The Great Escape

Mina goal 1 was on about 45m10s
Mina goal 2 was sometime north of 48m. I dunno exactly what time but watching away from the anxiety in the stadium I can’t say it felt particularly extraordinary play continued to the point of them winning that corner. It felt like if we cleared it that would be that though.

 

I think it was 48:50 ish but I’m guessing now for the second goal

 

Yeah, I’m afraid I was swearing too much to clock watch on that one.

Anyway, in the spirit of pedantry, I’ve checked. First goal was 45:07. Play restarted at 46:10, delayed by a quick VAR review. Their equalising corner was won at 47:48. And then Mina nods it in on 48:15.

All the timings are from the Premier League feed.

First goal: https://streamja.com/15Lp

Second goal: https://streamja.com/AgOk

If the total amount of play was over 2 minutes, we’re talking seconds. And I stand by my view Pawson had no need to add on further time for Everton’s second celebration as time was essentially up.

 

If we do go down (there's still time to complete the great escape), what do you think our squad would look like next season?

I think:

Goalkeepers
Foster
Bachmann
Dahlberg

Full-backs
Masina
Femenia
New x 2

Centre-backs
Dawson
Cathcart
Mariappa
Wilmot
New x 1

Midfielders
Capoue
Hughes
Cleverley
Chalobah
Quina
Dele-Bashiru

Wingers
New x 2 or 3

Strikers
Deeney
Pedro
Cucho
Suarez
Success

 

I would love you to do this analysis on the added time of all other games this season. I think if you do this will prove today was an anomaly.

 

I deleted that post as it didn’t represent what I meant to say! I wrote it, posted it, then realised I didn’t mean it!

 

And how often does that happen?

 

So how do you think it plays out normally then?

I can only say what I think - it seemed pretty normal to me at the time and checking the actual timings a little while ago only strengthens my view.

 

because this sh£t ain’t that important. 3 months ago I thought we were dead and buried. Now we are two points from safety with a lot of points to play for. I have no idea on the finances of our owners and their appetite to invest. If it doesn’t happen then I will go and enjoy watching us in the championship. That’s why I’m not particularly pessimistic

 

Foster will bail. He doesn’t train full time as it is and his body certainly won’t allow him to play Saturday/Tuesday as The Championship requires. He bailed on WBA when they were relegated.

They’ll be a mass exodus or migration abroad if and when we are relegated. I cannot see any of your midfielders list wanting to play in the Championship.

 

I think this is a value question. Personally I think we'll keep quite a lot of the squad together. Is that a good thing? Not so sure, as it means the majority are interchangeable between the Championship and Premier League.

Who will go? Well obviously Pererya and Gerri. There will be vultures swooping though, and I can see a few of our talented young lads being snapped up. Doucoure will be off. What happens to Sarr and Welbeck? Probably both would want to stay in the Premier League, however, it's going to be a brave club to sign Welbeck for the money we'd want for him with his injury record. We may well keep him. Again Sarr is under a very long contract and it would have to be a very big transfer fee to sign him, so I think we maybe protected there from clubs stumping up £70m unless he pulls up trees in the remaining part of the season.

I think Foster will go. Sheff Utd were already sniffing around a couple of months ago, before the Pearson mini-revival.

The defence would stay, which really underlines how bad it is.

All in all I think the vast majority would stay and we could afford to retain a Premier League squad by selling Gerri, Bobby and Doucs. We probably could raise around £60m selling those three.

Make no bones about it, it will be a financial disaster for us to go down, but this is what is going to happen, so we may as well get used to it instead of fretting about the possibility.

I think we will do well if we go down, but we would need to be able to play a lot of games close together. This is the real difference in the Championship. If we have the right attitude, with the squad we have now, we should really dominate the league, as along as we take it seriously and get in tune to the rhythm of the league very quickly.

Just look at the fervour there is for our fringe players from Championship clubs for the likes of Gray & Quina when they were on offer. Wilmott is doing well at Swansea. Even our squad players would be strong in the Championship.

The team we have now should not go down, but there is a fundamental problem with it. This wretched defence. It will do ok in the Championship, but has far too many off days in the Premier League and it undermines everything we try to do.

 

Well me as well. But in terms of pessimistic in the football sense. Are we discussing wider life issues here?

 

I imagine Sarr and Capoue will go to Udinese as Pozzo relocates the prime assets. Doucoure, Delefeou and Pereyra will all be sold to European clubs. We will be left with our dreadful defenders, Chalobah, Hughes, Deeney and Gray.

 

Can't see Capoue as a prime asset. He's been here 5 years and will be 32 in the summer. I can see Capoue hinself being quite relaxed about staying for the Championship.

 

I was gutted as anyone yesterday when we threw away a seemingly commanding lead in one of the worst possible fashions (a side with a poor away record and not playing well, 2-0 up, and then playing vs 10 men) but having reflected on it since, while much of this may be straw-clutching, there are positives to be gained even in the manner of our last two defeats, IF we can learn from and capitalise on them.

The most obvious positives: Deulofeu largely played well and showed he can defend as well as attack, Masina scored and Pereyra seems to have answered his critics and is a worthy replacement for Sarr (we can’t continue to blame Sarr’s absence for us not holding onto leads, it’s clear the problem is more deep-seated). We’re capable of scoring goals from various positions and only one team has scored the first goal against us since Leicester away, and that’s Liverpool who are beating everyone. Even Bournemouth and West Ham picking up points isn’t such a bad thing as it keeps two other teams in it and West Ham throwing away a 3-1 win lead can’t have done much more for their confidence than yesterday’s game did for us.

Clearly to lose in the way we have the last two games is awful, but then it means we have information for Pearson to work on. Firstly:

(a) Reaction to conceding a goal. This has been a problem all season, even during the winning run. Hughes gives away a daft penalty at Sheffield Utd, we get the jitters and are clinging on for the rest of the game while barely creating even a half chance at the other end. That’s a pretty good sampler. Only against Wolves did we see out the game with any conviction and the backs-to-the-wall play was understandable as we had 10 men, but that approach won’t always work even with 11. The coaching staff need to analyse the players and team from a psychological perspective and work out why this so often happens, but it’s a situation that isn’t easy to replicate on the training ground.
(b) Defending of set pieces. Three of the last four goals have been conceded from set pieces, an area I thought we were OK in. You could say that these goals were conceded because of the panicky state the team were in, but if you’re sufficiently well drilled in this area you should be able to deal with them most of the time whatever the situation. Something to pay particular attention to in training from now on, so that the likelihood of remaining solid in high pressure situations increases.
(c) Conceding in injury time. This is not a problem unique to us, but this is something that baffles me none the less. It seems for the most part we are OK during the regulation 90 minutes, but when the board goes up for the injury time, we lose focus (although even allowing for the rule of the minutes added on being the minimum, we’ve been unlucky in the last two games, particularly yesterday - some other referees would have blown up before Villa or Everton had a chance to score). Even against Spurs we needed a last-ditch clearance to avoid conceding a goal by the narrowest of margins that would have been given pre-VAR. But in the end we are still playing for only 90 minutes, it shouldn’t matter when the stoppages occur and how much added time gets awarded. Can Pearson get the players to concentrate for the full 95-100 minutes we are on the pitch?

If we continue to do what we’ve done well and the coaching staff can analyse and work out the root cause of the above problems, then we still stand a good chance. I’m not convinced it’s down to having poor defenders nor even a confidence issue (we were fine until Everton scored and managed to survive a rocky spell after half time without creating much), though the Brighton game, against a team we struggle against (opening day of 2018/19 apart) will tell us how much the last two games have affected team morale, if at all.

 

Oh, and another thing, relating to point (c): focus. I think this is more of a problem than complacency (as some are claiming). Always be prepared for the fact that at a flick of a switch the opposition can move up a gear or two at any moment, no matter how poor they look and how much they seem out of it. This is something to bear in mind even if we are 3-0 up after 70 mins against Norwich!

 

If time was added for Everton's celebrations, why was no time added originally for our goal celebrations?

 

I agree with everything you say, but I think Saar being out has repercussions throughout the team and it’s no coincidence we’ve struggled since he’s been out.

Our tactics have been pretty simple since Pearson came in, high work rate, hard pressing and then give it to either Gerry or Saar. They’re both dangerous players who cause the opposition big headaches. Without Saar our only real threat is from Gerry, we become much easier to play against and the opposition can concentrate more on attacking with only one side of the pitch to worry about. Ironically Bobby is a better finisher and will put more chances away in the box than Saar would, but Saar creates far more havoc down the right and far more chances for others to get on the end of than Bobby ever will. Basically without Saar we are twice as easy to play against and that puts more pressure on all other areas in the pitch.

 

I guarantee Matt Targett isn’t in our box to get the shot away for Villa’s equaliser if Sarr was playing as he’d have had to hang back more.

 

I hear you there, and admittedly Mariappa being on that side doesn't help.

I'm not one to lay into players like some have done with Mapps, but yesterday he was awful from an attacking point of view and not very convincing defending either - tentative in possession (maybe because he was afraid of f*cking up a simple pass) and even the passes that didn't go out of play didn't lead to any meaningful attacks. I'm starting to agree with Jumbolina that he's capable of a very good game every now and then but can't maintain that level over a run of matches, he needs to be out of the starting line-up if not the squad altogether for a while to have a breather so he can have a solid and inspired game when he comes back, which shouldn't be for too long and maybe not too often.

Comparing him with other full backs of limited ability we've had in the top flight (didn't see much of the 1999/00 one), attacking-wise I'd say at his worst he's worse than Nyom and Paredes, as bad as Jordan Stewart and hardly better than Doyley.

 

That’s really strange because before I’d got to the end of your post I was going to reply that he is more or less of the standard of many of our championship full backs, specifically Jordan Stewart! The way he constantly and aimlessly chips hopeless balls up the line is very much what Jordan Stewart used to do.

We need full backs that are comfortable on the ball and will retain it with their passing 75%+ of the time when in possession. We are lucky to retain it 50% of the time with his aimless chips.

 

Yes...change it to CATHCART AT THE BACK......GIVES YOU A HEART ATTACK"

 

Just sing 'Oh Craig Cathcart' like our super imaginative SUPER FANS do for Pereyra and Adam 'gets away with culpability for the third goal for some reason' Masina.

 

Our chants alternate between those that have some ring of truth (eg Doucoure - during his first full season with us he virtually never gave the ball away, at least while Silva still had the plot) and those that are tongue-in-cheek to varying degrees (like with Capoue, or to a greater extent, the "We've got Mariappa" one, which I find the most bizarre).

 

He was alright defensively in the top flight and had some pace (some considered him one of our better players in the 2006/07 season) but he was far from flawless even by our standards.

 

The Mariappa chant dates back years, to before he originally left the club, and was always ironic.

 

Seem to remember Jordan Stewart having this weird volleying technique for clearing the ball up the line

 

Do I assume that nobody can answer the question as to why goal celebrations in injury time need extra time to be added, whereas those in normal time do not?

 

Well, both do. So the premise of your question is itself questionable.

I was a bit surprised at the time it was only 2 minutes added on. Given the two Watford goals, treatment for Digne and Pereyra and the VAR review for the tackle on Pereyra I thought Pawson’s number was low. Could easily have been three minutes. Though I was pretty glad it was only two, as by the time the stream updated viewers about the added on time Everton had just scored their first.

As I proved earlier in the thread with the actual timings it’s clear there was 2 minutes play in injury time. The VAR check took longer than the Everton celebration, as they were back in their own half ready to go for a bit before Moss decided no handball. For all intents and purposes the 2 minute started when we kicked off on 46:10.

 

I think that referees often give a number which is "about right". Given the interruptions you have listed above, the number should have been 4. However, unless there has been a major delay, 4 minutes would be unusual for first half injury time, so he gave 2 (minimum) which for him felt "about right".

I have long argued for independent timekeepers....

 

Should we just introduce rugby rules? Two 30 minute halves with the clock only ticking when the ball is in play. Would solve the issue.