped.
Do you think that this action can be seen to be justified?
Do you hope that Joe Hart knows why he’s been dropped?
Do you think he understands why he was dropped? Answer again.
Does he appear to be taking it as well as can be expected?
The answers are probably all “yes”.
Is it chill time?
Again, probably “yes”.
Pants came in. From a fairly general goalkeeping perspective the almost universal performance assessment is…
Easy ride against NAAaarch! Big convincing/unconvincing home win in europe.
Goalkeeping assessment after defeated 1 – 0 at sunderland is that Pants “just dives a different way” to Joe. And, surprisingly easy ride against spurs. So Pants stepped up. He’s done pretty well, not without fault, but he’s done pretty ok.
And recently, when he’s been asked to, Joe’s stepped up too; eventually; for country and club, and he’s done exactly the same; pretty ok, for a keeper of his standard.
Has it really affected our play?
Not really. We’re still kinda stuttering in defence, but we’ll probably take 7-0, 6-0 and 5-2 home wins in “the best league in the world” and the champions league scattered around our seemingly eternal struggle against “them fuckin’ cats“. Overall assessment is that both keepers make their own sort of errors, but IMO all keepers make a type of error, it’s just a matter of finding one you can live with. Maybe we’ve got two (?) 1.5 maybe (?) Maybe we’re lucky to have Pants. The management obviously reckon he’s got something about him, something to hang some faith on. Joe needed dropping and he was dropped. Management’s opinion was that Pants was capable of stepping up, so they brought him in. Will it be a permanent switch? Is there such a thing as permanent in football terms? So I can’t help thinking, it’s a got to be a good place for both our keepers to be in.
Pants is number one. If he doesn’t make any really stupid mistakes (no examples necessary) or too many silly errors where the cumulative effect begins to cause concern; then he is still number one.
Joe concentrates on training and a number of future fixtures in which to stake his claim. Let’s let the trainers work on both Joe’s and Pants’ problems in training and until either Pants makes a mistake or until Joe does something worthy of regaining his place (either in training or in another game that he gets a chance in,) then we should leave it as it is. For now. I’m hoping, fairly obviously, that Joe gets his place back before Pants makes a mistake, but my City-head don’t work that way. Leicester and Bayern look like they could be the perfect opportunity for him to pull off his own “Tony Coton away at Burnley“ or “or some bloke against spurs when we got a 1-1 draw, who I can’t remember the name of,” – esque performances. Hopefully those games aren't too far away.
Maybe the management might have long-term plans in place to deal with such dips in form? I’m not one who enjoys unnecessarily bringing the tone of a conversation down, but, look at Un*t*rd and DeGae, but not for too long as it can damage your eyes. Was it last year or the year before when he was being publicly hung out to dry, for being sh*t? Who really cares when it was? After the press roasting, he was dropped and they brought that Lindergard bloke in. It is fair to say that DeGae is reasonably good now. It’s exactly the same deal here for me. I don’t really know how they'll do it. Maybe it lets the heat die down on the star-keeper whilst he gets some out-of-the-lime-light tailored training sessions, whilst new #1 does first team training (?) or putting them up against each other at skills known to be favoured be either in general keeper training to stretch both their games (?). Who knows. Anyway, Team Pellegrini have made a decision and stuck with the choice they made, for now. Fair play, our management's shown faith in Pants. Positives and negatives. It’s a game of chance and a game of opinion as much as anything, debates begin and a few hands of “blame-game” are played (currently one statistic of very little meaning is running at 18 – 3 to 4 – 2 – PIE CHARTS ANYBODY? There is a need.)
BUT.
Does it appear that there is a problem?
Has Pants done anything to deserve to be dropped?
More importantly, has Joe done anything to deserve to be given number 1 spot back?
No. The answer to all of those questions is no, not yet.
So.
Chill – YES
Panic – NO
Joe’s just getting a lot of press pressure for a return because they’re the english press and he’s the country’s keeper. Just let it run its course. Don’t read the papers.
Shit. I’ve written too much again.
