Team selection was very weird. Rotation in all the wrong places. Why was Cantwell starting on the wing? Why has Leif Davis been banished from the team? The balance was completely off, Kelly’s passing stepped up a notch in terms of being ****, but he and Smith just weren’t on the same page at all which didn’t help. I feel for Laird, he did okay in his first start but we should’ve kept Smith at RB and played Davis or Brady there. What has happened to Stacy, too? Not even on the bench??
Phillips needs dropping for me. Maybe I’m being harsh but he doesn’t improve us at all imo. That’s two games in a row he should’ve cost us with stupid errors. Kelly might be off the boil a bit but his actual defending is rarely below very decent. He and Cahill were the best partnership in the league, Mepham this season has been more than adequate back up and Hill came in to replace Rossi in the squad. Why did we need ANOTHER CB?? Wholly baffling.
We didn’t create anything of real note. But there were a couple of “moments” in the game where Cantwell was kind of through but he fluffed it up. Not nearly enough pace and running in a position where that alone creates chances. He was frankly appalling given his supposed pedigree, should’ve come off at halftime for Anthony or Dembele.
Solanke worked hard and was given nothing. He, Cook and Christie were good. No idea what game you saw to see Christie as non-existent, almost all of our good play came through him from deep imo.
Billing has been underperforming since the Huddersfield game. Our whole game plan seems to collapse when he’s not on it, and currently he’s not on it at all.
Not a lot of good things to say about any of that today. Poor from everyone imo save for a few individual performances. The entire team dynamic was nervy, uncertain, and off. A simple fix would be to play the players in the correct positions. LBs at LB, CAMs at CAM, wingers on the wing.