Originally Posted by
pineapple stu
Ironic that you completely ignore a comment after accusing another poster of the same thing!
I think yesterday's game fitted in with the pattern of the Kenny regime to date tbh. Against the poor sides - Luxembourg, Andorra, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Lithuania and Armenia - we've tended to start brightly and if we score early then we get a bit of confidence, force the other team to come out of their shell, and we create more. (See Qatar (H) and Azerbaijan (A). Qatar in Hungary is the only exception, when we scored early and drew 1-1)
But if we don't score early, then we get bogged down, lose our way in the game, let the other side into it. Luxembourg (A) and Andorra (A) saw us get bogged down for more than an hour before finally scoring and then the other team had to change tack and we had more room and scored more. Yesterday could well have been the same if Ogbene had scored that sitter of a header on 45.
But the longer we don't score, the less we look like scoring, and it just takes a bolt from distance to really put us under pressure (Azerbaijan (H), Luxembourg (H) and Armenia (A)). We did at least get an equaliser against Azerbaijan by abandoning our game plan, sticking Duffy up front and lumping balls into him. That didn't work last night.
Then Lithuania (H) we bailed out in the 97th minute.
You could maybe add both Bulgaria games to that list given how far they've fallen - they meet the same pattern.
So to be honest, I think all those games fit a broad pattern that has been reasonably consistent in Kenny's time, regardless of coach. We're too easy to defend against, have no creativity, and are unwilling to have a pop from distance; the only positive is that if we do take the lead and make a poor team come at us, we can get in behind them then
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