Solanke on target and made the keeper work and gets abuse by some....Ib misses yet another shot off target and people think the new messiah has turned up. So many lost possessions again today. He wouldn;t even make the bench but for injuries.
Mepham was great, you can see why Eddie signed him Solanke runs the line up front and was unlucky with the shot and also 2 great headers.
Ake MoM by a country mile. So much class.
*Yawn*........ when a player has a decent game and yet STILL you can't just accept it....it does you little credit I'm afraid.
Ibe is improving slowly I feel and certainly doesn't deserve the grief he's getting on here from the usual source. In two abject team performances against Liverpool and Cardiff he was probably our stand out player and yesterday he wasn't that bad either. He's starting to release the ball earlier rather than run into dead ends. I think Jim nailed it above when he said his awareness and work rate is improving both of which I feel have been his major faults. I'm pretty sure he headed the ball yesterday as well.
You may be right and a winger will be on our shopping list if so in the summer
Will cost us tens of millions, he's a first team player for such a prestigious club as in Napoli... no chance.
Ive been proved right for over 2 year but keep hoping he comes good.
I have just watched the highlights and, from what I saw, I think we were very lucky. IMHO both our penalties were VERY dubious, the Mepham handball was a stonewall penalty as was the Smith tackle.
Still, I’ll take a point.
Our home form is good but we really need to make the most of it as away we look like a bedraggled mess. (Cardiff was particularly disappointing)
See you all at Arsenal.
Thank you Neil. I always enjoy reading your reports, even if I have watched the match myself.
Your comment, "Ibe 6... 6 is the average of all his 8 and 4 moments." just about sums it up for me. With King, Wilson, Fraser, Brooks, Stanislas and others you know that when they get the ball and intend to keep it, their thought is to get free and get closer to the goal. So often Ibe seems to beat an opponent, turn, stop and then have to beat him again, the result being that he holds on to the ball far too much and loses it.
Ibe has improved during our time with us, has talent and skill, but you just never know if he will succeed when on the ball. I now regard him as a weak link. To develop as a team, we need someone else.
I would prefer that we gave Musset a start or even recall the slower, older Pugh. That is not going to happen so we need a replacement. There must be plenty of players in the division below us that we can pick up for a not too excessive amount.
We got lucky to get back what we paid for Afobe, but the loss on Ibe could be balanced by how much better we might do (giving financial reward by higher placing/cup advancement) with another player.
I wait a very long time before negatively rating a player. I stuck with Rantie and Afobe longer than most, but there comes a time.
There is an old saying based on Zen philosophy that the waste in something lies not in getting rid of it, but on acquiring it in the first place.
So you think an accidental handball is now a stonewall penalty?? You know what the laws of the game are, yes? And the fact it glanced off his head onto his arm, also means it can't be a penalty.
OK I’ll take the ‘stonewall’ away but it was a penalty.
Have another read of what I put and hopefully this will help you out