Rafa and the boys need to take a long hard look

January 22, 2006

at their approach and attitide towards this game.

We've had an amazing, championship winning form run ver the last 12, full of confidence, smothering teams and pushing forward at all opportunity's. We were like a different side today, everyone just seemed to freeze. Against that 11, we should have taken the game to them. Yes we had more possession, but were so scared with the ball, 75% of passes went astray, truly woeful, while first touches were as bad and movement off the ball non existent.

It's not as easy to say we were the better team and be happy with that. We dropped 3 points today, which would have gained us ground on the leaders and leapfrogged our main contenders for second. We were a team going into the game full of confidence against a team on the ropes. There's only one this cost us and that was our attitude. I'm afraid to day its how we seem to approach most games against the big teams in the prem. It was the same against Utd at home and Chelsea too. Sooner or later, a sucker goal will hit you if you try and play out nil-nils. As the game wore on I was waiting for it to happen as our decision making was so indecisive and nervous, I think it's the worst we've played all season.

Yes we probably were the better team, but go back and watch the game again without the interference of passion and while Utd we undoubtly schite, we were not much better. Simple passes were poor, alonso, Momo and Gerrard particularly poor with no conviction, or when we had the ball we were afraid to make any runs off it, Crouch and Cisse in particular and we were way too deep.

We've done brilliantly for the last few months, which is why this was particularly galling. Play that game 10 times and we'd win it 9 times if we showed no fear as per recently. As per the title, I think we'd do well to take a look at our attitude for that game, the fear and nerves in our game were the blatant result of that. I just hope it doesn't knock us too much over coming months.

Flip Martian · January 22, 2006

This post is not viewable to guests.

You can sign in to your account at the login page here