Gallowgate Toon

2 fucking great finishes.

It's the most physically intense league in the world. No team is winning without being at 90% physically, regardless of tactical approach.

A functioning right winger in that first half and I'm convinced we win.

Maybe harsh but he looked fucking tiny for the last 2 goals.

Fucking shambles second half, like. They were 2 passes and in on goal far too many times. Easy balls over the press too.

Clearly reserving fitness. A shame that wingers covering is a fucking massive thing for us.

One sweeping pass aside, god awful.

Looked back to his old self physically. Still a pleasure to watch him glide past players even when we're shite.

Massive space in front of defence is a team shape thing though. A DM doesn't magically cover 2 spaces at once. We will always be front foot against those sides, it's worked very well for nearly 2 years.

Didn't deserve to be on the losing side.

Felt like we were pretty in control for 35 minutes, bar a few breaks. We were finding loads of gaps behind them. They equalise and it all changes. Another game where we vastly underperform in the final third too.

I don't think box-to-box in itself is a problem if the team shape is good but Bruno/Miley/Longstaff is fairly powerduff from an athleticism perspective. Slow defence compounded the problem.

In short, the club need to back him this window. He's more than held his end of the bargain up until now. Talk of overly intensive styles etc. is still a red herring to me. Plenty of other sides play the way we do. We do need to work on game management though. I know he likes the Keegan stuff but going kamikaze at 1-1 is daft.

Plus, Barnes has very solid assists to his name. Miggy is abysmal in that category.

Over the last 5 seasons, Barnes has scored more goals with his left foot than Miggy has with every body part and he's not even left-footed. No idea if this is true but I bet it's not far off.

I don't think we've even been that much of a high press team since earlier this calendar year. Swear our final third turnovers and distance covered had dropped. Something we employ more as a tactic now than the whole philosophy.

That header Should've had a tap-in had Bruno squared it, tbf.

He had about 4 injuries and one of the 'back ups' was Pau Torres.

We've not always played the same under Howe so it just simply isn't true that he can only play one way. We weren't a pressing machine in his first half season, we were much more counter-focused and were excellent at it.

He was fine at what he's meant to be fine at but should've been off 5/10 earlier when it was obvious we needed to mix it up.

Very shot-shy today. 28 touches, a lot of them around the edge of the box, but 0 shots. Sure he scored some pingers at Sociedad but all of his goals here bar Brentford have been smooth finishes rather than anything outside the area. West Ham lob too, I guess.

Been let down by our attackers in recent away games as well. Not even a sniff of a half chance being converted. We're definitely not playing amazing going forward or owt but creating enough to at least do better than that pitiful output. Across the last few league away games, we've amassed about 5xg and missed 8 'big chances' while only scoring 1. Compounded by lack of available rotation and we're leaking goals we can't afford to concede.

I'm so at the point of wanting to see him dropped (if we had a proper replacement at the mo), as much as it pains me.

Miss seeing this lad in full flow. Really hope we can get him to 100% over the next couple of weeks.

Possession football still requires energy, running, and speed. Creative players need others to make runs for them to actually be creative. We've blown away some teams sit back this season already. To me, it seems to be a confidence thing. The board need to back him in January.