Gallowgate Toon

West Brom are as close to a Premiership side as we'll see this season (bar if we play a PL side in the cup) and if i'm honest i thought we were lucky to get a draw. What i saw last night was one team of teamplayers, another one full of individuals led by a manager who quite obviously is not in as much control as we'd like to think. We've been lucky this season to rely on an individual moment of quality against lesser teams but last night was a massive wake up call. Defensively we were reminiscent of last season, lack of protection to the back 4 and feathers ruffled when a big powerful striker comes to play. Simpson was quite simply awful and he was playing against a player who would maybe only just scrape it into a low Premiership side. Colo and Taylor defended well when the ball was on the deck particularly Colo who i thought was impressive with one-on-one situations but when it was in the air neither dealt with the situation particularly well but a lot of their problems stemmed from the midfield, which i'll get onto next. Enrique, played alright but seemed to feel the pressure. The midfield was absolutely dire, West Brom knew this and set up perfectly to get us at our most vulnerable. They had a 5 man midfield and caught us time and time again on the counter, constantly overloading our fullbacks. This problem was caused by our particularly weak right hand side, Guthrie is not particularly quick and therefore holds no threat of counter attacking, so their fullback had no fear in getting forward. The other of West Brom's tactics was to break through the middle, on at least 20 occasions, 2 of their 3 central midfielders would burst towards our box, they were rapid and continuously left Smith and particularly Nolan for dead and they made no attempt to track them. This left Colo and Taylor with an extra man to pick up which would force one of our fullbacks to cover, leaving their man free which gave West Brom's fullbacks more incentive to get forward. This will be a massive problem if we get promoted as we will leak goals, what makes it worse though is Hughton's total lack of power and authority as Nolan is evidently a big character in the dressing room and a part of the player democracy. Everyone could see Nolan was causing us a lot of damage but Hughton was too scared to make the call and this is why he'll never be a good PL manager. I can't really complain a lot about the strikers, Shola was crap but his service was awful and Lovenkrands tried a few things but again service was so bad that it didn't make much of an impact. Quality goal, was nice to see after his family loss.

Such a shame about De La Red, very talented player imo hope he makes a return after his problem has been diagnosed. I remember watching the highlights of the game where he collapsed, it was horrific.

stop teasing man, what was hischristmas shopping ? New tracksuit for the wife, matching of course. From what i saw, he hadn't made many purchases. Presumably some shoes for a woman (unless that's his thing) as he was leaving the womens shoes section but it was sort of surreal as not one person appeared to notice him other than me and he just wandered round looking like he was about to shit himself the next time an attendant sprayed some perfume at him. Was going to go up to him and crack a joke like 'browsing for January, Chris?' but thought i might look like a bit of a tit, so let him be.

Saw Chris Hughton and his christmas shopping in John Lewis yesterday, looks strange out of a tracksuit mind.

What fucking goal...

When a player takes a pelanty and misses it, then the commentator watches the replay and says: "Well, it wasn't the greatest penalty in the World". Well of course it wasn't you cretin, that's why he missed it.

Watford are the same as most teams this division, they play some nice football until the final third, they had a few chances but today was arguably our defence's worst performance of the season.

Was the best goal i've seen at SJP.com for a long, long time. It was fantastic both the turn and finish.

They only really need a goalscorer imo. They are a perfect team until the pinnacle of that attack and i don't think Van Persie's even good enough to lead the line on a consistent basis, he's never been prolific.

Actually, Forlan had a class season tbh so he deserves to be on par like.

Utter dross? In comparison to Villa, yes. Dzeko? Having an absolute laugh. Giggs? again a load of shite. Forlan? Henry? Vidic? Basically the majority from Fabregas down are laughable compared to Villa.

I'm sorry but the fact Villa is that far down compared to some of that utter dross is ridiculous. What does the lad have to do to get the credit he deserves?

I wonder how the "offers" compared with (1) the fee we paid for him and (2) the salary he gets here. I share your scepticism there. I don't think he's changed as a player - it's the quality of the opposition that's different this season. If the only problem was mental, I'd have some faith in him adjusting to top level English football, but I think the problem is also physical. He's too slow, he's not that strong and he's poor at set pieces. Basically, Premiership strikers were able to bully him, and when they managed to turn him or get him even slightly out of position he had no hope of recovery. Surely set pieces and beasty strikers (a la Parkin) are more present in this league than the tier above, from what i've seen anyway. And of course there's a mental aspect, being clever is the biggest part of a defender's game moreso than being massive or exceptionally quick, take Micah Richards for example, he is the defender you've described above but failed miserably in the centre half role. If you're a defender that's not mentally on it, that's when you're done for. He'll now be up to speed with the English Game, which is again arguably played at a quicker pace in this league.

Cracking result for Atletico today, Aguero absolutely demolished them. He will be an awesome player.

I feel sorry for Pellegrini like, so much to think about on top of being a manager. He's going to have to do something soon though, if he wants results from Kaka, he needs to get him in the centre, he's so wasted in wide areas.

Higuain absolutely has to play, he's the future of Madrid. I like him a lot, i also like Benzema (the jury is out on him but he will do it imo). Pellegrini has so many options but he just fucks it up with his selections.

The Real formation Pellegrini plays is useless, talk about square pegs in round holes. Why is Kaka anywhere near a sideline? He should be in the middle driving Madrid forward behind the striker. You should never have a one man team but you have to build the spine around certain players. If i was Pellegrini i would go with this: Casillas Ramos Pepe Albiol Arbeloa Lass Alonso Ronaldo Kaka Marcelo? Benzema/Higuain/Raul He could even go with a diamond too, just move Ronaldo up further with the main striker and Kaka playing behind them. A good manager imo but doesn't seem to be too confident or in control.

Shame that goal wasn't allowed, cracking finish. Always good to see a player who's got so much stick play so well, respect to him.

What a f***ing run that was from Quaresma, where's all this confidence come from? Has he been playing much recently Mattis?

Quaresma just needs confidence, h's a top player when he believes in himself.

I would prefer if up until February we didn't get a PL team. If some of our players play mint, then it could bye bye to them and bye bye to our promotion campaign.

Exactly, why do people always fail to recognise this. I would agree we don't want to burn ourselves out but if you want to conserve energy then chasing the ball for one half isn't the best way to do it. Conserving energy would mean keeping the ball. Fair point, but you're going to have to run anyway however attacking means doing that defending and then running to attack then running back to defend etc.

Exactly, why do people always fail to recognise this. Because it would be nice to hand out a real battering to someone and it would send out a message, If WBA can do it, then why can't we? We have a squad that is about as small as it's ever been with virtually none of them ever playing this many games, we have no guarantee that we'll get much funding in January, we have some totally unfit key players (see Nolan) who have no replacements in-squad. Fatigue is something vastly overlooked by people at the end of a season (Villa for the latter stages of last season). If we go flat out from now till Ferbruary or March then we'll be screwed, and those 4-0 wins might start to turn into 1-0 losses especially in difficult conditions and that can potentially mean we go on a bad run and lose all our momentum. At the end of the day a 10 -0 win is 3 points and so is a 1-0 win. I don't care about West Brom, yeah they're thumping everyone etc etc but i don't see them ahead of us in the table.

Exactly, why do people always fail to recognise this.

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