Rasiak-9-

We do this far too often. Give up on actually keeping the ball and just go backs-to-the-wall. Which suits teams like Villa down to the ground.

Good grief Hooivelds having a shocker.

Shaw does brilliantly bailing out both CBs

Bloody hell I know Villa have a reputation for pessimism but sheesh.

People are way too polarised on Lambert. We've got one camp that seems to think he's little more than a talentless try-hard clogger who can only score headers and boot it in in the abysmal lower leagues and others who think he could play for England. He's not bad He's not brilliant He's just...y'know...good.

We're not even playing terribly, the truth is simply that Chelsea are at their best. Fraid there'll still be a few of those this season where the opponents are better than us and are just going at 100%

mm. This is where our defence comes unstuck. Great in the air and fighting for the second ball but when top-notch attacking players run at them one-twoing it quickly we haven't got enough technical tacklers (if that is a phrase...you know what i mean anyway) to win the ball. Hazard and Mata ghosted past them far too easily. I mean I know its hard against the very best attackers but...meh maybe I'm being too critical. Thinking aloud here.

Boruc looking solid and physical. Good stuff. The natural ability has always been there.

Regardless of the credit of getting a point at Stoke, you will never, NEVER see a team make less of having a man advantage than we did yesterday. Wack it forward and get it wacked straight back. We just didn't even try to keep the ball towards the end of the match. Defending like what you do for the last 30-60 seconds, not for the last 20 minutes. Even more scandalous was the fact that with the game at 3-3 with seven minutes to go we could have just as easily have gone for the winner as Stoke. We just cannot react to goals and the change of tactics that come from teams. It can manifest itself the way it did against Sunderland/Fulham, with us just having no idea how to break a team down that goes backs-to-the-wall and does so quite well and it can manifest itself like it did against Stoke with the opposition reacting better to at least 5 of the 6 goals that went in at either end yesterday.

I just think we'll be outscored. 2-4 imo 1-0, 1-1, 1-2, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4.

Yoshidas been brilliant of late but CANNOT play full-back.

This will go so, so wrong.

Diame would have been perfect. Like Michu we had our chance and blew it, especially having been promoted a month or so earlier than West Ham.

I'd be gobsmacked if we win this one, but don't forget how often Stoke's dropped points at home have come against seemingly weaker teams. QPR took 6 points off them last season, Wigan and Bolton took 4. They do take their foot off the gas against lower teams sometimes. The key to this game is how quickly we can counter-attack. Stoke are strong but slow, if we take half an hour to get the ball forward and allow them to get men behind the ball we'll end up with the same problem that we had against Fulham and Sunderland, which amounted in all of 0 goals from open play in 180 minutes of football. No point trying to go toe-to-toe with them in a brawl, we'll need to have an effective counterpunching strategy to hit them quickly when their guard is down.

Haha I have a similar video on my phone more-or-less directly behind the goal, I have to say it was very central despite being well-struck! Better keepers would arguably have saved it and I'm not sure Schwarzer didn't get two hands to it!

Thread title ain't true. Check the stats on Football365. We're 2 points better off in fact.

Great suggestion and good timing!

A true box-to-box midfielder. Someone in the Bastian Schweinsteiger mould, an old school central midfielder who can actually link the defence to the attack through the middle of the park, arrive late in the box, shoot from distance as well as get stuck in and win it and give it. The main problem with us at the moment is that we don't have any central midfielders. We have two good defensive midfielders who can't attack and three good attacking midfielders who can't defend. I'd give anything to have somehow screenshotted the moment against Sunderland with about 15 minutes to go when our shape/formation LITERALLY changed to a 5-0-5 as Schneiderlin won the ball and immediately rolled it back to Fonte with no pressure on the ball or any real reason to hit it long. Immediately Cork and Schneiderlin dropped back to receive a square ball and Ramirez/Punch/De Ridder just ran up level with Lambert with no-one taking any real creative responsibility. Obviously the ball was hit long and Sunderland quickly regained possession in the middle of the park with no pressure on the ball. Footballing "courage" isn't just about effort/running around and putting your body on the line when winning the ball back, its also about everyone in the team taking responsibility to use the ball as constructively as possible going forward. We need a real leader in central midfield who can do this. Possibly even more than a centre-back. Like I've said previously, if we concede the opening goal against Fulham tomorrow, the stats so far say that 8 times out of 9 we've already lost the game.

I'm not one but I'd be curious as to what you think is the right style for a well-dressed clued up lad. Spit it out. Not that I have a pot to **** in nor would choose to dust off hundreds of pounds if I had them on clothing.

I should also mention that in Lambert's defence, we won't get the most out of him by relying on him too much. The problem against Sunderland was that the midfield had no movement whatsoever, no-one could beat a player or so much as play a half decent one-two or really do anything constructive with the ball from an attacking point of view. Far too often our midfielders gave the ball to a team-mate with an attitude of "its your problem now" rather than instantly thinking about how to support that player and actually trying to use the ball constructively and creatively. One example of this was that we hit the ball forward to Lambert time and again regardless of whether he was marked or whether or not he actually might be in a position to get a mismatch with one of the full-backs. I will happily concede that against Sunderland a lot of that wasn't Lambert's fault as an individual.

Don't worry pal you're not alone. I've been very critical of Lambert recently. Granted its not entirely his fault as he's had no service (certainly didn't against Sunderland), but his complete lack of mobility means that regardless of how good a finisher he is if you do get him up against centre-backs that can beat him comfortably in the air then he is rendered useless unless we can have players in midfield who can beat/one-two it past players and get to the byeline. Otherwise Lambert really is little more than a target-man. I think the biggest sign though that demonstrates how much we've overrated Lambert though is the absolute fury from our fanbase when he is compared to Grant Holt, as if even the comparison with a player who naturally we feel is in comparison, a talentless lower-league clogger who scores headers is utterly outrageous. We've even had a few people on here say that he could make it for England. Lambert is what he is, a decent lower-end Premiership player, no less but really no more. He'll get about 10-12 this season which is a respectable return and currently probably does just about still merit a start. However, he simply has to put more effort in and start coming up with the goods. 5 goals from open play so far this season is hardly setting the league alight.

It is only similar for Wigan, aside from their victory against Reading in which they came from a goal down to win, but apart from them, even Reading and QPR have managed to gain more points than us having conceded the opener and done so in quite a few games. We've conceded the opening goal in 9 games this season and 8 times out of those 9 we haven't been able to salvage a single point. That should be a concern. Conceding the opener should not mean that the game is as good as lost 90% of the time. We obviously do have a weakness in terms of teams finding it easy to defend a lead against us.

Villa aside we have lost EVERY game in which we've conceded the opening goal. Worrying. Very worrying.

Back to the 4-5-1 plznthx. Put Guly in for Mayuka with a view to bringing Mayuka/De Ridder off the bench to attack tired legs after about 60-odd minutes.

What we need is a REAL dribbler/street footballer type like Taarabt at QPR. Literally everyone on our team is a defensively-minded player than offers nothing much going forward APART from the designated front 4 of the 4-5-1. When those front 4 fail we end up being totally screwed and end up playing hoofball regardless of whether Lambert can actually win a header against the Cuellars/Osheas of this world. No-one apart from Puncheon has the ability to really run at a player and beat them (and he failed miserably at that today). Lallana can twist and turn but can't beat a player one-on-one. Ramirez sort of can when at his best but doesn't really have the pace to burn them and sprint through on goal. If 1) The target man is ineffective as he's owned by the two centre-halves. 2) No-one is capable of/is willing to shoot from distance. 3) No-one can really take defenders on. Then it will be VERY easy for a lot of teams to get behind the ball and close down space in order to one-nil us like Sunderland did today.