by P!ssed Off »
18 Mar 2013 17:10
Hoop Blah Royal With Cheese Maguire In that we acquitted ourselves well against superior opposition whilst employing a 4-5-1 system that added defensive solidity at the expense of any real creativity going forward.
That sounds like January to me.
It sounds like Sunderland, and to a lesser extent the Chelsea game (although you have to expect their side to pepper the goal a bit more), but the rest of January wasn't about shutting out the opposition so much as getting away with them missing more chances and Federici doing a good job of keeping them out.
We were more solid, but we could, and perhaps should, have lost most of the games we won thanks to excellent late fightbacks and specifically the finishing of Le Fondre.
Exactly, for the games where we got results in January we were only still in the game come the 80th minute due to Federici and luck, the midfield and defence consistently gave the ball away and did little to prevent the opposition creating numerous clear cut chances.
Against United, the midfield and defence did not give the ball away cheaply and defended as a unit. We hardly allowed United to create any clear cut chances where you were expecting them to score. We were still in the game come the 80th minute due to the work ethic of the whole team, not due to luck and exceptional goal keeping.
We can all celebrate the great late win against West Brom but we have to acknowledge that 9 times out of 10 Lukaku would have scored about 5 goals, but we were lucky and instead he hit the bar (twice I think) and put a few sitters wide.