Turgid Ivic-style stuff. Should have been 2 or 3 goals up if we were more alert at the sharp end of the pitch - but didn’t and Millwall grew into it. Second half was woeful fare. Neither team deserved the win. Ekong continues to look iffy - his distribution is utter garbage. Masina is just a wimp isn’t he? Has no interest in getting stuck in or pushing down the wing. Zinckernagel was very poor too when he came on - willing to overlook that though given we are asking a lot of him to come on and affect things in a game like that. Needs to start games now to get into his rhythm. Gray just utterly dreadful again. Skying efforts from 7-8 yards and just floundering around for 63 mins. Why oh why play him when he’s in such poor form and showing a lack of ability? Xisco has to take a large portion of the blame for that performance. Dodgy line-up choices and worrying tactics - far too much long-ball and nothing pro-active to change the game beyond like-for-like subs. Sierralta one of the few positives on display and he continues to look like a decent find for once at CB. Sarr I thought did what he could on that pitch and with those two clowns inside of him for the most part.
Don't think 1 player (Gray) is to blame for our away form a19tgg. It hasn't been good all season. When he came off tonight it wasn't much better, pretty scrappy stuff.
Kiko and Masina hardly crossed the halfway line, why? Why did we not play it down the wings instead of long hopeful punts into the middle?
Can understand the long-ball with the pitch how it was, but that's all I'll defend Xisco for, that was pretty turgid stuff
Strange to see a similar shape to last week given it didn't work, and compounded by fielding a weaker XI given Gray was in for JP. Game played out just as many suspected, didn't expect it to be pretty. Pitch was a leveller. Usual slog as like many games in this league, plenty of effort, very little quality, sh1te pitch. We had 15 shots to their 4 but only 1 or 2 half chances at best. No spark or creativity to unlock them and they were happy to sit in and play long. Only positives; better first half than last week (not that hard to do), another 90min for Hughes, we didn't lose. Gray useless, and you can tell certain players have no faith in him holding the ball up, making a decent pass etc. meh.
Yup. Looks more and more like a liability every game. A professional footballer who routinely cannot pass the ball to a teammate. Works hard and looks like a good egg, but shockingly bad distribution.
I sort of look at this result in s vacum of sorts. Was it bad? YES. Neither side wanted it and that pitch was god awful, so was the football. We hugged and puffed, passed in backwards and didn't really threaten especially second half. Gray was beyond shyte and Zinc had a poor gane, Hughes ineffective but both out of positions. No threat up top but defensively did well. We didn't lose at least, and up to 2nd be in temporary. Here is another way you could look at it. Had that game not been postponed, and that was the result on that day, we would still be where we are now. It's not an excuse for such half arsed display I know, but we are still in the pack. Must improve against QPR Monday night at the Vic. We don't play at the weekend so the table will look alot different before we play them. Poor game, average result.
I watched the Millwall Ifollow. They were VERY happy with a point and said we deserved to win by more than a couple.
I’m utterly convinced that Gino has laid down the law that he paid £18m for him and writes out a cheque for £250k+ a month to him - so he doesn’t want him permanently sat on the sidelines. It is literally the only excuse.
At least Xisco didn't play Sarr on the left this time. We haven't assembled a squad for 4-4-2, but we're going to play it anyway! As soon as Sema isn't playing the whole formation is wonky as we can only attack down one side. Masina isn't very good going forward and so we play a centre midfielder in front of him. So far Xisco has played the same formation for every minute of every game. And he only makes like for like substitutions. He has demonstrated no ability to react in game to what the opposition are doing or even to the players we have available.
We go to bed tonight with a point more than we had when we woke up this morning, That’s about all there is to say really.
Take the point, could of easy been one of those nights. Terrible pitch and conditions prevented us having any quality. We do seem to need the opposition to make a mistake or give us a penalty to break them down. Lacked that zip in our play. You could see what they wanted to do but it just took that extra touch which slowed it down or mis controlled final touches before getting that final ball in. Needed that goal in the first half when we were applying all the pressure. Think they could still be playing this time tomorrow and not score. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
We're just not good enough for the top two. Sure the home form convinces you otherwise, but tonight reaffirmed it for me. You can't win promotion without any strikers. We've got a good side until it comes to putting the ball in the net. Gray was yet again an epic fail. A swing and a miss and a swing and a balloon over the bar sums up his night's work. The pitch was atrocious but we created enough chances in that first half to have been cruising. 7 goals in 13 away games shows our problems. Unless we sign a striker we're not going up. Play offs yes, but then it becomes a lottery which I don't think we'll get through. It's the top two or nothing and after 25 games, we're not good enough. It's strange to say that when we're actually 2nd right now, but Swansea have 2 games in hand and Brentford 3 in hand. Once those are played out we'll be 4th. Frustrating, disappointing but highly predictable. We're not going up with Gray leading the line.
A good thing is he does at least bring on subs with 30 mins to go, the bad thing is the two players should have started
After 26 games 3 of our players have scored more than 1 goal from open play. Our '1st choice strikers' have 2 goals from open play between them this season. Gray 1 goal in 774 minutes and Deeney 1 goal from open play in 1077 minutes. Thats right, 1 goal from open play in over a thousand championship minutes!! One thousand!!!!! Also, we never win when Deeney says publicly before a match that we have to win. 0-0 at Millwall is pretty much our natural level this season. We are unlikely to get promoted but have a decent chance of getting into the play offs. We are a goal scoring striker short of a promotion team.
We just aren’t good enough ..... we don’t have a goal scoring striker who’s any sort of threat. However we also don’t have any midfield creativity either so chances are at a premium too . No way we are going up with this side and Gino won’t roll the dice. Failure to get promoted will by catastrophic financially and the circle will be complete in Ginos ownership era
