It was a great chance and one he should have buried - no excuses. Same with Obafemi after 5/10 mins.Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Here they come! It’s the charge of the “Thanks” Brigade!
Ferguson missed a sitter, Obafemi was great chance and McGrath should have scored in first 2 minutes... for all our talk about the wrong system ( and it was) we still should have been 3 nil up at ht.
In the Greece game we haven't talked much about the great chance we had in 2nd half when Doherty was in on the right and took a wild swipe instead of having bit of composure. Goals change our perceptions of games massively.
We should have equalised straight after their second. Square ball but a miscommunication in the box. Molumby involved?
was that Doherty's shot against Greece, Stutts? Awful awareness of who was in support (2 others in the box and ahead of their markers if i remember correctly) and poxy execution on the shot.
You are right about how goals change perceptions and while we did have chances (Doherty x2) to equalize (they had chances enough to win comfortably of course only for Bazunu), I think this would have gone down in the same fashion as the Serbia home game where we drew a game we should have lost and, despite it being an impressive enough result on its own merits created some divergent opinions on here for months after. I know we probably agree on the following but the Greece performance was fairly brutal - especially when you factor in all the preparation time and how quickly the plan fell apart. "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face"...
Theres no doubt the Greece game was a terrible performance. I still do think there are mitigating circumstances in the sense that our Championship players hadnt played in 6 weeks. Yes they had the training camps that were like a mini preseason, but alot of the players were showing pics on social media from the beach a couple weeks before the game. You could see the sharpness wasnt there, basic passes werent finding a man etc. Thats not to absolve Kenny from any blame, but all our managers in our past have struggled in this window to get good performances.
We actually got two of our best results and performances under Kenny in the same window last year. I'm not really sure this mitigation holds water. The problem wasn't down to players lacking sharpness, iy was a total lack of cohesion and a coherent plan or structure.
I think this "hadnt played in 6 weeks" thing is a bit of red herring though. Didnt the Greeks and most other leagues finish around that same time? I think the Championship ended May 8th for example (then playoffs) whereas a quick google tells me the Greek league ended on the 14th... most other leagues would have been in and around that time surely, such that it doesnt really matter?
Maybe you are right and Im being too lenient, but I seen players do things that if they were sharp they wouldnt usually. Cullen for example looked a different player!
This is true, and as poor as we were against Greece I always thought there was another equaliser there for us if we could manage to up our game. Once Greece got 2-1 in front they seemed happy with that and slackened off. Of course we couldn’t raise our game to take advantage. Our passing was particularly poor on the night.
Out for a spell, got neglected, lay on the bench unselected.
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