Gallowgate Toon

His position worked well with Cisse, someone out of those two positions needs to have some presence to keep the ball.

Nice and tight defensively and a tad more cohesive going forward. Good stuff.

Dropping Shelvey is not good. He's not been great since West Brom but he generally sets something up for our forwards or makes something happen on some sort of basis most games. How the fuck Gini and, to a lesser extent, Sissoko get away with it week on week is beyond me.

Garbage? He's an average Premier League winger with the potential to be a good one, but time's fast running out. Technically OK, can use both feet, has put in some good crosses for us, got some athleticism about him and already scored 2 more for us than Sissoko and also set up another 2 in that time (IIRC?). To be honest, I think he and Shelvey are decent PL players for a midtable side but they're evidently not enough for us in our current plight. Neither good enough as footballers for it nor were they the required characters or positions.

At dribbling. Nowt else, though.

It's just that simple. Even working with Rafa fucking Benitez can't get this lot of twats going. There was a point today where he just looked totally exasperated already.

Didn't Rafa even explicitly say a few weeks back that we needed to stop giving away stupid free kicks too?

Him and Mitro together. Fuck Gini as a 10, he's probably already agreed to go elsewhere, in all likelihood.

Was f***ing amateur hour at the back for the full game. It's f***ing pathetic, every f***ing week. That was as bad a defensive performance as I've seen, there was no doubling up on wide players and the central defenders might as well have stayed in the dressing room. Surprising since Rafa's meant to be big on organising shape and being compact. That was about as compact as Katie Price's minge. The players have to want to put the work in. Rafa should forget the arm-round-the-shoulder stuff and realise the majority of this lot need a fucking kicking. It's not confidence with our lot, there's no will because they think they're going to piss off to another club after this.

He always does some good stuff in a game, to be fair to him.

I noticed this today, when he has space he's never in a hurry to run with the ball for example. Never takes anyone on despite being a very good dribbler with a bit of pace. Just constantly plays within himself.

Considering there were 2 weeks of prep, it was pretty bad. The set up just seemed awful. Cisse couldn't/can't hold the ball up, Sissoko has no clue as a LW, Wijnaldum started OK and then did his usual disappearing shit. Townsend took a while to get into it. I couldn't see a cohesive plan to start. Again, his subs and Plans B/C seemed much better. Think he might be putting too much faith in players being badly managed, tbh. He'll have analysed us to death and know our weaknesses but might think they performed poorly for other reasons. Simple fact is, too many of them are either shit, gutless or down-right thick.

Like your average winger, very frustrating and dodgy with his decision-making. At least he tried to be direct.

Commentator said Norwich have conceded most goals from crosses this season. If that's true then it was a very poor decision not to start him, unless he was carrying a slight knock.

I'm starting to feel this way about him too. Has so much obvious ability and seemingly chooses not to use it.

Once again, our players prove themselves to be the most gutless and idiotic bunch in the league. So many fucking thick decisions.

Mbemba can fucking do one after today.

Another thick free kick. Fuck the fuck off.

Saivet looked decent in his last game, no? Reckon it's a more 'no risk' approach with midfield, for him.

Going for counter attacking, then.

The 'she knew what she was doing' shtick is starting to absolutely do my head in, now. Is it just me, or is it mainly girls saying it too? Seems to be that way on my social media at least.

0-2.

It's going to be very intriguing seeing what he does with the flanks for the next one. I expect our lot to be much more up for it, I think the point and situation from the weekend will provide a big psychological boost. Hopefully the Sissoko on the left experiment is done for home games (at the very least), he just doesn't look to have the qualities to play that side. What I'm slightly encouraged by is that Sunderland are probably the worst sort of opponent for us - they defend deep, they're compact, they choke space and they've got 2 really physical players in front of an already big defence. Norwich don't have that, Swansea don't have that, Villa don't have that and neither do Palace. I expect us to compete much better in the middle of the park against them and, as they're more open sides, see more space to attack. We've got some decent technical ability in the team so I fancy us to match those teams much better and it'll be those sorts of matches where we see Benitez's tactics become more prevalent. This is far from done yet, like.

We created some opportunities. Mitro, Sissoko and Perez all had decent openings, aside from the goal. Shelvey had that free kick too.

How is it at all obvious he's 'always' going to cut inside? We've already seen he's pretty handy with his right foot when crossing. I think he shows a good mixture. He's just come back from a hamstring issue and was already lacking fitness, I don't think he's going to be at full tilt yet.