We looked out on our feet last night

Gerrards use of subs can be horrendous at times. They had made 3 subs by about 70 minutes whilst we still hadn’t made one.

Everyone could see we were starting to tire and needed fresh legs.

Then for the only sub we did make to be the most useless guy on the bench as well.

Can we afford to rest Morelos on Sunday? I don’t think we can.
 
Brick_Top said:
Gerrards use of subs can be horrendous at times. They had made 3 subs by about 70 minutes whilst we still hadn’t made one.

Everyone could see we were starting to tire and needed fresh legs.

Then for the only sub we did make to be the most useless guy on the bench as well.

Can we afford to rest Morelos on Sunday? I don’t think we can.
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Whilst I agree about Gerrard not using subs correctly I wouldn't use the comparison of Young Boys making 3 subs within 70 minutes. They had to win the game last night to have any chance of going through so can understand why they used all their subs by that point.

Also our bench is fairly weak as well with not many options on it so can see why Gerrard is reluctant to use it.
 
two2tango said:
Let’s hope we can recover for sunday

Gerrard needs to use the squad

I’d hope he starts Stewart and maybe even defoe sunday

we certainly need to freshen things up

hard hard game
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Absolutely running on empty in the last 30mins.
The squad is thin, as we saw last night. Their substitutions changed the game and we failed to conteract that. SG's use of,or lack of use of, his bench is the one worry I have.

Ojo for Kent changed nothing. One empty jersey for another on the night. No change is shape or formation and therefore no effect on proceedings.

I would've been tempted to use the other two subs simply to get fresh legs on to the pitch in the last 15mins. We got lucky in the end.
 
Tormusk1872 said:
Agreed, also that’s three games in a row where we dominated the first part of the game to then take our foot off the gas.
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I agree on the first part but we aren’t deliberately taking our foot off the gas, it’s worrying that it happens though because alarms bells go and teams have punished us for not being at it.
 
The 1st half it was evident that we had 3 players chasing down 1 opposition player on many occasions. In the 2nd half we were lucky if 1 player closed down.

The 2nd half was like watching a training session of defense vs attack.
 
I just think we dropped off too much. Up to exactly 60 minutes we were playing the best football I’ve seen us play in years, then we just stopped pressing, dropped off and made Morelos isolated which is why the ball kept coming back.
It’s a strange tactic I’ve seen us do 5 or 6 times and I don’t think it works.
 
Was going to start a thread but I’ll ask here - whither Jamie Murphy? I cannot believe he would offer less than an Ojo or Barker coming on. Guy has a great football brain, would retain the ball and gets into scoring positions. Is he physically no longer up to it? Only reason I can see for his continued omission.
 
Bigbluebear said:
We didnt take our foot off the gas.

They changed formation and tactics and we had to change ours to combat it.

Until they did that we were still on top in the 2nd half.
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If we had scored a second we could have relaxed a bit. But we seemed to go all out again, and the legs went by the 70th minute
 
Alex Venters said:
Absolutely running on empty in the last 30mins.
The squad is thin, as we saw last night. Their substitutions changed the game and we failed to conteract that. SG's use of,or lack of use of, his bench is the one worry I have.

Ojo for Kent changed nothing. One empty jersey for another on the night. No change is shape or formation and therefore no effect on proceedings.

I would've been tempted to use the other two subs simply to get fresh legs on to the pitch in the last 15mins. We got lucky in the end.
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They were a good team desperate to win and we confined them to 2 shots on goal the whole game. Nothing lucky about it, if anything they were lucky with the jammy OG.

You say you'd have brought on subs purely for fresh legs... Well that's exactly what happened with Ojo but you're still complaining about it. You can't have it both ways.
 
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It would have been a lot easier had we killed the game off when we were pummeling them.

I don't understand the manager's choice of substitutions at times but that's for him to improve on. Still a weak area.
 
Brick_Top said:
Gerrards use of subs can be horrendous at times. They had made 3 subs by about 70 minutes whilst we still hadn’t made one.

Everyone could see we were starting to tire and needed fresh legs.

Then for the only sub we did make to be the most useless guy on the bench as well.

Can we afford to rest Morelos on Sunday? I don’t think we can.
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And in that last 20 mins we were toiling badly. Lack of subs is a worrying trend.
 
I’m sure I wasn’t the only screaming ‘make a change!”

starting to feel like he doesn’t fully trust some of those on the bench. Or is that he will start some of them on Sunday, but do we see Defoe, Stewart, Ojo, Flanagan getting a start. I don’t. Which makes it confusing that more weren’t put on at the end last night. Morelos looked like he was running through cement the last 5-10 mins
 
Alex Venters said:
Absolutely running on empty in the last 30mins.
The squad is thin, as we saw last night. Their substitutions changed the game and we failed to conteract that. SG's use of,or lack of use of, his bench is the one worry I have.

Ojo for Kent changed nothing. One empty jersey for another on the night. No change is shape or formation and therefore no effect on proceedings.

I would've been tempted to use the other two subs simply to get fresh legs on to the pitch in the last 15mins. We got lucky in the end.
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We realky weren't 'lucky' last night, if anything they were lucky we never skelped them.
 
CumbrianBear said:
I’m sure I wasn’t the only screaming ‘make a change!”

starting to feel like he doesn’t fully trust some of those on the bench. Or is that he will start some of them on Sunday, but do we see Defoe, Stewart, Ojo, Flanagan getting a start. I don’t. Which makes it confusing that more weren’t put on at the end last night. Morelos looked like he was running through cement the last 5-10 mins
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He doesn’t like changing things when we have something to defend as he obviously thinks they are coping and doesn't want to upset the rhythm and concentration.
 
CumbrianBear said:
I’m sure I wasn’t the only screaming ‘make a change!”

starting to feel like he doesn’t fully trust some of those on the bench. Or is that he will start some of them on Sunday, but do we see Defoe, Stewart, Ojo, Flanagan getting a start. I don’t. Which makes it confusing that more weren’t put on at the end last night. Morelos looked like he was running through cement the last 5-10 mins
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What change would you have made? If you look at the options on the bench it's clear why the manager didn't make any more subs.
 
We simply don't have the options on the bench. Halliday? Barker? I would think the gaffer looked at his bench and thought nah.Davis a massive miss in the last two games, he plays and we skelp both of them.
 
Leif Erikson said:
What change would you have made? If you look at the options on the bench it's clear why the manager didn't make any more subs.
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id of put Defoe on for Morelos for sure. Morelos lost the ball countless times at the end. Defoe has the experience to see out at games you’d expect
 
Some don't seem to be able to grasp that you can not play the pressing game for full in 90 minutes, even if you are Liverpool or Barcelona it just doesnt happen

Especially when you have had 3 big games in a week


Playing the way we do there will always be periods of the match where we drop off a bit.

What's more important going forward for me is that we kill off teams when we are having our extremely dominant period of a match

If we had that killer instinct we would be sitting here with a cup and top of the group

As it is its a process and we have done fantastically well to be where we are.
 
We didn’t help, we caused the players to go into a shell in the 2nd half, when they started to dip other than the broom loan the rest of us fannies jumped straight on their backs and started screaming at them.

We must be one of the worlds worst supports to play for at home. It was horrific
 
They did look gubbed and you can see why. At the start of the season we were told/thought the squad and bench looked stronger. Most weeks it doesn’t seem to Defoe/CH apart.
We don’t have a huge injury list.
They may not be the answer but I don’t think Docherty/Murphy would let us down either.
 
I was surprised not to see Edmundson on the bench. I get it that he is a little bit raw but he is a unit and can pass. When Jack was running on empty then maybe Edmundson could have replaced him infront of the back four. He has played there before and done well and his athleticism would have been refreshing in what was the most crucial area of the park at that time.
 
was very noticeable the last 25 minutes,i have concerns for sunday ,in that it may just be a game too far for most of these players ,after all they have given the last week,, we could really do with getting away from teams and getting the game done as early as possible, for all our great work and fine football we do make hard work at times of getting over the line, one things for sure sunday will be a long ,hard slog for us against this mob
 
fmp said:
I was surprised not to see Edmundson on the bench. I get it that he is a little bit raw but he is a unit and can pass. When Jack was running on empty then maybe Edmundson could have replaced him infront of the back four. He has played there before and done well and his athleticism would have been refreshing in what was the most crucial area of the park at that time.
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Think he was ill mate
 
I thought we were very average last night and agree we looked knackered in the second half.
 
It’s weird that we seemed to have loads of centre midfielders , then last night With Davis missing we literally had no one to come on a play that position ( Halliday could possibly but hasn’t for a while )
 
wd1872 said:
Some don't seem to be able to grasp that you can not play the pressing game for full in 90 minutes, even if you are Liverpool or Barcelona it just doesnt happen

Especially when you have had 3 big games in a week


Playing the way we do there will always be periods of the match where we drop off a bit.

What's more important going forward for me is that we kill off teams when we are having our extremely dominant period of a match

If we had that killer instinct we would be sitting here with a cup and top of the group

As it is its a process and we have done fantastically well to be where we are.
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If I could like this post more I would. There were folk around me going mental in the 2nd half screaming why's he changed it, and how are we no playing like we did in the first half!?

Some folk also seem to think it's a 5-a-side game where you need to be marking a man at all times - especially Tav if we were defending narrow and they had a man on their left touchline and the ball was in their right back area. Screaming at him to "mark the fucking winger!"

Absolutely zero fucking clue about football. It's really starting to get to me, thinking about a seat swap after this season but going by this forum theres clowns everywhere!
 
We need some fresh legs into the team for Sunday. Kent, Aribo and Arfield in particular looked knackered the last 20 minutes. Not having a midfielder on the bench was a mistake i think, we had nobody to bring on there to freshen it up the last 10 mins or so. Even Docherty could have been an option, he'd give you a lot of energy anyway, or Polster who we've seen, albeit briefly, looks comfortable in the holding mid position.
 
Captain_Sticky said:
Think he was ill mate
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Ok, didn't know that. Docherty?

On the match thread everyone was screaming for replacements but no-one was saying who they would bring on. Clearly all mid and forwards were knackered but there was Defoe, Stewart, Ojo and Barker to bring on. When Ojo came on he wasn't exactly showing maximum commitment to the cause. Stewart might have shown more and would probably have been my choice.
 
From the subs available i'd even have stuck Halliday on instead of Ojo, at least he'd offer more defensively. Ojo's lack of any sort of game intelligence absolutely kills me at times.
 
fmp said:
Ok, didn't know that. Docherty?

On the match thread everyone was screaming for replacements but no-one was saying who they would bring on. Clearly all mid and forwards were knackered but there was Defoe, Stewart, Ojo and Barker to bring on. When Ojo came on he wasn't exactly showing maximum commitment to the cause. Stewart might have shown more and would probably have been my choice.
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Docherty is just completely out of the picture it would appear.
 
Captain_Sticky said:
Docherty is just completely out of the picture it would appear.
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King also, it seems. We have a lot of games to play though and the sudden lack of depth in midfield is worrying.

That said, I was happy with the bounce back on Sunday after Wednesday and I'm ecstatic about the bounce back last night after Sunday. Desire, commitment and aggression. Long may that continue.
 
Leif Erikson said:
They were a good team desperate to win and we confined them to 2 shots on goal the whole game. Nothing lucky about it, if anything they were lucky with the jammy OG.

You say you'd have brought on subs purely for fresh legs... Well that's exactly what happened with Ojo but you're still complaining about it. You can't have it both ways.
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We had Arfield and Aribo unable to have any effect on the game in the last 20mins. They should've been replaced by Halliday and Stewart.
The back four were tremendous last night and they kept us in it towards the end.
 
fmp said:
I was surprised not to see Edmundson on the bench. I get it that he is a little bit raw but he is a unit and can pass. When Jack was running on empty then maybe Edmundson could have replaced him infront of the back four. He has played there before and done well and his athleticism would have been refreshing in what was the most crucial area of the park at that time.
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In big games against good opposition when we are trying to see out a game defending a lead i wouldn't be against that.
 
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