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This is horrific namedropping so I apologise, but AP was at Wentworth last Friday to play golf and he said that the most important thing they were trying to do differently this season was to play "expansively" (his word). I think that today proved that is actually the case. Almost every time today and particularly before the sending off, with the exception of Williamson, every time there was a choice between a short ball and a long ball, the short ball was chosen

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He's been saying it for ages, just nobody believes him because he hasn't been able to implement it. Understandable I suppose.

its actually been happening this season tbf the problem has more been defending that any of our ability to go forward.

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Deserves a lot of credit today, before the sending off we played some of our best stuff in ages. After that we dug in really well and never gave up on trying to win the match even down to ten men against one of the teams he's normally terrified of. Tiote as captain was fantastic IMO (aside from his part in the red/pen of course) and I can't think of a single player that didn't play well. Only slight complaint I'd have is why we switched Ben Arfa and Gouffran for about two minutes which they promptly profited from. Bit baffling that.

 

Well done, more of this please. :thup:

 

Agree with most of this. One word of caution though, most of our joy came from lofted diagonal balls over the top, which seems to be our default attacking tactic, so I'm not entirely convinced we had an attacking plan to suit this game in particular, it was more the pressure we put them under that told imo.

 

Much better though, I genuinely enjoyed the first half, and I haven't said that about any 45 mins for what feels like a year.

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We looked well set up from the off today and it made such a difference. I hope after this performance, people will stop saying our players aren't good enough, while we had 11 men we bossed one of the title contenders in most areas of the pitch. We have some very good players, and if we can get them motivated and set up right, we are European contenders.

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We looked well set up from the off today and it made such a difference. I hope after this performance, people will stop saying our players aren't good enough, while we had 11 men we bossed one of the title contenders in most areas of the pitch. We have some very good players, and if we can get them motivated and set up right, we are European contenders.

 

:thup:. If we had a manager like Martinez or Pochettino I'd believe we could be European contenders.

 

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Guest icemanblue

His players gave him a proper performance today. Doesn't often get the organisational side right either, but he definitely did today. Impressed with our spirit and effort. Hope we see more of the same boer the next few games.

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Couldn't believe my eyes when I checked the score to see we'd scored again, having gone a man down. As soon as I saw Yanga had been dismissed, I was fully expecting a defeat - or barely a 1-1 draw. Extremely refreshing to see we continued to take the game to the opposition, even with ten men. Especially at home.

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Extremely refreshing to see we continued to take the game to the opposition, even with ten men. Especially at home.

 

We didn't really. After the goal we stopped attacking bar the odd counter which always fizzled out into nothing.

 

Fair enough. As I say - I didn't see it (hate missing all these Saturday games (live); I'm so pleased the Mackems is on Sunday).

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First time in months that we looked like a proper organised, cohesive unit. We had a gameplan, we had pace and movement and looked (largely) composed at the back. Even if that Suarez free-kick had gone in then my opinion on what I saw in the preceding 90 minutes wouldn't have changed. I don't expect to win every week, I don't expect to rattle good teams each week but I do expect certain things such as effort, organisation and discernible tactics and we got that today for the full 90. The game changed on the pen and we adapted our tactics accordingly while still posing a threat to them.

 

Well done to the boss and the players, more of that please.  :)

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First time in months that we looked like a proper organised, cohesive unit. We had a gameplan, we had pace and movement and looked (largely) composed at the back. Even if that Suarez free-kick had gone in then my opinion on what I saw in the preceding 90 minutes wouldn't have changed. I don't expect to win every week, I don't expect to rattle good teams each week but I do expect certain things such as effort, organisation and discernible tactics and we got that today for the full 90. The game changed on the pen and we adapted our tactics accordingly while still posing a threat to them.

 

Well done to the boss and the players, more of that please.  :)

 

:thup: it's not like we're asking for much more than ideas, intent and professionalism from manager to players is it?

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He's been saying it for ages, just nobody believes him because he hasn't been able to implement it. Understandable I suppose.

 

Yip! I think people might slowly start to do that u-turn though, I thought it was impossible but the future is looking brighter and brighter, can't see how they can keep going in the other direction! This team is going places!

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