beaten by the better team. WBA were better than us in every position, knew their game plan, knew how to control the game and were solid without being great - they didnt have to be
We started poorly and although we huffed and puffed second half I never felt any confidence in us scoring. Yes we had a couple of chances but our attacking threat was one dimensional and has, as a team, gone off the boil.
Would be good sometime for a referee to actually understand what is happening to Gyokeres and give him some protection
From the start we were pressed back and sat deep. We didnt press like we can. Space became tight which meant the out balls were difficult. What you do not need in the first ten minutes when you have a young, inexperienced and new back three is a goal keeper who can not catch simple balls, stays on his line, has erratic kicking and doesnt appear to command his area or even his 6 yard box. There had to be a leader back in defence, as a senior player Wilson should have but didnt. The back three needed to be confident in him, clearly they were not. Everytime he had the ball at his feet i held my breath because it seemed only a matter of time to a mistake. Of course his dallying allowed the attackers to press so that when the back three had the ball from him they were immediately under pressure. He set the tone for the rest of the night for the team performance of , erratic, disjointed lacking belief & confidence. The rest to a big degree flowed from that.
We sorely miss Fadz's leadership, no one else in the squad seems to fill the leadership role, thats a worry not just for the rest of this season
Thats not to say that all the players didnt do some good things, but it was inconsistent, and outweighed by poor passes, missed tackles, lacking of awareness, and intensity. we were slow in thought, and movement
Panzo was like a rabbit in the headlights when he received the ball, his passing not good enough, poor. I like McNally he seems to be a proper defender. Bidwell got found out in the first half. The two young loan lads to be honest look out of their depth at the moment. You can see they have technical ability but neither seem up to the level yet - hopefully that will improve. Midfield was there but none of Hamer, Sheaf or Allen really stood out or controlled the game - ultimately nothing bad but nothing good. We can not expect Palmer to play like COH so why keep the same way of playing in attack. Gyokeres was well marked & isolated just hoofing up the pitch to him is not his game but it is what we resorted to - even more so when Godden came on (who added nothing to be honest) Thought Eccles looked decent when he came on, but then we seemed to stop using him and our pressing and movement fell way
It would be good to get referees that were at least consistent. Gyokeres was getting battered but if he breathed on one of their defenders it was always a foul, the WBA long throw ins were taken from best part of 15 yards from the wrong place but he picked up CCFC regularly for 5 yards, etc . The point about the long throw is important, without that movement back up the line WBA do not have a decent angle in to the box in fact it would be heading away from goal and probably they dont score (assuming keeper & defenders do their job). Referee not the reason we lost though
Poor display, disjointed, lacking usual intensity, no real control of game. Hopefully the squad learn from it, hopefully MR learns from it
