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The morning after defeat the night before.
A mini thread of my thoughts from the game. When you lose, natural reaction can be to focus on what went wrong, there were though things in how we approached the game I thought were positive. All of that said, ‘no Wilf, no points’.
A mini thread of my thoughts from the game. When you lose, natural reaction can be to focus on what went wrong, there were though things in how we approached the game I thought were positive. All of that said, ‘no Wilf, no points’.
Let’s get the elephant in the room dealt with first. I would make the change on Roy soon. Not because of last night or Burnley. Simply, If Roy isn’t going to be the manager next season & the manager you want is available, make the change & move forward.
Onto last night & here comes what might be interpreted as a defence of Roy. Too often, the criticism is that Hodgson is too safe, doesn’t make changes to his line-up & doesn’t make substitions early enough in games. He respects the point ahead of trying to win games.
We can’t say that of last night. Changes at the back, midfield & attack. Subs made early & all aimed at creating / scoring. Tactics switched to suit Benteke when he came on. The irony, we got beat trying to win a game as opposed to accepting the point.
Schlupp up top......not overly a fan of it but he was there to stretch Newcastle so they couldn’t play a high line & compact the midfield. After 15 mins, we settled & started to see a lot of the ball, especially Eze. Schlupp / Roy can take a lot of credit for that.
No Wilf, no points....but last night was different, we did create chances against a solid / defensive team. This wasn’t us getting goal scoring opportunities as we were playing on the counter. We looked to play out, keeping the ball, we stayed patient & really should have scored.
I’ve seen posts describing last night as a dreadful performance, I really don’t think it was, that said, you can see where we are fragile. If Sakho or Tomkins is fit, Dann shouldn’t be in ahead of either. Jimmy Mac & Kouyate do not offer enough creativity in the centre.
Townsend offered little creativity last night meaning it fell on Eze as the only 1 of the midfield 4 to get us up the pitch & look after the ball. I said it earlier in the week, Eze is a breath of fresh air but he’s a better player with Jairo on the pitch.
PVA once again worked hard to get outside Eze as he naturally cut inside & from early on, I thought this was when we were at our most dangerous. For all of that, we started with Ayew & Schlupp up top, both work hard but that isn’t a Premier League front line.
I spoke with a Newcastle journo yesterday, he’s watched every game this season. He described them as solid, functional, little creativity but ‘when you’ve got Callum Wilson you can always win a game’. We simply didn’t have that type of player on the pitch last night.
Valencia aside, wherever Batshuayi has gone he has scored goals. For me, if we are playing 2 up front then he has to be playing. For sure there are things in general play he doesn’t do but we’ve enough players on the pitch to counter that.
A bad week for Palace, we’ve definitely not been at our best but we really should have come out of both games with points. The positive, we’ve created chances, the even bigger positive, Wilf is back next week! I’m hoping the manager is brave & goes out again to win the game.
