we clearly expected Orient not to threaten

and that whatever happened we could just score freely. Neither happened, and the team wasn't up to any variant on the expectation.
When the midfield is flat as last night, (I'm ignoring the idea that it was a cubic zirconium with Oli in the hole) you realise that the players are all too similar - when the diamond is working with their defined roles they look different.
When the flat midfield comes in then there is not enough protection of the back 4 - our worse defensive performance in ages. Martin looked petrified, Doc looked like old Doc (best moments were when he was up front) etc etc
And the midfield didn't create moving forward either so nothing in either direction, other than giving the ball away a lot.
The strikers didn't feed each other at all - so even though there were 2 + 1 they were all just trying to do the same thing. Martin tried to create more, but it was a lost cause. I don't think McNamee would have made much of a difference - his performance on Saturday was poor and other than just seeming a bit different I don't think he added much on coming on.
A terrible performance and let's hope it was just one of those nights - I know we've had a couple of hiccups in recent games but this was the first time I thought we actually looked clueless.

Posted By: camcan, Apr 14, 09:35:40