Kyle Walker, John Stones and Nico Otamendi have not yet appeared in the Hague for the crimes against humanity they committed on Saturday before Fabian Delph has tried to wipe out a bunch of, admittedly, sour faced Bluemooners whose sense of entitlement would embarrass many at OT. Delph was at fault today but he isn't a criminal; in fact he's an honest and very decent guy doing his best out of position because Mendy is injured. Mendy is actually not a drama quuen or "sick note" but a professional who's unlucky enough to have suffered a second serious injury in two seasons. KdB made his first start of the PL season and Danilo only his second and Sergio and David returned from injury. None of them had their finest game but I'm sure that if we try hard enough we might be able to think of a reason. Ferna is still injured and we "only" had Gundogan in that position because Pep didn't hold Jorginho with a gun to the head until he agreed to sign. In addition to those who usually act as convenient scapegoats we have a number of players who are not in their best form, Bernardo being one of them at the moment and Raheem wasn't at his best today. The result is that our passing was not as crisp as usual and went astray more than a little, we could not play those balls in the inside forward channels to get Leroy or Raheem behind them and we certainly never had our full backs overlapping, which was such a part of our game last season.
So, the team lost for the third time in four games and we are now down to third. This is disappointing but what is ridiculously childish is the reaction of some of our fair weather fans who react like spoilt brats and go on as though the players had lost deliberately just to insult them personally. Then they make the discovery that Pep is to "blame" as well, and that we are a mid-table team at best! The team is out of form, it isn't playing well and I don't know when we'll get back to normal but we will. If the cost of two poor games is that someone else wins the title we'll have to accept that they deserve it.