Just been looking for positives from this last week, and the thing that stands out most for me personally is the bringing us back down to earth factor.
We've had an excellent start to the season no doubt, but maybe some of us were getting a little bit carried away with how good we actually are, I know myself I was trying very hard to not be guilty of believing our own hype, but it does become hard when you beat teams 6nil and have the pedigree in europe that we have.
I think if anything the two games this week have helped to bring a bit of normality back to our season.
The Pompey and Porto games highlighted two things for me, firstly maybe our squad isn't as strong as we think. Don't get me wrong I think we've one of the best squads in the league, but there's only so much switching you can do before you start lowering the overall quality of the squad, there's always the oportunity to rest players just maybe not all at the same time. We certainly can't go resting vast numbers of players and expect to take 3 points, no matter what the reasons behind it are.
Secondly, the performance at Porto was a strange one, we certainly weren't at the races, and you can bet the players didn't enjoy a game like that. We had very little control and weren't able to dictate the pace of the game at all which is when we play our best football, and it's very unusual for us to be in that position. Now I don't know if the players were maybe getting a bit cocky and just thought they needed to turn up and get the 3 points, especially in europe were we've been so good and expectations are so high, but that match just went to show if you aren't concentrating properly and playing to your level then you aren't going to win games. The lads probably know they were lucky to leave with a point, and I certainly know we were.
These two results could be good lessons learned for both Rafa and the players, and could be the making of the rest of our season, the fact that they were both draws and not losses makes the lessons learned not as costly as they could have been, and I think we can count ourselves lucky we've come through this week still in a pretty confident mood. Maybe it'll make Rafa think a bit more before he makes wholesale changes, and maybe it'll bring the players down to earth ever so slightly and help to show what might happen if they aren't properly focused on the match in hand.
Hopefully some will make sense of all that and i'm not just chatting ****, but i think i feel better for us having these results this past week, i just don't want them to happen too often.
We've had an excellent start to the season no doubt, but maybe some of us were getting a little bit carried away with how good we actually are, I know myself I was trying very hard to not be guilty of believing our own hype, but it does become hard when you beat teams 6nil and have the pedigree in europe that we have.
I think if anything the two games this week have helped to bring a bit of normality back to our season.
The Pompey and Porto games highlighted two things for me, firstly maybe our squad isn't as strong as we think. Don't get me wrong I think we've one of the best squads in the league, but there's only so much switching you can do before you start lowering the overall quality of the squad, there's always the oportunity to rest players just maybe not all at the same time. We certainly can't go resting vast numbers of players and expect to take 3 points, no matter what the reasons behind it are.
Secondly, the performance at Porto was a strange one, we certainly weren't at the races, and you can bet the players didn't enjoy a game like that. We had very little control and weren't able to dictate the pace of the game at all which is when we play our best football, and it's very unusual for us to be in that position. Now I don't know if the players were maybe getting a bit cocky and just thought they needed to turn up and get the 3 points, especially in europe were we've been so good and expectations are so high, but that match just went to show if you aren't concentrating properly and playing to your level then you aren't going to win games. The lads probably know they were lucky to leave with a point, and I certainly know we were.
These two results could be good lessons learned for both Rafa and the players, and could be the making of the rest of our season, the fact that they were both draws and not losses makes the lessons learned not as costly as they could have been, and I think we can count ourselves lucky we've come through this week still in a pretty confident mood. Maybe it'll make Rafa think a bit more before he makes wholesale changes, and maybe it'll bring the players down to earth ever so slightly and help to show what might happen if they aren't properly focused on the match in hand.
Hopefully some will make sense of all that and i'm not just chatting ****, but i think i feel better for us having these results this past week, i just don't want them to happen too often.
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