The meltdown posts are over the top. I haven’t decided who wins the best meltdown of the week yet.
Nottingham Forest were better than Burnley by every metric if you look at the stats, apart from the most important one – scoring goals. So you have to ask why we didn’t outscore them?
1st because we made a basic defensive error yet again! MGW has, Sangare has, Boly has and now Zinchenko has. Neither Nuno nor Ange made those basic errors. It happens, but it’s cost us again. They are all paid a fortune to not keep doing it, so let’s hope it’s just bad timing.
2nd reason is we had 17 shots and only scored once. I know, it’s obvious, but that means the team played plenty well enough to win if we had someone who could put the ball in the back of the net. Which brings me to my next point.
3rd, we do have a player who can put the ball in the net (well two if you count Wood who misfired today again). We have Igor Jesus who scored 2 a few days ago. Even if you agree Wood deserved to start (and he did not) why was Jesus still on the bench until so late?
Yet another manager who sits waiting to make substitutions until too late. I’m sick of it. When he finally did it we were well on top again at the end.
Why bring Jesus on after 75 minutes if Wood wasn’t cutting it, and Jesus scored twice the other night? Someone explain it to me. SO ANNOYING and exactly what Nuno Nono subs was like! Stubborn and late subs. ARRRRRGH!
My opinion is we’d have won if we had a more mobile forward. I’ve said it. Sorry Woody, but that’s what I believe. We had more possession, more shots, 90% passing accuracy, more forward passes, but no cigar.
The team should have been:
Sels
Neco, Jair / Potato, Milenkovic, Zinchenko
Luiz, Anderson, MCatee / MGW
Bakwa, Jesus, Ndoye
Notice no number 10. Pointless if your number 10 just throws away posession by poor shooting or stupid tricks. Might as well have a stronger midfield who keeps the ball and builds play.
We need to be more mobile and faster up front. And I don’t mean just one quick winger like Elanga, I mean the whole forward line.
Message to Ange: Don’t wait until the last moment to make game changing subs. And stop stubbornly sticking to out of form players. We could have the old boss back if we wanted that.