My Thoughts...........

[ChocChip 0]

First of all, thanks to the Geordie lads who kindly sold me and my friends they're spare tickets for Fulham (a). They also insisted we didn't pay full price as we were 'doing them a favour.' True gentlemen.

 

The game.....................well, er, crap!

 

Players:

Given = Top man.

 

Carr = Thought he played well tbh.

 

Baba = Thought he covered their diagonal ball (from LBM to farpost) well. He's not popular but he's not bad on the ball, teams know this and always close him down more than the RB. This is because he'll always try and play his way out of trouble so can make bad decisions imo, as opposed to Elliott who just lumps it. Baba gets in trouble because the midf don't show for the ball and our forwards (on the day) don't work the channels.

 

Boum = Looked comfortablish, should do against Mcbride though.

 

Ramage = Played intelligently most of the time, timed his jumps well but tended to drift to the right in the 1st half despite Boum telling him not to and so left a very big gap between the 2. Easy for Fulham to exploit because they have MOVEMENT.

 

Clark = Committed, very slow though, in fact, incredilbly slow.

 

Bowyer = Run around a lot at least. Didn't deserve the criticism from the stands.

 

Solano = Doesn't do enough flair play to make up for his non-athleticism imo.

 

Zoggy = Should've played wide left i think, no space in the middle and he was forced to run with the ball as their wasn't often a player making a run to pass to.

 

Shearer = Was never gonna win much in the air today so i have no idea why we lumped to him repeatedly, much, much better with ball to feet.

 

Luque = 1st time i've seen him in the flesh. Clearly had no idea what the game plan was, the rest didn't look as uncomfortable because they're obviously used to this loose preparation for games. On the whole i saw enough promise, better in the air than i imagined. He played a great ball blind behind their back 2 with absolutely no Toon player running onto it, he'll have to learn to cut out the clever football at NUFC because he'll make himself look worse. Same complaint Pedro made at Hartlepool or where ever he played (i forget).

 

Souness = Nothing. Ridiculous tactics, i can guess the team talk, 'launch to the BIG MAN and Bowyer and Zoggy will collect the knock downs', or 'give it to Luque, he's expensive.' A flair player cannot shine if the rest have NO idea what they're doing, and clearly they don't.

Also, it struck me that the Toon players looked heavy legged at the BEGINNING. Moody.

Chopra and O'Brien made an impact, so much of one i had to wonder why they weren't introduced earlier. Also, why take off Zoggy and Luque? F**king bewildering!

 

The Fans = Great songs and cheering, some funny comments though. The repeated booing of Luque and the guy next to me saying he hated Luque and that Luque was a cancer at the club who's holding us back, yeah, sure buddy. Was a shame to see confrontations amongst the fans regarding booing Souness, everyone was frustrated i guess.

 

Fulham = Couldn't see their goal but on the whole they were terrible, they're only advantage they had was that their players clearly practice passing and moving.

[Howaythelads 0]

Thanks for the insight mate, an interesting read, sspecially the bits about Babayaro and Luque.

 

I'm not going to bang on about 'you know who', but I picked up on the mention of movement in your post.

 

The lack of pace and MOVEMENT in our team has been the biggest problem since Souness decided to feed his ego. It was crystal clear in the match away to Sporting last season when Dyer was up front. We looked pretty good, we looked able to pass the ball about, midfielders looked dangerous because they were able to run into spaces created by Dyer stretching their defence. It helps the defenders too. Nobody can pass the ball well if nobody is making themselves available.

Edited January 16, 2006 by Howaythelads