Shite though that decision at the end was, there’s no way I’m blaming Hooper for 2 more points tossed away. The reality is that we’ve let both Spurs and Chelsea do us in stoppage time this season, the dippers with just 9 minutes left to play and Arsenal with 4 minutes left to play. 3 points from 4 fucking games against our immediate rivals tells its own story.
As soon as we get put under pressure by a decent team, we crumble. The prolonged absence of Stones has been a key factor, but even without him there’s no excuse for some of the piss weak one on one defending we’ve seen in recent weeks. 10 goals conceded in the last 4 games. We finished the game today with 4 x CB’s, 2 x FB’s and 2 x DM’s on the pitch and yet we continued to let them walk through us in the middle of the park to then create overloads for their wide players to cross the ball into our box. We lost in stoppage time against the same team in almost identical fashion 2 years ago, when Kane muscled across in front of an oblivious full back to score with a header, so it was pretty fucking galling to defend just as badly again today.
The dippers scored twice at the death again this afternoon, Arsenal did the same the week before. We might still look like champions at times, but if we don’t sort this shit out whereby we look like conceding every time the opposition launches a long ball counterattack, then we won’t be for much fucking longer. I’m hoping Stones will be fit for Villa, cos, alongside Son and Salah, Ollie Watkins is a prime exponent of the art, and the way Dias and Akanji are defending at the moment, we looked ill prepared to deal with that attacking MO