As said. Just lucky we escaped without any injuries.
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Post Match Newcastle (A) Aug 26th 2 fucking 3
- Thread starter dee
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Great result, worrying performance.
Don't think Kerkez stopped one cross coming into the box. Looks and plays like a thicker Lloyd Christmas. You'd have to play Robbo next game.
VVD was immense under pressure.
Szobo's energy is unreal, a genuine option in a number of positions.
Konate is looking like Sakho at the moment, Guehi can't come quickly enough for me. Will walk into the side.
Wirtz obvs needs time and games but at the moment he's a passenger. Hopefully he's more Kenny Dalglish than Nigel Clough but I'm struggling to see it right now. Ponderous on the ball, not much vision, weak.
Salah, we needed a big game from him last night, we didn't get one.
Ekitike is superb, I would have left him on the pitch last night.
Getting bossed by 10 men is never a good look but hopefully just bedding-in issues. Good to see Bradley back. Lack of depth on the bench is a concern though. Thank God for Rio of course.
Don't think Kerkez stopped one cross coming into the box. Looks and plays like a thicker Lloyd Christmas. You'd have to play Robbo next game.
VVD was immense under pressure.
Szobo's energy is unreal, a genuine option in a number of positions.
Konate is looking like Sakho at the moment, Guehi can't come quickly enough for me. Will walk into the side.
Wirtz obvs needs time and games but at the moment he's a passenger. Hopefully he's more Kenny Dalglish than Nigel Clough but I'm struggling to see it right now. Ponderous on the ball, not much vision, weak.
Salah, we needed a big game from him last night, we didn't get one.
Ekitike is superb, I would have left him on the pitch last night.
Getting bossed by 10 men is never a good look but hopefully just bedding-in issues. Good to see Bradley back. Lack of depth on the bench is a concern though. Thank God for Rio of course.
If you need a ball winner type DM when you’re playing 10 men then you’ve got serious issues (which we do).
That said I’ve been going on about getting a DM all summer.
Can't disagree with much there.
Kerkez is the biggest concern for me. I've seen virtually nothing from him, even in the preseason games, to make me think he was ready for a move to Liverpool. If Robbo's not better than him right now then we shouldn't be selling Tsimikas, because he's definitely better than what Kerkez is showing right now, as limited as he is.
Ekitike the complete opposite. Has looked one of our best players in every game he's played. And haven't heard enough praise for his simply fantastic finishing so far (bar his heading...). His shooting technique is basically a sort of drilled pass, so you get the calmness and accuracy of an old fashioned poacher with the power of someone like Gakpo. Small sample size but brilliant so far. He can be a world class player, and pretty soon at this rate.
It's one thing not stopping Elanga but Fabian fucking Schar was giving Kerkez the runaround down the wing come the end of that game.
Gakpo and Salah aren't providing any consistent options for our midfield at the moment, and neither seem to be able to beat a man with skill right now. That in turn makes it difficult to stretch teams and gives Wirtz more to do to try and manufacture options.
A tad unrealistic as Nunez can't speak English. The idea is funny though.
Random rant I can't think where else to post: has anyone else noticed how a lot of goals now result in the ball hitting that stupid camera on an arm thing they put *right behind the goal* now?
It really fucking annoys me. It completely ruins the aesthetics of a goal imo, with the net bursting and billowing naturally.
It really fucking annoys me. It completely ruins the aesthetics of a goal imo, with the net bursting and billowing naturally.
I still don’t understand Kerkez approach to defending. The free kick for the first goal looked pretty much like he made no effort to get anything on it. It wasn’t even a dangerous ball, was a floaty slow one. So many balls came from his side, he needs to learn fast as he looks well out of his depth.
Agree with all of this, and haven't made time to read this thread yet.
Our midfield was makeshift again last night, with Jones (who was largely turd) coming in and demoting one of our best CMs to RB - but luckily Dom was immense.
I want to hold off judgement on Wirtz until we see him with Gravy & Macca playing behind.
Some random comments:
- For whole of the first half we didn't once just pass the ball to feet. Every time we got a turnover we hoofed it long, or floated it into an area that was easily defended. We no longer half half the players we used to use for playing these kinds of balls - Diaz, Jota & Nunez loved that. Gakpo doesn't. The passes were mostly shit too. It was really poor mentality to just keep giving away possession.
- Balance was crap - and we lost a lot of the midfield battle although once Grav was on an early yellow that made him have to dial down his game.
- Ekitike on multiple occasions was a brilliant CF at just getting the ball and helping us progress up the pitch - he lacked a lot of support. Love the look of this kid already.
- Wirtz - I don't think his style is yet suited to players like Gakpo and Ekitike. He wants to play fluid one touch - if he was surrounded by Diaz & Szobo I think he'd be making more of an impression on games. He looks badly suited to our line up. I'd be tempted to start him at LW against Arsenal because he's playing like a luxury player at times, and we already have one of those.
- Mo - lazy performance, and he didn't even look like fighting to get into the game. Nice assist at the end, albeit helped by Szobo. He left Dom exposed down that side many times, which is just shit team play. £400k for that? He needs to fucking step up.
- Konate - he has been 'space jammed' - completely at sea on too many occasions. Needs benching... BUT FOR WHO ARNE!! On his current performances I wouldn't even want to meet his contract demands, sell in Jan and bolster the squad.
Lucky to get a win, we showed no fight until injury time. Dreading Sunday's game against a very good opponent.
If a kid from the academy had come in and played like this everyone would be saying we need to ship him out pronto.
REFCAM was a load of balls as well, just something else the game doesn't really need so why bother?
Someone on here mentioned Conor Gallagher being available. There's been a suggestion Palace might get him on loan so I don't know why we couldn't do the same. It won't happen but I thought it was a very reasonable shout - someone who can just come in and offer real energy while we work through the issues.
I was making calls for him the past two seasons - i rate him. He's the kind of workhorse we need IMO.
Another thought - I think we need to find a way to send Gakpo & Kerkez on some sort of team building trip.
Gakpo's last desire when he has the ball is to get it to the byline and find a way to cross - whether that is him or his full back. He likes Kerkez overlapping because it lets him cut inside and try to shoot... but we need to get that combination operational because as many have said we are not utilising the assets we invested in from Kerkez. His end product for Bournemouth was brilliant, but Gakpo is largely ignoring him.
Maybe once Macca returns and we have a settled Grav - Macca DM partnership again we will see better link ups.
Gakpo's last desire when he has the ball is to get it to the byline and find a way to cross - whether that is him or his full back. He likes Kerkez overlapping because it lets him cut inside and try to shoot... but we need to get that combination operational because as many have said we are not utilising the assets we invested in from Kerkez. His end product for Bournemouth was brilliant, but Gakpo is largely ignoring him.
Maybe once Macca returns and we have a settled Grav - Macca DM partnership again we will see better link ups.
His energy and tempo definitely would help us in certain games
We're already mega reliant on Ekitike though, imagine if he got injured.
Salah has been shite for 178 minutes of the 2 games, Gakpo has been OK, Chiesa isn't the answer despite last week's heroics and Rio is 17. We need a forward of some sort.
Agreed - but I'm not convinced £130m on a forward when you can see our CBs falling apart is a sound financial decision.
It’s Gakpo and Salah in attacking sense who are killing us just as Kerkez and Konaté are in a defending sense. Utterly useless for the most part. Jones wasn’t bad, in my view, and neither was Chiesa when he came on.
One positive from Szoboszlai’s playing at right back was we didn’t turn over the ball in midfield with hospital passes; he was immense as a defender, though.
One positive from Szoboszlai’s playing at right back was we didn’t turn over the ball in midfield with hospital passes; he was immense as a defender, though.
It would be madness to not sign another forward.
Watching the first goal again, while Kerkez was the chief culprit with his weak piss defending, Ekitike has to take some responsibility as well.
At the start of the throw-in, Guimares was Ekitike's man to watch, track and block. When the ball was headed clear to a Newcastle player (Livramento?), Guimares started moving and circumvented Ekitike while the latter was ball watching and neglected his man. This gave Guimares the advantage of the run up and momentum to jump Kerkez and bump him just enough to turn him around. Again, Kerkez was weak piss there, not arguing against that.
The second goal aside, I think the bigger problem in us defending against set pieces the whole game was not the first ball, but the second attack once we'd cleared the first ball.
At the start of the throw-in, Guimares was Ekitike's man to watch, track and block. When the ball was headed clear to a Newcastle player (Livramento?), Guimares started moving and circumvented Ekitike while the latter was ball watching and neglected his man. This gave Guimares the advantage of the run up and momentum to jump Kerkez and bump him just enough to turn him around. Again, Kerkez was weak piss there, not arguing against that.
The second goal aside, I think the bigger problem in us defending against set pieces the whole game was not the first ball, but the second attack once we'd cleared the first ball.
I thought Gakpo last night really underlined what we lost by selling Diaz. The constant running, enterprise, tenacity he brought - Gakpo's got none of that. Both he and Salah are essentially "moments" players who'll produce occasional brilliant end product but basically do fuck all else all game. That's why you can't just measure football by stats.
