Vester
Well-Known Member
First of all, 1 point away at Newcastle is not the end of the world. The result in itself is not particularly good but not a disaster.
With that said, I think its a few things thats a bit worrying:
1 - We are the only team Newcastle have faced this season without them looking significantly worse than their opponent (even if they have managed to steal some decent result so far).
2 - I love Pep (and who am I to question him), but if Sean Dyche was our manager, this is the starting XI he would have chosen today, trying to nick a result. We left all our midfielders that have something to offer in attack on the bench and unsurprisingly we as a result had little to nothing to offer in terms of goal threat. Pep will figure it out going forward, he always does. But I think we showed a little to much respect for Newcastles counter threat, and was willing to give up far too much attacking power of our own trying to reduce it. In my opinion, we should have picked a side trying to go at them instead. We weren't playing prime Barcelona away, we were playing a Newcastle side that got destroyed by Fulham last week and that was missing their best attacker.
Luckily, we have a few "easy" (on paper) fixturers going forward which should give us some time figuring out how to make a Rodri-less team work. Whatever the game plan was today, it wasn't it.
And please, let's stop with this silly not starting Foden thing we are doing. We are already missing key players, we cant keep putting our player of the season on the bench.
With that said, I think its a few things thats a bit worrying:
1 - We are the only team Newcastle have faced this season without them looking significantly worse than their opponent (even if they have managed to steal some decent result so far).
2 - I love Pep (and who am I to question him), but if Sean Dyche was our manager, this is the starting XI he would have chosen today, trying to nick a result. We left all our midfielders that have something to offer in attack on the bench and unsurprisingly we as a result had little to nothing to offer in terms of goal threat. Pep will figure it out going forward, he always does. But I think we showed a little to much respect for Newcastles counter threat, and was willing to give up far too much attacking power of our own trying to reduce it. In my opinion, we should have picked a side trying to go at them instead. We weren't playing prime Barcelona away, we were playing a Newcastle side that got destroyed by Fulham last week and that was missing their best attacker.
Luckily, we have a few "easy" (on paper) fixturers going forward which should give us some time figuring out how to make a Rodri-less team work. Whatever the game plan was today, it wasn't it.
And please, let's stop with this silly not starting Foden thing we are doing. We are already missing key players, we cant keep putting our player of the season on the bench.