My view on the match that will end with a slightly depressed rant:
Another game we dominated, and which, on the balance of play, we more than deserved to win. We made so many clear chances, and weren't THAT troubled, though it's clear that we missed Lucas hugely. Henderson was incredibly unlucky with his shot - the bend and spin on it, well, I'd have put someone else's house on that bouncing off the post and in, it looked in all the way.
The front three looked intersting, the actual shape of the team was good and it's kind of hard to understand why that's the first time we've seen that formation, though I still think it's a little bizarre that the one position we don't seem willing to try Suarez in is on the right of that 3 where he scored about 70 billion goals in a season for Ajax, especially given that Bellamy plays so well on the left of the 3. I mean, why reverse them? Made little sense to me. Still, that's a very minor quibble, overall the tactics were spot on, as shown by the number of chances we made, even down to 10 men.
Spearing was unlucky, a harsh red card. In isolation you could justify it, and him getting the ball really isn't the main issue - it's all about the potential danger of the way he made the challenge. But it's another one where the ref lets physical, cynical challenge after challenge go, leaves cards in his pockets, only gives a yellow to Senderos for a deliberate, horrible and very cynical challenge right through the back of Adam, then has absolutely no hesitation sending Spearing off. Yes, by the rules he was within his rights to send off Jay, but if he's taking a hard line then he could have sent off Senderos, and certainly should have awarded a penalty considering the foul continued into the box (like with Mash a few seasons ago, foul clearly started outside the box but penalty was given because it carried on into the box). Senderos also could have been booked towards the end for wrestling Carroll to the ground.
Once again it's that inconsistency which absolutely infuriates me. I wouldn't mind the Spearing thing if it were part of a genuine clampdown on shitehouse challenges but it isn't. Do the same thing on Suarez at the moment and the ref will give you a fucking blow job. It's disgusting and it's a major, major failing in this league - shithouse refs making decisions based on reputation and media hype. This isn't 'Nam. There are rules. Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the FUCKING RULES???
-----------------------------------------------------------
OK, here's the more irrational, ranty bit.
Carroll was shite again. I thought he was shite against Chelsea too mind, but everyone seemed to think that was encouraging. He had two decent chances today and took both of them shitly, was shit on the ball, shit off the ball, and looked a mile off the pace. I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything about him that makes me think he'll be the tits one day. I see glimpses that he might make a quality Peter Crouch style squad option, but couldn't we have put in a sly bid for, say, Peter Crouch as a quality Peter Crouch style squad option rather than spending a wad of cash that could have paid for 90% of players in world football, or bought us 2 or 3 promising and highly rated other players who aren't at that 'top class' level yet? We paid Aguero money for him. We paid cash that should go to proven class or a kid so promising he could dominate the world. We could have gone all out with early bids for, say, Phil Jones and Ashley Young who we seemed hugely keen on.
Oh well, never mind. I really hope you come good Andy, I really do, but I'm just not seeing it. Sorry.
The other rant part is this:
Fuck this. We are not going to finish fourth this season, not a chance. We've blown it, and it isn't even January. What chance we did have disappeared with Lucas' injury. We now have a solid back 4, but it's lost it's shield, so essentially we still have a horribly soft underbelly. Up front we are utterly clueless. We miss a shocking number of presentable chances - perhaps not helped by leaving out Maxi all the time - and even beyond that our decision making is grim. It does seem like a mental thing because we are so much sharper against better teams, it's like we get a bit complacent. This isn't helped by it being open season on fouling Suarez, but then he's hardly an innocent party when it comes to wastefulness. In fact he's horribly wasteful for us this season, given his fee, talent and compared to other players in his kind of role for our rivals.
We've put ourselves in this situation, to an extent, through a degree of poor planning in the summer and in January, we've rid ourselves of players who can take chances and replaced them with players who struggle with it.
There's still a lot of promise in the team but we're not going to see it until next season, and we're going to need clever investment. We're going to have to work hard to keep Suarez in the meantime because you can bet there'll be bids and people trying to tap him up in the summer. It's also going to be that much trickier to attract the kind of talent we need given the almost certain lack of CL football next season.
Oh well, onwards and sideways.
