My heart sank when I saw the team sheet, tbh. I look at the attacking midfield we are capable of producing and can see goals going in from everywhere. Then I see the manager put Paulsen and Lucas together, with Agger at left back, and I wonder whether we'll draw 1-1.
Questions for Roy:
1. What is wrong with Aurelio? You signed him, so why aren't you playing him? Is he really worse than a right-footed, retreaded center back with no pace suffering from concussion?
2. Two defensive midfielders failed for us for an entire season last season. Why are we persisting with it? We do not have the creativity in the middle nor the quality out wide to play this way! We must be more dynamic in midfield which is why SG must be CM. And if you feel we aren't capable of passing it around in the center of the park, why did we loan out Aquilani? All we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
3. Hurry up and play Pacheco already! Ok, that's not a question. Even if he turns out to be complete sh!t he'll give us some creativity for a change (and I don't think too many people expect him to be complete sh!t). How many times yesterday was Torres pointing at space that his team mates were not running into?
Roy gave WBA credit for being a good team after the game, which he had to because they pressed us. But a "good team"? They couldn't stay up the last time they made the EPL, and they shipped 6 goals to Chelsea. We should not have come out to defend against this team, especially at Anfield. Just ask yourself what might have happened had the ref blown Skrtel for pulling their man down in the box in the first half?
I'm with the idea that we don't want to lose games, and I can see that Roy is still tinkering with the squad so I can't really criticize him; we won thanks to his tactical change, and at the end of the day that is the most important thing. But I do think we can front up a bit more and take the game to the opposition.
Manager rating: 6/10. Wasn't aggressive enough, which put us under pressure, particularly at left back. Made the right call to switch Kuyt to the left, which ultimately won us the game.
Team rating: 5/10. Poor down the left for the entire first half, didn't challenge the 'keeper enough (shots at goal count was 7 to their 11 *after* the Torres goal), no possession in the middle of the park, kicked away possession too much by hoofing it forward without a capable target man. Jova had a bad game, that's not Roy's fault, but he was playing as though he expected Agger to be pushing up like a wingback on the overlap the way Johnson was. Agger. Oh, come on! I also thought Stevie was poor; he missed a fair number of passes, and managed to look worse than Lucas in the second half. Again, this is not the fault of the manager. More looking the mirror questioning why you're not good enough!
I'm not as upset as this post probably sounds. We did ok; got some things wrong, got some things right. We can certainly improve, and hopefully Roy has a better handle on things now.
