stmichael wrote:The Newcastle match wasn't negative?
There were too many aimless balls out of defence again. We couldn't retain possession for any significant period of time. Our central midfield was dominated. Our "wide" players never went past their fullbacks once and our main striker was misfiring awfully badly. Not to mention the fact that Andy Carroll dominated both our centre backs.
I'm not putting the blame solely at the managers door. A lot of the players have a lot to answer for aswell. However we surrendered control of the game after getting back to 1-1 and having that decent 10 minute spell. After Ranger came on the game completely changed but Hodgson did absolutely nothing to counter that change. Why? Because he had no idea how to. We just ended up sitting deeper and deeper and inviting pressure against lets face it, an average side (although roy called them "formiddable opposition").
Mind you, the manager also thought we played well in the first half even though we were absolutely woeful and created sod all.
I am not in the habit of defending the indefencible and most of what you say is true. I am as gutted as anyone about the defeat as I honestly didnt think they were 2 goals better than us.
My point is that Hodgson has been accused of being negative with regards to his team selection and his tactics. When I say the newcastle game wasnt negative I am not saying there werent some negative things. There were plenty, as you have pointed out. What I mean is that he picked an attacking minded team with one of Europes leading strikers and world cup winner Torres and the clubs leading goalscorer Ngog. He also picked the in form maxi and lucas. Again, not negative. We had a go and although the second goal took the wind out of our sails, I was pleased with some of the play in the match.
He then brought the fast, pacy, recently scored a goal Babel on to try and shake the team up, but once again tweeting ar'se failed to live up to expectations. As Ive said I wont defend something for the sake of it and konchesky has to be one of the worst players Ive seen in a Liverpool shirt. For that I must blame Hodgson and the longer he plays him the worse it will get. But, I repeat, I felt it was a more positive performance than some of the early games and if more players did their job properly we wouldnt be having this discussion
