Kiko, Hughes, Dawson, Foster superb displays. Sarr still our danger man but his final ball was poor today. Considering they're third in the league I reckon there wasn't much between us both today. Pereyra good lord he's so frustrating, Wellbeck no better. Pedro showed up well against Brentford and needs a chance.
Watford weren't that bad, Filbert! Very harsh, considering all players have had minimal pre-season after an exceptionally long break. Anyway, a much better game than the Villa and Norwich matches.
I actually thought Troy played well today, held off Evans most the game, won his headers, won some fouls, played it off to runners nicely. Pereyra- yeah not good. Would rather the hard working, high energy Pussetto get a chance. Or Wellbeck, who I feel is getting more of a hard time than deserved, it’s so much harder proving yourself with a few random minutes here and there. With 9 subs would absolutely want to see Pedro on the bench.
yeah when holebas came on I was surprised (and concerned when I realised he was taking corners), but he was throwing the ball into the box well I love holebas but didn’t really expect to see him on the pitch again
**** Mariappa for that god awful og against Brighton when that was literally the only way they were ever going to score a goal.
Yeah, we were quite good, Leicester not at their best, but it wasn't a shambles. Best game to watch of the restart so far
My thoughts... - Both sides had chances to win it. - Pereyra should have buried his chance right at the end of the first half. Totally inefffectual today. May as well have not been playing. Great player on his day but way too inconsistent and he does not put his body on the line for the team. Would be happy to replace him with a less talented but more comitted winger. - Brilliant save from Foster to deny Demarai Gray. - Capoue and Hughes excellent. - Love Capoue's hair - Rather than just punting the ball down the right flank, we need more creativity when looking to create chances. Teams know that Sarr is our main outlet. - Fabulous strike from Chilwell, though Mariappa gave him too much space. Chiwell loves to cut in a shoot like that. Poor defensive work, though this aside we were pretty good defensively today. - Wonderful overhead kick from Dawson. - Solid first point. Will happily take this. A fair result for both teams. Chilwell is incorrect when he said in the post-match interview that Leicester were much better. - Arsenal are absolutely ****.
So we have had a global plague, a Tory government paying people not to work and stay at home but the most amazing and weird thing that has happened this year is we scored from a corner
We were alright, not great. Some understandable rustiness. I think most of us would take a point against 3rd place, especially when it’s a 93rd minute equaliser. Unfortunately Arsenal have shattered my good mood by contriving to lose to Brighton.
Our game was only the second 1-1 draw ever in the Premier league with both goals scored on or after the 90th minute, the other game where the same happened was Arsenal v Liverpool April 2011.
I would certainly consider that a point gained today. Would have taken a point before the game and that feeling was emphasised further after 94 minutes. Thankfully Dawson popped up with a remarkable centre-half goal, probably the best since Cathcart against Birmingham in the Championship, although from memory, Angela did score a rather nice goal against Forest I think it was. It would have been an injustice had we lost today. We created several very good opportunities, forcing good saves from Schmeichel on at least two occasions. Leicester never got a shot on target until the last few minutes, although we got lucky when Albrighton's shot hit the inside of the post and went away from the goal, but the follow-up produced an excellent save from Foster. Leicester second on target shot produced their goal in the 91st minute. Seemed like a certain, unfair, defeat at that stage, but for once we struck back in the most unlikely of circumstances. I thought Hughes was excellent. Foster produced one amazing save, but was a spectator for most of the match. The defence was solid, although Kabs' early touches were of a Sunday league level. That's the best performance from Dawson since he signed though. We've got to scrap this out. It's not going to be pretty, but we're playing clubs of a similar ability to us in the main. Only City and Chelsea to really worry about in the run in. There's no reason to think we couldn't get points of all the other sides. Still 4 more wins needed to survive. It's a tall order considering we've only won 6 from 30. That's a staggeringly poor return. But it's looking likely you will not require 40 points to stay up this season, so we may get by with 3 wins and a couple of draws.
This is my first post on here in quite some time because I’m a fair-weather fan, and we didn’t pick up any points whatsoever in April or May; shameful. Anyway, if Palace stays the way it does, it’s been a pretty solid weekend for us, despite how much more useful it would have been if Arsenal had managed to avoid utterly embarrassing themselves. On the subject of Pereyra, he continues to let himself down entirely and I cannot for the life of me understand how he still receives a start. Pussetto might be lightweight, and fail to beat a man (not that he’s been given much opportunity to demonstrate the contrary) but I don’t think that necessarily matters that much. No, he’s not about to beat a man, cut in and whip a 30-yard curler into the far corner, but let’s be honest: neither is Pereyra. Not for some years now, anyway. What Pussetto does do is work hard; very hard. He literally won us a point at Spurs through it. What Nigel should be doing is adapting our play to take advantage of that attribute of his, with him on the pitch. It can’t be worse than having the ghost of Roberto Pereyra shuffling about, continuously leaving us with 10 1/2 men on the field from the get go. Probably the biggest individual tragedy of going down, if it did somehow end up happening, would be missing out on seeing what a full season of Sarr, having acclimatised fully to the league and possibly even with some kind of improvement in the players alongside him, would look like.
For a team that high in the league, Leicester were remarkably one dimensional - long early ball to vardy and hope he can get clear. Repeat
No wonder they were doing so badly before he came back just before lockdown. Unlike ours, their Pereira is a big miss too lol
Pretty sure Foster tipped Albrighton's onto the post too, which is a really quite incredible 30 seconds of action with the follow up save from Maddison.
Burnley are away to Man City At 8pm on Monday, this must give us a good chance of getting something from next Thursdays game, they also have injury and June 30th contract problems!
I'm all for giving JP a go here and there, did well when he came on in the friendly against Brentford (yeah, I know it means nothing, but why give him a go there if you're not planning to ease him into the squad?). Gray is a fish out of water as a striker in this set-up, but what about out wide? Can't be any worse than Pereyra was today
We need Dawson as our back-up right-back, whether that involves shuffling the pack a bit in the defence or not (Cathcart is a very similar player to him, and has spent large parts of this season next to Kabasele, so it's not as if it'll cause much disruption shifting Dawson to RB anyway)
Not a sitter by any means, but with his quality, you'd rather have him in that situation than anyone else
Hopefully with Burnley having some big lads in their team, we'll use Dawson instead of Mapps as our 2nd choice RB when Femenia comes off
Lets face it, it was a good time to play leicester before they get back into their stride. I doubt Rodgers would swap many of our players for his. Once again we gave away a crucial goal in the last few minutes. We really need to analyse this problem from a tactical point of view and sort it out. The reality is we are 1 point away from relegation and in a 4 way battle to avoid the 2 remaining relegation spots. If we don't win one of our next two games things will get increasingly doomladen as we hurtle towards the final 2 games without the cushion we need. We now have 6 games to get the points we need and those 6 games will be over in 24 days. This is gonna happen very fast and if we don't get right it's gonna be very painful.
Deeney's role in the side is not to "hold off" Evans, a defender, is it? Or to win some free kicks, or to play it off to someone? That might be OK if we had a goalscorer playing alongside him, but we havn't. Surely his role is to score some goals or, at least, cause the defenders some problems. His lack of pace reduces the effectiveness of Sarr's pace, because Sarr has no target. But, to be honest, I am not really sure what Deeney's role is because he just isn't doing anything quite well enough. But, to be fair, he was trying and putting in the effort and didn't do much wrong, but he just doesn't do enough right, in my view. I agree with the rest of your post though. I think Pearson is sending the wrong message to the squad when he continues to pick Pererya. The bloke shows such poor attitude, such disinterest, such disdain for the club, what will other players be thinking as they sit on the bench or not even in the matchday squad? I'm frustrated because I feel we have a few players on the fringe that could put themselves about a bit up front, with extra pace and a little bit of unpredictability that makes defenders less comfortable which encourages mistakes. And Pedro would be one of those players.
When Brighton won I was gutted but in hindsight it’s a good point after Muff and WHAM results. Thoughts: - totally bizarre experience. Such an important game (as they all are) with so much at stake but felt like a training match. - apart from the Dawson goal I can’t say I enjoyed it. It just heightened my feelings of stress and anxiety. Can’t wait for the season to finish. - lots of silly mistakes, remember a few from Kabs early on but both sides gave possession away with errors - actually I did enjoy HUGHES gutsy performance - and I did also enjoy Capouse’s sublime pass to Sarr - I thought Deeney was alright, he has his limitations but did win a lot of headers and knock ons. - Pereya frustration as others have said. The thing I noticed was in one of the drink breaks NP was giving instructions to Pereyra and Masina and Pereya just looked bored and disinterested. I want to fall back in love with Bobby P but don’t know if I can ever trust him again - thought Masina and Dawson had a good game - although some of Sarrs deliveries not spot on he’s nevertheless fresh and exciting and England’s left back didn’t have a clue against him. As someone else mentioned we have to stay up to see what he can develop into ( who the f is Lukebakio) - I felt dirty wanting Palace to win especially when I saw Zaha’s goofy startled face
I had high hopes for Wellbeck, that when he was fit he would really add something to the team. But yesterday he contributed less than the frustrating RP he replaced.
Pereyra was virtually nonexistent yesterday, and against Burnley he will surely be invisible- given their physical style. Surely Wellbeck should be given a chance from the start.
No mention of Doucoure I see Pob, however I am not surprised as his contribution was highly forgettable. He gets such high praise from the football media, however IMO the truth is he has been a classic one season wonder for us so far and has done very little since. I think he actually gives the ball away time and time again as his passing is woeful, and he is also forever being caught on the ball. He does have the odd flash of genius, but all in all most of the time he is more of a hindrance to the team than an asset.
