Mick

I agreed with most of that but you lost it with the last line, we played forwards today who were good enough to piss all over Reading, we lost it because we didn't bring them into the game, getting 2 forward players will not change that.

A year ago you thought we should get more forwards instead of defenders, today we had good forwards but didn't use them. It doesn't matter who you play up front if you don't give them the ball in the danger area.

We played better when we brought on some width.

blueyes.gif I couldn't argue with that.

You brought him into it.

You probably think that we need more forwards, I'm sure that was what you were saying last year. A year ago we had Rossi and Duff up front, today we had Martins and Owen but didn't get the best out of them because of the way the team was set out, not because of who played up front.

What was our problem a year ago?

I've seen your reply to Bagio, you're all about point scoring on here regardless of the facts. Nobody is claiming that our defensive record has improved but some can see the problem with the tactics, you can't.

Agreed, it's the tactics that's wrong now, not the players in defence.

I agree that we should be trying to keep a clean sheet, I just don't think we should disrupt the team against Reading to attempt to do that. I also think that Allardyce does think that keeping a clean sheet is more important than scoring, he's virtually said it in the quotes I've seen.

Pointless question, you know the answer.

Who said Allardyce would change a winning home team for away games?

The point about 20 games since we've kept a clean sheet proves that it's not as important as scoring, we've won in those 20 games without keeping the score down to zero. Keeping a clean sheet gets you 1 point, scoring more than the opposition gets you 3.

I've been to more away recently than home, how many have you been to?

We can't keep changing the defence, I think our away problems come from the other changes, anyway, Roz was shocking against Derby so he might not have been any better today.

Think about it, he wanted 0-0, not 1-1. We played Reading today, a team who were struggling before they played us yet we changed our team to stop them from scoring. Getting beat away from home is the main problem, not letting in a goal.

Thats bullshit I'm not sure that it is bullshit, a lot has been said before the game about us trying to keep a clean sheet today and our team was changed in attempt to keep the clean sheet.

Do people not start threads when we've won saying how good we are?

We haven't learned from our mistakes so far, don't hold your breath.

Allardyce must have been in a tiny minority if he thought that we were going to do much with the team he put out today. I'm sure if we'd gone out against Reading the way we went out against Spurs then the result would have been different. Football is a simple game, you play to your strengths, we seem to forget that and change things away from home when we're playing teams we should be pissing on.

Too many people who voted seem to have missed at least half of our games.

How?

To be fair to Martins, he didn't have much of a chance because of the way the team was set up.