If you still hate Futcher I really enjoyed the game yesterday - a good, tactical battle where we were well set out, had a game plan and everyone stuck to it really well.
I don't agree that we were bad in the 1st half - we just sat back and made sure they didn't have any room to pass around us. Swansea may have had 70% or so of the possession but about 80% of that was with their centre-backs as we just let them have the ball but cut out the easy pass to their playmakers. Basically we played as if we were the away team, but gradually as the game went on Swansea were getting more and more frustrated and we came into the game more and more. As we did BMcD made his subs which helped us get on the front foot more and more.
For me MOTM was a toss up between Pearce (organised the defence well) and Pog, who deserves a lot of credit for a selfless performance up front on his own and was probably subbed as much because of getting a yellow card as for being tired. It's a pity he had a heavy touch when running in toward their goal in the 1st half but that was the only opportunity he had.
Praise the Lord, after 5 pages someone who actually understands what went on yesterday!!
Plenty of people who say that watching Swansea would bore them to tears, well fair enough, but it's not very often a team will sit as deep as we did with two defensive banks of four and five for them to play through. We set up to spoil and deny them space in and around our defensive third and it worked. To set up any differently with more emphasis on attack we would have left gaps for them to exploit, and given the fact we'd lost the previous seven games on the spin it was clear that we set up to spoil and end the run of pointless games. We allowed Swansea to have possession almost at will on the half way line, keeping a disciplined defensive unit, easily snuffing out most of Swansea's attacking threat at the expense of almost all attacking threat from us. Seemed to me early on to be more of a 4-1-4-1 but as the half wore on both Davies and Tiendalli were clearly told to push forward which, with all the possession they had, meant that McAnuff and Kebe were drawn back into the full back position snuffing out almost any chance of a quick counter. Not so much a back six but a necessary 4-3-2-1. And that, in my opinion, is why so much of Swansea's play was "pointless". They simply had no space to be able to open us up so they just kept possession in an attempt to draw us out but we didn't, so it was going to take either a mistake (Gunter
) or a piece of genius (Michu 5 minutes in, 20 yards out) to open us up. All of that said, Swansea should have led at half time.
Second half, no change in shape, just a simple result of getting in their faces more, meant Davies and Tiendalli were given more defensive duty as we snuffed out their moves much earlier meaning McAnuff and Kebe (and later HRK) were given more ball. Gunter in particular got forward well but Jesus, does he know how to whip a ball in? So many times you see him just loft it in, all too often too close to the keeper. Yes, this led to our best chance but the cross was what Coppell used to call a "butterfly cross", all air and floaty. Apart from that we struggled, but were significantly better defensively, restricting Swansea to just one chance that they should have buried.
I suppose, to sum our performance up, we could be split into two distinct categories - superbly disciplined without the ball, oxf*rd sh*t with it. Until the latter is sorted we're in trouble, as if that really needed saying.
He's spent 5mins off the pitch in the last 2 games and look what happened? Shorey may tick more boxes, but somehow we always look better as a team with Harte playing. An absolute Model Pro, which is something you couldnt say about 1 or 2 of our current players who are bizzarly idolised by some sections of our support.
