Just back at my father's house in Crook, County Durham

Sat in the Milburn stand today due to a lack of desire in paying ?40 to see a glorified game of Subbuteo, which is what I witnessed during that classic 2-2 come back in 04-05.

I thought that today was a big improvement, performance wise at least. We dominated large spells of possession in the second half and looked very lively down the wings which coincides with the fact that Pilks, Bennett, Naughton and Drury all played to high standards, Drury in particular was excellent (until Pardew stuck Ameobi on him and hit him with long balls) bombing up and down the wing, producing good crosses/though balls and most importantly dominating Ben Arfa in one on one situations.

Both CB's were poor today, I've made my feelings about Ward's shortcomings very apparent in the last couple of weeks so won't ramble on (what about the rest of this post, said the reader) although I will admit to concern over his status as captain today, surely Lambert doesn't want to build the defence arounf him? Hopefully it was only due to a percieved lack of alternative options. Ayala needs to get fit asap while Ryan Bennett needs to step up to the task of being considered a starting option, ?3 million is a lot of money for a club of our size to spend on a player whose only task is to give the directors some company. Russell Martin might not be good enough at RB but has looked good enough at CB where he doesn't have to put in so much running, hopefully he's reconsidered in place of Ward.

Our midfield has a lot of quality but lacks consistency overall, we also still failed to win 50/50's and second balls today (barring the 50-60 minute period where our midfield sweeped up a lot of loose passes), despite having a man advantage in the middle of the park. Jonny Howson has a good footballing brain and made a lot of clever runs today, but his touch doesn't look good enough for this level of football and will need to improve, hopefully that's just a case of him needing games to get sharp. Fox and Surman were both fairly annonymous in the first half but stepped their performances up in the second forty five minutes, they both have been guilty of drifting in and out of games on far too many occasions this season which is going to cost us against the better teams in this league, I also still think that we need a genuine CDM brought in to replace Fox.

Morison had one of his poor days again, although he was fairly isolated, Lambert left it far too late to bring on Holt who could have offered the support needed, unfortunately that's the fine line between dominating the midfield and having enough viable attacking options in the final third of the pitch. I must say that I almost have zero faith in Moro when it comes to one on one situations, that fluffed breakaway and shot at the end of todays match is an all too familiar feature of the big 'Welshmen's' game.

Overall an encouraging performance which showed signs of improvement, but we need to pick up three points against Wolves, every player needs to put in a shift seeing as Wolves will be fighting for their lives, despite their poor quality. If we struggle next weekend then I might start to believe that Lambert has drained every last drop of available quality from this squad, that would be a big worry going into next season, reinforcements of the required standard might be needed in large quantities.

Posted By: Common Sense Police on March 18th 2012 at 21:29:25

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