What went wrong?

iamborome

iamborome

Well-known member
1. Stoke closed us down and harassed us whenever we had the ball - gave us no room to play. This upset our passing game. We got rushed into making passes which often went astray. This also affected out confidence and the quality of our play dipped.

2. We sat off and gave them time on the ball. They started to play like we do most of the time - keeping the ball, dominating the pay and grinding us down.

3. We lacked energy. Stoke outcompeted us and were first to every ball.

We need to put that right on Saturday.
 
Bad day at the office but we still got a point and it might have been more if Chuba had scored another of our early chances and/or Steffen saves their goal on the stroke of HT.

They used a high press on us but our "Plan B" of chipped balls to Chuba didn't work nor did "Plan C" shuffling Akpom up top in place of Archer (not sure why we persist with this I'd rather we put Forss on as a straight swap for Archer)

Hey ho.
 
I suppose the only positive to take last night, was we never got beat, good teams always find a way to at least salvage a point, so we dust ourselves down and resume normal service against Preston.
 
The water on the pitch stopped the ball moving quickly, which is an important aspect of our play. The players did not adjust.
The crowd was quite flat, the players weren't their recent selves; Stoke were pretty good/as good as anything to come here this season. The substitutions were strange.
47 points from the last available 60 puts things in perspective.
Nobody is going to roll over when they play us and if we are not at our best we will have difficult days.
I'm still hugely looking forward to saturday and the rest of the season.
 
iamborome said:
1. Stoke closed us down and harassed us whenever we had the ball - gave us no room to play. This upset our passing game. We got rushed into making passes which often went astray. This also affected out confidence and the quality of our play dipped.

2. We sat off and gave them time on the ball. They started to play like we do most of the time - keeping the ball, dominating the pay and grinding us down.

3. We lacked energy. Stoke outcompeted us and were first to every ball.

We need to put that right on Saturday.
Click to expand...
The team’s passing game couldn’t handle the soggy pitch and Stoke one upped us on game management..
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Nothing "went wrong". We drew 1-1 with a very good Stoke side who came with a plan and executed it to perfection. I don't think anyone would have complained had one of those late chances gone in and they left with 3 points.

We can't play with 8/9 out of 10 performances every game, nobody does that, not Man City, Arsenal, Real Madrid etc. Given the second half performance on Saturday, it is fair to assume that the lads just couldn't find that extra push in their legs.

I'll take a draw and move into the weekend with another good chance to get 3 points on the board.
 
Exactly nothing “went wrong”


Oh so we cant improve then? Is the above what Carrick says to the players, or do they examine the game and work out how they can do better?
 
We did look like we didn't pick up as many second balls as usual. We've been used to building pressure by picking up a lot of those loose balls in the midfield but it was noticeable how much quicker they were at picking up possession in the midfield. Hackney/Howson/Barlaser all struggled in that middle.

Stoke played really well. Closed us down quickly and didn't let us play the lovely football we've got used to. Well done to them.

We've done well to get a point. Move on. There's another 27 points to play for.
 
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