This is gonna be short & sweet...
- Job done, difficult ground, shite atmosphere, potential banana skin etc... We don't half contrive to make things difficult for ourselves sometimes. Another sloppy set-piece goal, and let's not kid ourselves, they could have had more from them. Why didn't Kyrgiakos start? I presume Rafa wanted to get more games into the Agger-Skrtel partnership, but an ugly away tie in Europe against a team whose only route to goal is through set-pieces would have been tailor made for the big Greek I'd have thought. If Skrtel's injured properly, he comes back in for the game against Big Sam's Blackburn, which should suit him.
- Carra at right-back against shit sides I'm afraid to say is horrible. Scream, receive, passit back to where it came from times infinity. It breaks my heart watching that. No coincidence that our first goal came as a result of him getting to the byline for the first time in the game. Johnson would have made a huge difference going forward. As we've pointed out though, he'll make it more difficult to keep up our decent clean sheet record though. Gonna be interesting to see how Rafa approaches this one.
- Decent performances from Babel, Insua, Skrtel, Lucas, Gerrard, and the excellent Mascherano. N'Gog might as well not have played, cos he clearly didn't fancy it out there. Smart play from Lucas for the thrid goal; recognising Levy had withdran his defensive midfielder two minutes prior and replaced him with a striker, Lucas advanced into the defensive midfield void, a couple of neat passes later and it's 3.
- All in all, a decent result, with more difficult games to come. The fucking tempo has to be raised though, that was diabolically slow at times Tonight. I've said it a million times; you don't necessarily need quick players, you need quick ball movement. Any side can defend against a team who are just shifting the ball sideways with zero penetration or imagination. We need to raise the tempo, take more risks, and knock the ball about at a higher rate than what we're currently doing. I know the pitch was shite, but for 45 minutes we made that more difficult than it could and should have been.
- Anything else?
- Job done, difficult ground, shite atmosphere, potential banana skin etc... We don't half contrive to make things difficult for ourselves sometimes. Another sloppy set-piece goal, and let's not kid ourselves, they could have had more from them. Why didn't Kyrgiakos start? I presume Rafa wanted to get more games into the Agger-Skrtel partnership, but an ugly away tie in Europe against a team whose only route to goal is through set-pieces would have been tailor made for the big Greek I'd have thought. If Skrtel's injured properly, he comes back in for the game against Big Sam's Blackburn, which should suit him.
- Carra at right-back against shit sides I'm afraid to say is horrible. Scream, receive, passit back to where it came from times infinity. It breaks my heart watching that. No coincidence that our first goal came as a result of him getting to the byline for the first time in the game. Johnson would have made a huge difference going forward. As we've pointed out though, he'll make it more difficult to keep up our decent clean sheet record though. Gonna be interesting to see how Rafa approaches this one.
- Decent performances from Babel, Insua, Skrtel, Lucas, Gerrard, and the excellent Mascherano. N'Gog might as well not have played, cos he clearly didn't fancy it out there. Smart play from Lucas for the thrid goal; recognising Levy had withdran his defensive midfielder two minutes prior and replaced him with a striker, Lucas advanced into the defensive midfield void, a couple of neat passes later and it's 3.
- All in all, a decent result, with more difficult games to come. The fucking tempo has to be raised though, that was diabolically slow at times Tonight. I've said it a million times; you don't necessarily need quick players, you need quick ball movement. Any side can defend against a team who are just shifting the ball sideways with zero penetration or imagination. We need to raise the tempo, take more risks, and knock the ball about at a higher rate than what we're currently doing. I know the pitch was shite, but for 45 minutes we made that more difficult than it could and should have been.
- Anything else?
