When I started this blogging nonsense The Man from Eastlower gave me one piece of advice. Never blog straight after a game when you are cross. I'm going to ignore that advice! I'm not cross. I'm furious. My fury is not really isolated to tonight's game. Week in week out this side has been pushing me closer to the edge, further along, and tonight I think the end of the tether has been reached. I've had enough.
Tonight's game was a classic. Two teams playing at the top of their game but I only care about one team. I thought we played well. Better than for a long time. We looked full of desire and that cannot be faulted. However, yet again we squandered another lead and that's why it's hard to accept.
Defensively we are shit. There is no other word for it. We have twice let two goal leads slip to the spuds this season because we are clueless. Defending should start at the front yet ours doesn't even start at the back. We can argue all night long about whether the spuds goals were great undefendable goals or not but it doesn't change the fact that at 3-1 up away from home you should be able to shut up shop. Moments after the penalty they carved us open on the other side and we were lucky not to go 4-3 down. SZEZ balls saved another late on.
I'm reading Paul Merson's book at the moment and I've just read that in 1991 The Arsenal could get a battering, Ian Wright would break away and score and the opposition's heads would drop as they knew Dixon, Winterburn, Adams and Bould would shut up shop protected by the midfield. It's not a new idea is it? Defending a lead to win a game? When we score now the opposition don't think they have no chance. They know we panic and they go for it and usually score themselves. Get Steve Bould away from the Under 18s and get him in to teach us how to bloody defend properly.
The title was there for the taking but as it stands we have slipped to 3rd and the FA have asked our players to present Man U with the trophy on a bloody big plate. Man U are average at best and yet we can't pull ourselves above that. 8 points from the last 18 is crap and the fact Man U aren't out of reach by now proves they are nothing special.
I really don't know what else to say. The same old problems are there. I could just cut and paste the same blog every week. We have blown it. It was in our hands and now we are 3rd. You lose the right to draw away if you get 3 draws at home on the spin so I'd say a draw tonight having been 3-1 up is rubbish.
There, never write a blog when you're cross (or furious!)
Hiya, nice furious blog there :)
ReplyDeleteI can definitely agree with your point that defending starts from the front. I actually isolated why this constant passing/attacking with no end product annoyed me so much. It wasn't that there was no end product, it was that the result of it more often then not (or even if it doesn't happen too often, it usually hurts us) - anyway the result of the attacking with no end product is that we give the ball away and the opposition breaks and our entire team is on the back foot. Tonight I saw plenty of instances of attacks that were well blocked by the Sp*rs, there was no options for passes on, so the ball goes out wide and back and forth for a bit and you can see players like Clichy just ran out of ideas as to what to d with it so they attempt something either foolishly or half-heartedly and the ball breaks to Sp*rs, they run with it break in numbers get a nice long crossfield ball over to the right corner of the penalty area our defenders are huffing and puffing to keep up with it all and danger is created. And so it went a few times until I found myself shouting at the screen to stop attacking we're 3-1 up keep the ball for a bit or try something different. Dont attack, and then not score and give the ball away while 8 or 9 players are in the opposite half. Clichy, although a good defender and allround quite good player, i Found, tonight was the main culprit of this. anyway that's just my 2 cents.
And yet a draw this evening would have been perfectly acceptable had we dispatched Sunderland and Blackburn in the manner to which we have become accustomed. We are 'inconsistent' which is actually worse than being shit:
ReplyDelete"I can take the despair; its the hope I can't stand"
And much as it pains me, Spurs are much better than they were. I don't go in for the Spud-baiting (as it tends to come back and bite one on the arse) but under Harry Redknapp (yes, tax evasion, melty bloodhound face, blah blah blah) they're a unit, they know what they're out there to achieve, they came back at us again and again this evening - and to be honest it could easily have been 8-7 to either side.
Brilliant game, utterly useless result for either team. But there are still twists in this title race. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we're in the right frame of mind to take advantage of them. This saddens me :(