Back from Yorkshire, and following a good night's sleep..........
I think we need 2 CBs at least.
Perry reads the game well, but cannot keep up with it all the time. Yesterday, he was great in the first half, but as the game went on he faded and just couldn't maintain the pace.
Thomas is good in the air. But that's it. Put the ball on the deck and he's lost.......
Lancashire may become a good CB, but not this season.
The midfield were pretty awful yesterday, but I feel this was down to AP's tactics which seemed rather naive.
He effectively removed them from the game himself for 53 minutes.
When we managed to get the ball, we hoofed it up the park in the air to the big guys at the front. They won nothing, mainly because they were both going for the same ball all the time and inevitably, the Terriers regained possession and launched another attack.
After 53 minutes of this, AP decided a different approach was required and so brought on Thomson, who tried to exploit his pace playing wide. This didn't work because Huddersfield read the tactic well; every time the ball went to JT, there were 2 and sometimes 3 players on him all the time. He had no support with him and so was dispossessed.
Jacob Mellis was brought on and was obviously told by AP to make runs through the centre of midfield and get into space, which he did reasonably well, however nobody was on his wavelength and so possession ended up being wasted yet again.
I'm sure that AP now realises that playing RL and Raz together doesn't work unless you are playing with wingers who are putting crosses into the box from the byline (remember that???).
If we are playing the direct ball we need a nippy striker to play with RL. Another poster suggested Lallana. I think that may work quite well, but my concern is that AL is a bit too lightweight for that role; this is another physical league and the ref yesterday demonstrated this by giving nothing for hard, crunching tackles that would make premiership prima donnas soil their underwear.
Huddersfield looked pretty good yesterday and will most likely be up amongst the play off places; the main reason for this was that they appeared very organised and seemed to have a keen understanding of the gameplan which was backed up by communication.
We would do well to learn from them, because at this level, those are attributes that will separate the wheat from the chaff.....
I am not overly disappointed by yesterday's result.
We are a transitional team.
We cannot expect anything just yet. It will take time for things to start to gel, and I am sure that they will.
I would like to think that we could get 6 points from the next 2 league games but realistically, I would be over the moon if we got 4.
