Our new signing Ngakia on the bench, and a start for the Menace with TDB at RB. Obviously the failed experiment has not yet washed away.
Why are both Andrews and Ngakia on the bench? Seems unnecessary, unless (and perhaps it would make sense seeing as there seems to be so much concern over him at RB) we are grooming Andrews as a winger
Really doing my head in with the persistent arrogance of starting TDB. On paper outside of that waste of space, that’s our best 10 out of 11. Andrews in place of TDB and that would be our best starting 11. It’s becoming a joke now that VI isn’t starting Andrews. You’re no longer managing minutes of his fitness.
Dennis will either destroy Udders or he'll try too hard on his first start and try to beat 5 players every time he gets the ball.
That’s a good question. Two right full backs on the bench and a make shift right full back starting. I have no explanation.
Andrews on the overlap/underlap with Asprilla has been our best right sided combination this season. Hopefully Andrews gets 45 minutes.
Would expect Ngakia comes on after 45 and Andrews replaces Asprilla late on, the latter seems to have been the way lately
I think VI has been influenced by the last season of Ted Lasso and the Dutch concept of total football where players can function anywhere on the pitch and position is irrelevant.
So we have 2 right backs on the bench! Good job we didn't get another one in January as half our fan base were screaming for on the social media channels!
TDB at RB is quite baffling. But strangely not surprising. Maybe you’re right about turning a player into an all rounder. The headline is Dennis starting. But where? In defence?
Yes, Dennis will be played at CB with Pollock being the big target man up front. VI is a genius and spots things no one else can.
Not my concern I should say, but Ismael did mention about his numbers being in the 'red zone', I wonder if he'll emerge as a winger seeing as he wouldn't be needed to bomb up and down as he does as a RB
Andrews will score 6 goals as right winger in the last 5 games of the season, including a winner in the play off final where he breezes past tired defenders to slot home. We declare VI a genius.
I'm sorry but whatever you (Val) say(s), there's no way you can convince me that Andrews needs resting for this long at this point. It's 5 games now. 5 games. I think it's fairly laughable to keep pretending that is the reason and expecting us to eat it up. What it actually is I'm obviously none the wiser and have no idea. It's inexplicable. Unless, as I tinfoil hatted a few weeks ago, they've got a sniff of a big deal in the summer from an upper Prem team and are sneakily covering him in cotton wool to protect the asset...
Baffling to see Andrews on the bench again, but at least TDB at RB makes more sense in a game where we are expected to dominate possession. Early in the season we were really good at inverting the full backs into midfield to create a massive overload in the central areas. I hope we start doing that again today, because we stopped doing it at some point for no apparent reason. Dennis for Rajovic means we're actually playing 11 v 11 for once!
I've often wondered whether Andrews may be suited to being a winger but the problem is his final ball is often really bad or he messes up an easy pass.
unless it's the Dennis we saw at Norwich which would make it 10 v 12. I'm remaining optimistic though and hope he can play a blinder to make the place his for the rest of the season and resurrect our promotion charge.
Double sub first half? Kone' off in a strop.. Huddersfield all over us. This is going well, our passing has been next level in Sunday league at times. Cannot keep hold of the ball and nobody wants to pick a pass. Excellent.
Pathetic. VI more at fault than Kone and Kayembe. We're sat deep and using the whole width of the pitch, result is nobody's playing near another yellow shirt - leaving us in our own third with nobody to pass to. ******* *****.
You can't blame VI for kone completing more passes to Huddersfield than our players. He was looking so casual today he deserved to go off.
I thought that with the exception of Andrews, it looked like our best XI on paper. What a shocking first half that was though. They didn’t look ready for Huddersfield’s pressing at all and we’re lucky to not be losing. Ismael has to take responsibility for not preparing us for them at all. Things improved a bit with the double sub but we’re still way short of the required standard.
Very poor first half. Questionable at this point whether the players are actually playing for the manager after his talk in the week about us flying out of the blocks. Zero shots and barely got in their box at all. Val was on the touchline trying to gee them up after about 2 mins. Says it all really. That said, I said after 15 mins the two central midfielders were seriously off the pace and was glad to see Val agreed by hooking them both off. Kayembe presumably just not fit but goodness knows what sort of daydream Kone was in today. Away with the fairies type stuff. As good as he can be on a good day, he's rotten when his head's not with it.
Kone playing centrally with Kayembe and Livermore needs more thought. Asprilla and Sema hugging the touchline and Dennis isolated, we may as well be playing 4 3 0. No wonder the midfield got overrun. That's not Kones fault. Its the managers
Definitely made mistakes - today especially. Highly doubt any replacement would get this mid-table team anywhere better than mid-table though.
First half was a war crime, but I do have some sympathy with Ismael as we had enough chances to kill the game off in the second half, you suspect if Dennis were on the end of one of those, he would have bagged another
