The team selection was wrong. Downing ahead of Maxi and Kuyt? As expected, but wrong. Bellamy? With Gerrard so deep, Suarez was isolated. Don't think it was wrong to pick Spearing. Agree with the mentality thing, we lacked the right one for a Cup Final. Not surprising when we leave out Maxi and Kuyt.
We made three mistakes for the first goal. Agree it was a problem as soon as Spearing missed that ball. Very good things about Reina and the first post. Agree we are making the same mistakes. Agree we are not aggressive enough. I believe it's tactical. We have not selected for example Kuyt or Bellamy or Maxi and we haven't used Gerrard as second striker, so we have not set out to be aggressive and win the ball high up.
Reina's mistake, I think it's a consequence of how we coach and our overall mentality. Agree he would have been a bit further out a few years ago. Terrible to hear if/that we've had multiple GK coaches.
Agree that we have defensive problems. Second goal was IMO due to a big gap between midfield and defence. Same old problem. For a side defending in a passive way, that's quite a big concern.
Agree big time on the Fagan story about winners. We've missed that. Good points about the second "goal" and how we can use Carroll. It's not the hoof we should go for. Still not convinced by Carroll, but real credit to his performance. Still think we should build stuff around Suarez, not Carroll. But when we play Carroll, I agree that we need players who can read where the ball is going from his touches. Kuyt? Bellamy? Downing? Same thing again, same answer as with the aggressive game.
Carroll and next season - if needed, I'd sell him to get an upgrade. Why? Because we need to raise cash.
