devaney » Fri Feb 22, 2013 11:57 am wrote:Thommo's perm » Fri Feb 22, 2013 10:13 am wrote:jacdaniel » Fri Feb 22, 2013 8:52 am wrote:The lads and fans can be very proud of that performance.
If Im brutally honest though, I think the double sub killed it for us. You don't make changes like that when the lads on the pitch have scored 3 goals and have the Russians pinned in their own half.
We lost the midfield, momentum and control of the game and the last 20 mins sort of fizzled out.
In plain speaking Brendan fu'cked up. Why he had to change a winning formula is beyond me and seems to be his achilles heel
There was absolutely no need to bring on Shelvey, who added absolutely nothing, and leave Downing on, who also added absolutely nothing.
I hope he learns from this experience, but in this case Im not too optimistic
I was fkg incensed and screaming at the top of my voice when he brought on the two subs. The timing was idiotic. Nothing against Asaidi but Shelvey is another matter and given recent performances should not have been playing. But what I failed to understand was why BR felt the need to change a team that were looking incredibly impressive. Sterling also looked very average (and that's being kind) when he came on.Sorry BR but you lost us the chance to progress in the EL.
I applauded it at the time as it was clear to me that he'd fielded a defensive team in order to ensure we didn't concede and his game plan was to throw on all attacking forces in order to get the goals we needed to survive. I think that was obvious. I don't think it could easily have been predicted we would have been less of an attacking force with the changes he made, but hindsight does show that we lost our grip at the time of the change. Given that we had 30 mins to play at the time though, arguably it was the right time and it gave the incoming players chance to bed in and help. Shame it misfired though.
