Yet again we’re starting with a massive deficit in playing Bachmann and TDB. Already 9 vs 11 against Brum with those two atrocious players. Throw in Morris, Pollock and Porto and it’s basically 6 vs 11. Easy win for Brum.
Christ that team is a shambles. Understand his hand is forced with a couple of those starters, but it shows how far we've fallen in the last couple years or so. We have the quality to hurt them in some areas. Will we though? I very much doubt it.
Yet people complain Morris is in ? Guess Sema might have been the best option but he is injured too .
Morris at least works hard and gets involved. Lewis just dosses about passing back to the goal keeper and generally has a cba attitude. I'd rather have Morris over Lewis every time. Newcastle gave us another dud to add to the collection. His glory days are long gone and he's a shadow of the player he once was even for Norwich.
Dreadfully awful game of football. Dennis thankfully still has that sort of finish in his locker, almost a second right on half time. Entertainment value is zero, but will we do a Watford second half? So far so good score wise for Clevs.
Not seen any real change in performances between Ismael and Cleverley. Only thing is we got lucky. Same shape. Same lackadaisical play. Same errors. Same problems. Bachmann with some really good box control and saves only to take the sheen off that with some very dangerous passes that he didn't get punished for. You can say it's because our confidence has been on the floor and any win is a good win. That's reasonable. But we won't get many more points if we keep playing like this. We only scored as Brum gifted us a goal and they didn't take their. Neither side looked like scoring bar defensive calamities. Just grin and bear through the Leeds game next and go from there. I'm not optimistic with what I've seen today.
OK that half was bad, they could have scored 2 or 3 of those chances, but hey, performances count for zip at this stage of the season!
Very hard work watching that. Watford gave the ball away so, so often, either through poor control or poor passing. Good job Birmingham were awful too.
Wouldn't say Clev 'passed his audition' there at all, but a win is a win at this stage in the season. A good set of results for us today as none of the other battlers won, including Huddersfield at Rotherham, so that might just be enough now, even if we were to lose all 8 remaining games
1st half better than the 2nd but i think we were a lot more direct. Didn’t really have too much empty possession and fannying around at the back. I like the intent and a good start for TC. 8 tough games left so this was a very much needed win.
Take the 1-0 scrappy win as we needed to get 3 points. Obviously didn't sound too great though and Bachmann had one of his good days. Might be the last 3 points we get for a while - or even a point.
The centre backs were excellent, Asprilla too good for them at times but his decision making was terrible and TDB is great as the 6 on the half turn. Also, in all seriousness Lewis should not be playing ahead of Morris. Neither are very good but one clearly wants to be playing for us and actually gets stuck in. I’m sure people won’t agree but I think Morris has come on leaps and bounds since last season.
Managed to get a stream working in the background for 20 mins in the second half while busy doing something else. Seemed to be wave after wave of Birmingham possession and attacking moves. We looked utterly inept.
There was one moment in the first half where Asprilla definitely should have passed to Chak, he also had that chance in the second half which he did well to fashion, a very tight angle he was obviously odds against to score from, but I wonder if it was even too tight to fashion a chance from
Marko didn't take into account that by that criteria, Brum would have started with about 5 players lol
3 points and that’s all that matters. Can’t judge clevs at all as he has basically had no time with the players. Realistically we would stand a good chance of staying up even if we get no more points this season. Would like to see us bring in some of the youngsters and freshen things up a bit.
Phew. How we needed those three points today but Birmingham (thank god) are wasteful in front of goal although credit Bachmann for making one brilliant save and denied a few other half chances. Dennis got the only goal that mattered, a delightful deeney-esque vs West Ham chip finish to give us a lead after a dreadful first 44 minutes of football. Second half went just as I expected, Brum threw everything at us and we were content to hold on. Not really much else we could of done considering our bench. However I will slate Clevs for one thing, why make the subs so late? Asprilla was clearly caked second half yet he kept him on. A lot of other results went our way with Sheff Wed getting a thrashing and Stoke losing as well as Plymouth. That has put us level on points with the mighty Sunderland, wow. Credit to the lads today who battled it out to hold on for the win, but we cannot give teams so many chances. We could of lost 3/4-1 second half but thankfully they looked just as toothless up front as we have at times this season. Tom will be happy but I am sure there are lots of things he saw we can work on in the International Break, A really tough homecoming though, Premiership chasing Leeds in his debut at the Vic under the lights. For now, we can finally enjoy a victory again. Would not really call that a manager bounce, more like a manager deflated bounce. A win is a win.
Probably tbf, that game was kind of like the Rotherham game where we were awful and got outplayed, but benefited from some abysmal finishing. Think that was more of a case of Brum losing that than us winning it if you get what I mean, but hey, 3pts is 3pts
Interestingly, with only 2 first teamers absent, we ended up with a starting XI with an average against below 24, our youngest for well over a decade
Bloomin' eck! I can hardly believe that. Clevs stated that he wanted us to play with high intensity and lots of pressing; instead we started with the most lethargic opening 20 minutes I think I've seen from us all season. We were absolutely friggin' abysmal. Truly atrocious at the start of the game and for most of the latter part of it as well. Honestly, the way we started, after 5 minutes I would have bitten your arm off for a draw. If we played like that against a side like Leeds our goal difference would be taking a huge battering. Not that it would really matter though, as the win pretty much puts the brief worries of relegation to bed. Maybe another point later on will be nice, but that should be enough. As has often been the case in our games this season it was the only moment of quality in the whole game which ended up being the difference between the two teams. Thankfully it finally was for us. Some had held vague hopes Dennis would help with a promotion push; he's not done that at all, but his goal at least should keep us up. He was pretty bad again for most of the game as well, but it was good pressing and an excellent finish. The way the ref managed the game though I was half expecting him to claim Dennis had fouled the defender and blow for a free-kick. A truly terrible showing from him in blowing up for basically any contact all game, usually for the home side. Chak did not look fully up to speed after his knock at the weekend and I genuinely would have subbed him after 10 minutes. He wasn't even bothering to track Laird's runs most the time and was just jogging about, and the one or two times he seemed to make a bit of an effort he got destroyed anyway. Laird basically had the freedom of the right flank all game and I was surprised they took him off with 10 minutes left. Andrews also had his third straight absolute stinker since returning to the side - regularly gifting the ball away cheaply to them in dangerous areas when we had men committed forwards and getting regularly out-fought by Bacuna. Against a decent side those things get punished, but Brum just wasted chance after chance. Porteous was MotM for us. After scoring two goals in two games, while being fairly bad at actually defending, today he didn't score but actually defended very well. Pollock for the most part was also very good alongside him (aside from once getting caught too high up the pitch trying to make a tackle he failed to reach). Bachmann also actually had a good game and made a brilliant save in the second half. It was only his kicking today which let him down a bit. In general the main positive from the way Clevs seemed to set us up was how composed and progressive we were with our passing. We did use the ball well when we got hold of it, but as has often been the case of late the final ball or decision in the final third generally let us down. TDB in particular was very good on the ball, but I don't think gives us enough protection in front of the defence as the DM and it was too easy for their midfielders to get shots away. Aside from that I wasn't hugely impressed with how we set up and how the game was managed. I thought Chak stayed on the pitch far too long and in general we went too long in the second half under pressure without making a sub. We were too passive out of possession and didn't seem that fussed with lapses in concentration. We also defended set-pieces just as bad, if not worse, than usual. Early days for Clevs though of course. Even though there were are a lot of things which need to be improved out there, I won't end this on a negative note, as ultimately what matters most is the result. By hook or by crook we somehow managed to take the vital 3 points. U 'Orrrrns!!
