Dreadful, yet still better in many respects

Positives: I thought that shape suited us better. Dimi was excellent, he's still young and the defensive positioning will come. We were much more effective in midfield, created plenty of chances and had more shots than they did.

Negatives: we shoot, we don't score. We can't defend. Bali was a shadow of the player I thought he was though to be fair he's lacking match practice. Idah should be on loan as he's a way off a Prem player just now. I tend to agree that we might have hung on to Hugill and sent Idah out rather than the other way around. And yet again they picked up the ball in their own half and we never went for those niggly little fouls everyone else does at this level - it's not like the championship where we could out-football people, we need to be more street-smart as literally every other prem team is. And we need to play out from the back less often as we're still putting ourselves under unnecessary pressure all the time doing it.

Next game: I'd like to see us try this shape again, the 4-3-3 simply isn't working for us and our most expensively-rated player (Todd) doesn't fit in to it. Or back to 4-2-3-1 which honestly I quite like the idea of with the current squad. But if we do play four at the back I think Andy O and Kabak should be our CBs and for a run of games even if Everton goes badly. I'd start Dimi over Williams, keeping Williams as backup for him and Max.

Oh, and Farke most definitely IN, and Rupp does not deserve his escaped goat status at all. And I tend to agree with Worthing about Billy a bit, but time will tell.

Posted By: Old Man, Sep 22, 10:55:47