Originally posted by MrMichael
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I think that was a lighthearted comment, might as well let it be imo 
Hmmm. Having had some time to take stock since this afternoon, I think I can appreciate the viewpoint the likes of Pete, Shaggy and yourself have been expressing a bit more, and perhaps I was a bit harsh earlier.... but I still think that was an appallingly dire game of football. For a neutral watching that would have been like having teeth pulled slowly. You're right, Stoke isn't an easy place to go, and it was never going to be a "good" game, but I honestly thought we could have played for three times as long and still never looked like creating chances. Stoke were very poor, perhaps that was down to good defending on our part, but what struck me watching that was just how little a sense of our own footballing identity and style we are playing with these days. Yes the team showed a bit of grit and determination, but its a sad state of affairs really when that is considered an improvement.
Us struggling upfront without Gerrard, Torres, Benny etc isn't really that much of a surprise, but personally I didn't think 1 shot on target in the entire game was really good enough even without them. Stoke had 10 corners. We had none.
Lucas was indeed, once again, one of our better performers. Kyrgiakos had a very strong game in the air, and some of the other defenders played reasonably, abet against possibly the least subtle attack in the league. Degen and Aurelio (what's happened to him?) were very poor though, and upfront I just felt really sorry of Ngog, feeding off scraps doesn't even come close. The initial team selection I could live with, but i felt we missed a big opportunity to take the game by the scruff of the neck after we rather fortuitously scored, bold substitutions on our part could have killed the game off rather than allowing Stoke to regain the impetus and pressurise us the way the did in the closing stages - our defence has just been too brittle this season to get away with it, as they once again proved. I think that's what left me with a bad taste in my mouth, if we'd pushed on after we scored that would actually have become an excellent performance, instead our predictable capitulation in the final minutes lost us more points we simply cannot afford to do without.
Hmmm. Having had some time to take stock since this afternoon, I think I can appreciate the viewpoint the likes of Pete, Shaggy and yourself have been expressing a bit more, and perhaps I was a bit harsh earlier.... but I still think that was an appallingly dire game of football. For a neutral watching that would have been like having teeth pulled slowly. You're right, Stoke isn't an easy place to go, and it was never going to be a "good" game, but I honestly thought we could have played for three times as long and still never looked like creating chances. Stoke were very poor, perhaps that was down to good defending on our part, but what struck me watching that was just how little a sense of our own footballing identity and style we are playing with these days. Yes the team showed a bit of grit and determination, but its a sad state of affairs really when that is considered an improvement.
Us struggling upfront without Gerrard, Torres, Benny etc isn't really that much of a surprise, but personally I didn't think 1 shot on target in the entire game was really good enough even without them. Stoke had 10 corners. We had none.
Lucas was indeed, once again, one of our better performers. Kyrgiakos had a very strong game in the air, and some of the other defenders played reasonably, abet against possibly the least subtle attack in the league. Degen and Aurelio (what's happened to him?) were very poor though, and upfront I just felt really sorry of Ngog, feeding off scraps doesn't even come close. The initial team selection I could live with, but i felt we missed a big opportunity to take the game by the scruff of the neck after we rather fortuitously scored, bold substitutions on our part could have killed the game off rather than allowing Stoke to regain the impetus and pressurise us the way the did in the closing stages - our defence has just been too brittle this season to get away with it, as they once again proved. I think that's what left me with a bad taste in my mouth, if we'd pushed on after we scored that would actually have become an excellent performance, instead our predictable capitulation in the final minutes lost us more points we simply cannot afford to do without.
but our reality is different than that now. the way i look at it is this - if rafa had been sacked after reading and hiddinck or mourinho had been installed, that is more than likely exactly how we would have played and we'd probably be praising them for attempting in inject a new resilience into the team and very nearly doing it.
Thats really is shocking. And it's always annoyed me too how we don't leave one pacy player up by the half way line. When was the last time we scored a goal on the counter attack? 
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