by Snowflake Royal »
07 Apr 2018 21:05
Clement has been a breath of exactly what we needed. He's clearly changed the focus on defending hard, scraping for everything and breaking fast when we can. No dicking about in our half. And the players have responded. Gone are the looks of confusion, standing still waiting for someone to move and then passing backwards.
We look a bit iffy going forwards compared to the last few games under Stam, but my God we look so much more up for the fight and so much more solid. The big weakness though, is that both our wingers are absolute dogshite defensively.
Mannone - 7 solid performance, beaten a couple of times, but saved by the woodwork.
Gunter - 7 still don't like him, but one of his better games. The switch to left back was a good move
Richards - 6 actually looked decent bar a couple of silly moments losing the ball, got absolutely no help from Barrow, in fact half the time Barrow actually tried to help, he made it worse.
Moore - 9 imperious
Ilori - 8 quality
Bacuna - 7 solid and did a good job at right back
Kelly - 6 couple of times he was on a different (wrong wavelength) but pretty good
Swift - 6 can't really recall much of anything he did to be perfectly honest
Barrow - 6 well taken goal, looked a threat though didn't produce a whole lot, but an absolute clusterfuck in defence. AWOL so many times, and then when he did track back he'd get in Richards way and cause confusion over who was picking up who. Better when (presumably) Gunter was able to yell him into doing the right thing a bit more
Aluko - 5 good lord, for a player who is clearly pacey and skillfull, he doesn't half slow the game down. Way too many touches, dwells on the ball and turns into trouble in his own half. Easy to defend against... put someone tight and have someone else standing off on his blindside. He'll turn into it virtually every time, just nip in and take the ball. He at least tried to help his fullback defend, but he wasn't really doing a great job of it.
Bodvarsson - 7 worked his arse off, couple of good breakaway moments and I think got the flick for the goal.
Martin - 4 he's a lazy sack of shit isn't he. All the mobility of the QE2 and virtually no effort.
Clement - 6 actually did alright, but was the wrong sub... turned our midfield into the most powderpuff bunch of cobwebs I've seen in ages when he stepped in for Bacuna
Evans - 6 steadied things up a bit with a more physical and defensively competent presence.
We look vulnerable at 1-0 still, but we've worked hard and ridden our luck. We should probably have had a penalty, although Kelly seemed to go down a bit early and easy... but then Preston could also have had a penalty for an off the ball accidental clip of Bacuna or Aluko running across behind someone, ref obviously didn't see it. And their number 14 could have seen red easily.
Ref was ok, seemed to favour Preston to me though.
Two home wins in a row and one at 3pm. Clement's making friends easily. Good work to make sure all the players came over to the fans too.
Loved it. Left the last two home games with a sore throat.
