Holmes_and_Watson

And sure enough. Bah! Before we could even bring on the subs.That had been coming a bit.

We passed it clear, which was good. But when it got to Alcaraz, there was no out ball. Not even for anything more direct. Just gives WBA more of a foothold, and raises the pressure on us.

A shot curls wide. Baz not in danger (nowhere near his wrists 🙂 )

Hm. Didn;t pass that one clear. Russ won;t be plaeased with that. We're dropping back. Without Smallbone, we've lost a lot of passing angles. Need to be using Sule and Fraser now to pin them back, with some of those incisive passes we know we can do.

Couldn;t quite create a chance form that, but great to see us switch down to the flanks after Smallbone has gone off, and set Fraser away on a run.

A rare mispass from us. I'm saying that's because Smallbone, the link up player is off. 🙂

Stu?

Yeah. They are subbing him. This will be interesting how we switch the style of play around.

Uh oh. An injury for Smallbone?

COYR!

And another shot, outside the box and comfortable in the end. WBA having a better spell. RM will hopefully give a team talk to get us that bit higher tempo and aticipate for the second half.

A few nearly things. Alcaraz does well, but just doesn;t pick out AA's run behind the defence. For his part, AA then doesn;t know that Sule would make a run and pass it into space for him to run onto. Smallbone, doing every job as usual, doesn;t quite have the power to get a ball into AA. When there's a chance to get it into the middle, we have to pause, as we've had to run from deep. Little things, that don;t quite click. Not that they all have to. Any one of these would give us every chance to go one up. Meanwhile, that was a decent chance for WBA.

Well now. That was two Baz passes on the riskier side. And Downes didn't get that second one and we nearly conceded. Baz hasn;t been shy in thumping it recently. When it doesn;t quite work out, we can expect pressure, and we were switched on enbough to stop that one (although had the WBA stayed on his feet, he might have had a shot away)

Lose it in the middle... boom.. Downes gets it back a second later. Often a gap in breaking up play/ getting possession and stopping attacks. Downes dowing well today, continuing his form.

Smallbone probably wasn;t the best option for that shot. But in a good place to pick up the pass from KWP. But excellent from Alcaraz from deep, making the right decision, moving clear into space, and picking out a really good pass.

I think AA realised he didn;t have the pace there, or perhaps he decided for a chip. The move up to it was excellent. A pass across picked up by Baz, a pass out to KWP who took a look, and decided possession was better. A pass back to DMC Downes, who is really solid so far. His direct ball goes to Smallbone and then directly onto the onrunning AA. A lovely mix of the possession, distribution from the keeper and incisive teamwork to create a chance. That's MartinBall working.

AA races out to get the ball from the middle, after Sule loses out on a challenge. His work rate is a massive plus.

We're in that spell where they aren;t coming onto our defence. We're generally happy to pass it around. A nice direct effort from the back gets us out of it, which is good to see. WBA have tried to use that full back gap, but haven;t been able to be accurate enough as yet. When we lost it outside their box, we had enough bodies to prevent a break. So things we've learned as the season have gone on.

Smallbone gets it away at the other end.

Nearly let them straight back in.

Get in!! Lovely pass through from Alcaraz to Stu, nice cut back towards AA. Gets to Smallbone who did really well running in to pick wqhen AA's shot was saved by the keeper's leg.

He's on 5 live sometime soon. As the show started, he was trailed as "the former Luton manager." Edit: Again as former Luton manager. He's giving an opinion on man utd. Be sure he has a great track record of dealing with any player at that level. snippets: the stats might be showing they are covering the ground, but it's not happening. It's the manager's responsibility to get what you can from the players. But there's so much else going on around the club. Expect senior players to get hold of the dressing room. Not seeing any leadership. Talks about having discipline, leadership and stability so that new players can hit the ground running, and make it clear if they are going to fit. Mentions Brighton and Brentford as examples of this stability. Nathan said that Stoke had been on a bit of a downward trend before he got there. Likewise, Southampton had lost a lot of games before they got there. The point he was making, when compared to clubs grown from a stable squad, is that it's easier to add pieces than make small changes. He had to defend himself. Someone was talking about new appointments this week. They considered these as left field choices and that Nathan and other out of work bosses were now a bit obsolete. Nathan pointed out the similarities of these coaches and the likes of himself, before having to put up with a too old joke, that was a bit uncomfortable. NJ will see himself as a data driven, modern project manager very much awaiting any left field approach to be a manager.

In a parallel world, we don't concede to 10 man wolves, NJ delivers a series of coherent press conferences, we get Bree delivering to Big Paul who gandoes on a scoring run. The confidence that gives us, keeps us up. 🙂

I'll not be convinced until Crook exclusively reveals the Irish lad is Irish...probably when he has 50 full caps.

Maybe the local girl Nathan left behind to pursue his footballing dream was a relative? I growled on my run today, in tribute. Something front footed and aggressive.