kiltorken

Great Post, agree with most of that. Just on the last point about blame, I personally think when you play expansive football as we are trying to do at the moment, you are naturally going to leave yourself more exposed and that's the sacrifice with playing this type of football as I'm starting to realise. Even if you have the best players in the league when you're playing offensive front foot football you have to allow for soft goals going against as the team is more exposed, we still only have 11 players afterall. Its easy to have a go at our starting 11 when things don't go right but that back 4 are good by championship standards at least. Stoke have good quality players for this league and they played well stifling us and that's what they did today and fair play to them. teams in general will also figure a way to stifle us and we need to rise to that. I think Smith will hopefully get around this. I wouldn't want anyone other the Smith to navigate this season to be honest.

Well Whelan for Grealish for one but Stoke set their stall up to stifle us and it worked. Probably have to get used to teams doing this.

Shite performance and fortunate to get a point. Need to be a lot sharper against Leeds.

Result aside, El Ghazi was a joy to watch, What a performance, himself and Bolaise will terrorise teams this season.

I suppose it shows how far we've come recently that we are gutted by an away draw at one of the best teams in the league.

How did the linesman not see the hand ball (the second one) clearly looking at it.

Bolllox

Dwight gayle the cheeky prick leaving the boot in on nyland

His end product has been excellent even ignoring the goals, hugely impressive.

Great delivery again from el Ghazi

That was an incredible strike

Great block by Hutton

And two up at the most, don't want to ruin it as a spectacle.

Yeah the defensive aspect was equally as impressive as the forward play, how quickly they got into a good defensive shape after losing possession was impressive. Teams must really be dreading having to face us now.

Yeah it'll be a good retirement gig for him when he's in his late 60s.

This was against a Boro side that conceded 10 in their last 19 league games. Remarkable turnaround, we've got a very good manager on our hands.

Yes Whelooo!!

Go on chessie

Ffs that was a stonewall pen

Top class save in fairness

It annoyed me for the last goal how he reacted to the shot going in by his near post, he was so unprepared for it when the only possible shot on was the near post option considering the angle.

I noticed that as well, even on Sunday a lot of the times Chester and Whelan in particular got caught in possession or gave the ball away there was no option given by the full backs to help them out.

Totally agree with that assessment

I'm a huge fan of Smith and what he's doing but he can't be blameless for the team conceding so many. His system is definitely leaving us very exposed defensively and he needs to sort it out soon.

He looked very nervous on the ball yesterday, like he didn't want to have it which is a problem when he's under orders to play it out from the back every time. A mitigating factor though I thought he was left stranded a few times when team mates didn't offer a simple option, Taylor in particular.