Zezti
Player Valuation: £70m
Fully agree.Absolutely awful team selection. So bad that I don't know where to start.
1) at least 1 of Keane or Mina have to play for their physical presence and ability to play out from the back. Passing out from the back was abysmal today, especially Holgate. This makes it hard to even play your way into the game as the ball would not stick at all. Even when we have struggled in the past at least when we go back to Keane/Mina we keep the ball fairly well and try to rebuild possession.
2) James Rodriguez can't play with Coleman. Lots of cogs cease to operate when we lineup with this combination. James can't help out defensively enough, in turn Coleman (who already is regressing in quality) gets caught out more and more. This drags Doucoure into helping out down right channel far too much and the midfield crumbles.
3) Not sure why we had so many central type players on the pitch tonight. Gomes, Siggurdson, Davies, James, Doucoure. No width whatsoever. We was destroyed down the wings all game.
We would have been better off sticking with Holgate and Godfrey RB and LB and pushing Digne up wide and Iwobi on the right or sub on for James.
Richarlison's movement all game was cack. Not once made a decent spin to try get behind. Ball to feet game doesn't suit him at all so don't know why he was playing like that.
I think Carlo wanted to rotate and manage the squad tonight far too much thinking about number of games we have to play. Can't think of any other reason he would drop both Mina and Keane.
I'm proper proper deflated after tonight's game. We always flake when we are gifted opportunities by other teams performing poorly. We never capitalise on it.
My gut feeling when watching that shambles was that we must not have prepared properly. Underestimating a lower side again, like we did against Newcastle?
It seemed like we had no idea how they would play or what to do to counter it. Letting their CM have acres of space while lack of pace on the wings was what killed us the most and we had Gylfi and James out there. Should have been Richy/King/Iwobi with one of Gylfi, James or Gomes behind them with the usual Davies/Doucoure behind that.
Holgate was nothing short of a disaster and not for the first time this season, and Coleman was having rings ran around him.
Everything about it was wrong.
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