Lotus

I think if Debuchey hadn't cocked up and HBA had bothered his arse to move another 10-15 yards we could've held onto the 1-0 long enough to see Hull have to come out to us more. Then i think the space would have been there. Pardew will have to work hard to remedy it because Pienaar and Baines are going to running at Debuchey full on for 90 minutes, that's obvious. Sissoko and HBA will need to help him. We do seem frightfully limited when we move away from plan A though, must be said!

Saturday's result against Hull was awful. There were some positives to our play though imo. We played some nice balls along the deck into Cabaye through the middle. Suprised me as the passes were actually quite long and i thought risky but we were quite accurate with them. They cut out a fair bit of the Hull side. Some of our football was definitely better. There were moments of moving the ball around well, quick passing, pulling their players about and dragging them from their positions. I understood what we were doing when we were playing it around at the back. We weren't being aimless and showy or having a lack of ideas, we were trying to drag them out, to invite them to press a little higher so we could pass the ball into the space they'd vacate to do that. Hull were so compacted around the width of their box i understood sometime you have to try long shots and see if anything falls for us. It did fall for us, twice. Our problems were (as i saw it): 1) We rarely got any real width. A Debuchey cut back, occasional left footed cross from Remy/Santon. Not enough. If a team compacts the way Hull did we needed to go down the flanks effectively. We didn't. Part of that is only having 1 player out 4 on their natural foot. 2) I was worried that if played a 4-3-3 we would lack the tactical discipline to make it work. The Villa performance made me think i'd misjudged that. The Hull one made me think i hadn't. Anita played it well but both Sissoko and Cabaye left too much space between them when we didn't have the ball. They didn't play with the necessary discipline/intelligence to make it work (against Hull). Also, our wide forwards did not track their FBs. 3) Lack of intensity. We were lacklustre after 20 minutes in the 1st half and came out slow again in the 2nd. Pardew said it was a bad day at the office. Every team can have those. It makes me hopefull that he wants to stick with the system and some of our ideas but just improve upon them. When he made subs and we started changing formation we just fell apart. Bad squad depth as well as a bad plan B. There was plenty wrong with Saturday. Plenty. But, there were also some good things that i think have been overshadowed. I hope we can reduce the mistakes, both individual (see Debuchey) and system/formation (see lack of width and midfield players 30 yards from one another) and improve on what we started to do well, some decent passing and at least 20 minutes of good movement!!! From what i've seen so far, that's still our best 11 to play Everton, such is our dirth of options.

Pass it. Yep. Pass it to players running into the spaces that Hull left by crowding him out. Hardly rocket science is it?

Thought he was ok today. Some nice things at times. Some others not so good. A hugely crowded midfield isn't really going to be right space for him to play though tbf. I thought he should have dropped deeper and made up the numbers today and then either him or Sissoko could have ghosted forward when it looked promising.

Seriously i don't think the rest were that bad.... but Debuchy was f*cking horrific. He's the main reason we lost today and i'm in a vile mood, thanks a lot you french t***. MYM and Colo were terrible too. I really don't think they were..... neither were to blame for any of the goals.... there were all Debuchy's fault.... the first two were due to his awful positioning and they both should have been picked up by him and even the third he was awful for and the midfield not picking up Aluko if he wasn't playing we win today IMO. I honestly couldn't blame Colo or MYM for any of the goals. MYM invited pressure tbh and Santon was often well out of position when we lost the ball. Bollocks. Nah, it takes more than 1 out of a back 4 having a bad day to be THAT all over the place. The whole backline was defending alone all game, which makes it look worse. Nope. Anita was dropping into positions when one of the back 4 would go for a run around. Aye. As intelligent as that is from Anita, he can't do it every minute. Then his FBs need to think about the game from the POV of being defenders 1st. Also, when MYM wandered around with the ball and lost it, who had dropped into his position? Anita, which was a good thing.

He was outdone by his RB having the worst performance i have seen in years.... nothing to do with Steve Bruce. Well, tbf. Targeting Debuchey was a fairly obvious option. We're playing 4-3-3 with a narrow midfield and only HBA to help him out. It's going to happen a lot because, for the oppostion it works.

Thought he played well today. Aware, quick responses. Good team player.

Seriously i don't think the rest were that bad.... but Debuchy was f*cking horrific. He's the main reason we lost today and i'm in a vile mood, thanks a lot you french t***. MYM and Colo were terrible too. I really don't think they were..... neither were to blame for any of the goals.... there were all Debuchy's fault.... the first two were due to his awful positioning and they both should have been picked up by him and even the third he was awful for and the midfield not picking up Aluko if he wasn't playing we win today IMO. I honestly couldn't blame Colo or MYM for any of the goals. MYM invited pressure tbh and Santon was often well out of position when we lost the ball. Bollocks. Nah, it takes more than 1 out of a back 4 having a bad day to be THAT all over the place. The whole backline was defending alone all game, which makes it look worse. Nope. Anita was dropping into positions when one of the back 4 would go for a run around.

Agree with that regarding lineup. They need to work considerably harder in training to try and look like a team though.

True dat !

Seriously i don't think the rest were that bad.... but Debuchy was f*cking horrific. He's the main reason we lost today and i'm in a vile mood, thanks a lot you french t***. MYM and Colo were terrible too. I really don't think they were..... neither were to blame for any of the goals.... there were all Debuchy's fault.... the first two were due to his awful positioning and they both should have been picked up by him and even the third he was awful for and the midfield not picking up Aluko if he wasn't playing we win today IMO. I honestly couldn't blame Colo or MYM for any of the goals. MYM invited pressure tbh and Santon was often well out of position when we lost the ball. Bollocks. Nah, it takes more than 1 out of a back 4 having a bad day to be THAT all over the place.

He doesn't even look Championship level with his back to goal.

We didn't capitalise on him being doubled/tripled up on at all. Weird because you know it's going to happen. I wonder why we didn't work on anything properly (or at all) midweek to exploit it.

They're are busy under-reacting.

I think we should have replaced Cabaye with Marveaux and kept our shape. Didn't help us at all changing formation. Didn't understand Tiote coming on at all.

Seriously i don't think the rest were that bad.... but Debuchy was f*cking horrific. He's the main reason we lost today and i'm in a vile mood, thanks a lot you french t***. MYM and Colo were terrible too. I really don't think they were..... neither were to blame for any of the goals.... there were all Debuchy's fault.... the first two were due to his awful positioning and they both should have been picked up by him and even the third he was awful for and the midfield not picking up Aluko if he wasn't playing we win today IMO. I honestly couldn't blame Colo or MYM for any of the goals. MYM invited pressure tbh and Santon was often well out of position when we lost the ball.

We really did play some nice stuff at times going forward but without a CF who looks truly dangerous he did look at bit impotent when in and around their box. Our back 4 was pretty ropey i must say. They had a good gameplan to deal with us. Shame we didn't have a good gameplan to deal with them.

He doesn't know how to defend. Apparently he didn't have to do it in that Mickey Mouse sham of a league. Tbf i expect more from a guy who's played International football. WHAT he was doing for the 1st goal i just don't know. I know he didn't get much support (well next to none) from HBA today but you have to expect that with a 4-3-3. It's just the way he would go into midfield or central leaving his wing completely exposed that baffled. What was even stranger is that we had players there already but he still went walkabout.

Weird lapses of concentration today. He really had no idea what he was meant to be doing at times.

We did really struggle to hold shape today.

FYP

Who said otherwise?

No, he had plenty of good games in the season we came 5th. You look silly saying otherwise. Hope he adapts and improves as it will benefit everyone.

They use chalk lines. The ones they use to mark carpet before they cut that. Pretty accurate tbh.