My take on last night (for what its worth)

Sure most of this has been said last night so apologies for repetition.

Firstly the positives:
(i) One bad performance doesn't make us a bad side or Lambo a bad manager. It will happen and in this league if it happens we will lose but its not the end of the world.
(ii) The gap to the bottom three remains 11 points. You could therefore look at it by saying another round of fixtures has passed, the teams at the bottom have gained no ground and we are a step closer to survival.
(iii) I feel that last nights debacle means that we are more likely to turn up this saturday now, a game that I think a few (both players and crowd) might otherwise have been a bit compacent about.
(iv) Even when we played utterly sh*te we still created two very good chances and on another day might have been in that game had they gone in.

Thats about it, however, as last night's "performance" was clearly the worst of the season and arguably the worst i've seen under Lambert. Whats even more annoying is that despite the "O'Neill effect" I actually think Sunderland are very average and had we turned up we could have got something. As it was though it was one average prem team working really hard against another average prem team having an absolute mare throughout. Thoughts:

(i) The formation was completely wrong. They play with two wide men so playing a narrow diamond was a very strange tactic to employ.

(ii) If you are going to play a narrow diamond then you really need your full backs to push on but Naughton doesn't do that when he plays at left back and Martin has stopped as well now he has completely lost his confidence after being skinned by premiership wingers every week for the last month and a half. We really, really need Tierney or drury back at left back so naughts can go right back and Martin back to the bench. Did Lambert say anything about why tierney was not in the squad last night?

(iii) Andrew Crofts = Gary Holt. Great lad, great attitude but out of his depth in the prem. His head is always down when he receives the ball. Really should not be starting for us any more.

(iv) Surman and Wes both struggled. I normally like to see Wes on the pitch all the time but it was right to take him off last night as he kept getting caught on the ball which was setting them off on counter attacks.

(v) Johnson was pathetic. One game does not make a bad player but my god he was bad last night. The second goal he was at fault THREE times in the space of about 5 mins. i don't know what his brief was last night. if it was to pick up Sessignon then he failed miserably. If it was to sit and protect the back 4 then he also failed miserably. Terrible.

(vi) When we play without Fox no midfielder comes to collect the ball from the centre backs. This, coupled with the fact that we had no wingers and the full backs would not push forward meant there was no outlet and we had to resort to hoofing to Holt and Mozza.

Anyway we move on. If we win on Saturday last night will be but a distant memory. i really don't want to see Crofts or Martin in that starting line up on Saturday and would like to see Pilks, Bennett and Fox come in.

Posted By: Jim on February 2nd 2012 at 10:39:06

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