by ycsatbjywtbiastkamb » Sun Oct 19, 2014 3:45 pm
Jesus I don't even know where to start with that one.
I can't understand why some of you are on Mingolets back, he had a great game, if it wasn't for him we would have conceded 6 today. He made at least 2 world class saves to keep us in the game.
The defence once again was awful, Enrique in particular had a mare though to be fair to him it was his first start in the prem in a year.
Lovren and Skrtel are supposed to be 2 'enforcer' type CB's but both were outmuscled by a couple of lower league ale house type forwards in Zamora and Austin. For me the pick of the back 4 was probably Johnson who somehow managed to save a certain goal.
The midfield were totally out battled in the first half but had more of the play in the second as QPR tired.
As for up front Balotelli should have scored (although to be fair to him Lallana's miss was probably worse), I can't help feeling that when Brendan called him out in the press for not scoring enough it has been totally counter productive because Mario seems to have abandoned his link up play (which was good) in order to shoot on sight at every opportunity, even if he is 35 yards out. One thing I would say though is both of their own goals were conceded by players trying to cut out balls to Mario so in a way he did have some influence in terms of putting the defenders under enough pressure to make the mistakes.
The one big positive for me was that Sterling and Coutinho seem to be just starting to come back into form, the last 10 minutes were frantic but we did look a bit more like the team of last season at the end.
Over all it was an important win, we rode our luck but we are up to fifth.