Having watched most of it yesterday then, highlights and comment on MOTD, the overriding factor is the levels of fitness are not good enough. There were comments when Hughes was at Barcelona that he was pretty poor at training, whilst I was in the happy camp to give him a go especially as the one thing we looked like we needed was the team getting a kick in the pants and he seems to have the demenor to do that, the niggle in the back of the mind was the Barcelona attitude.
Yesterday when Redmond nicked the ball and was off up the pitch and no bugger went with him was astounding and shocking.
Another observation and this probably also points to a lack of fitness, on more than one occasion Yoshida, who always reads the game well, felt the need to come forward out of defence as Fulham surged forward in the vain hope of pausing them enough for his lacklustre team mates to get back in support. Can’t get up the pitch fast enough to support an attack, can’t get back fast enough to defend.
Everyone knows that to play and maintain a pressing game you have to be damn fit, when Poch was with us Jack Cork said to survive one of his training sessions you need 2 hearts.
As for persisting with Charlie Austin as everyone says he is a passenger, there was one moment when he got the ball, controlled it and laid it off to another player successfully, the fact that I can recall it magnifies just how little he did for 78 minutes. Obafemi might be green but he was more of a threat in his 17 minutes on the pitch, one thing is for certain, when Redmond tore up the pitch on his own, young Obafemi would have been there as an option.
