I'm quite sure BRLR is referring to WBA's escape of 2004/05, Pearson was also in charge of the Southampton side who avoided relegation from the Championship on the last day in 2007/08, winning a thriller at home to Sheffield United 3-2 from 1-0 down when they were in the bottom three and their opponents were going for the play-offs. We were playing at Blackpool during that amazing final day when one out of five teams could have gone down, and we played a part as Southampton would have needed us to win if all other results went against them. But then we went down to ten men and could only get a draw to snatch probably the most undeserved play-off place by the narrowest of margins (at the expense of Wolves, who we beat 3-0 three months previously) in the history of the English football play-offs.
One thing I don't think has been mentioned - Our Set pieces were good yesterday. Obviously scored from one, and had two or three decent chances from others. Glad we seemed to have worked on this. You'd think if we could just be solid and look to score on the counter/set pieces we should be fine.
I'm not sure you can take too much from the amount of pre-restart friendlies, a few teams weren't even able to have games against other teams, or otherwise didn't publicise their prep games. We had the one game against Brentford, but more than likely had some inter-squad fixtures too
I think the tactic is now 'aim for Dawson', instead of 'aim for Deeney'. With Welbeck's aerial ability, we are now a little bit more of a threat when the ball is crossed in than we have been in years.
Edging out Wolves only for us to embarrass ourselves and get hit for 6, when have we seen that before?
It’s a sad state of affairs when your championship standard centre back is is a bigger threat from set pieces than your centre forward.
Now the plan has been announced Giraldi will see to it to make sure it doesn’t happen. We don’t do plans at WFC, but if we did, Giraldi is the only one allowed to make them.
Oh yeah, it's all opinions and I don't want to bash back and forth over it as it fine to see things differently. To answer your question though I'd say Masina's slide was unnecessary, not the attempt to block. I don't think it's ever great trade craft for a top level defender to be sliding around unless it's literally a last gasp effort. He just needed to stand up to Buendia and then would have been much better placed to react to the change in direction. By sliding like he did he was completely committed and made it far easier for Buendia than it needed to be.
Kiko did have trouble to start with against Hernandez as did Janmaat at their place. The turn and shot was good though tbf - maybe Masina could have done better but still well taken. We have been targeting Dawson all season when he plays. Just came off for once !
He's a Spurs fan and a bitter one at that. In fairness I felt quick sick watching the first half so it was a relief to concentrate on something else