andym

not confident about this, not because i think spurs are really any better than us, but because Redknapp seems to have the jinx over MON. he has a ridiculous record going right back to when MON was at leicster. id like to see 451- petrov and nrc holding, milner, young delph or downing and gabby up top. please no steve "mr invisible" sidwell

only person id change would be sidwell, bring in stan and let NRC partner him. sidwell was good for the first 20 today, got stuck in and made some good runs forward. but then he did his disappearing act again, he started to get muscled off the ball easily and gave it away a few times with some awful passes. he also somehow missed that header and then the rebound on the penalty i dont know whether its a confidence thing but he just isnt really getting hold of the ball enough and doing something with it, particulaly in the final third where he is meant to be good. he also seems to stand next to opposition players, doesnt make himself available for the pass. cant fault his workrate off the ball, he puts players under pressure (though he cant tackle very well so doesnt actually win it much), but i think he needs to start doing more things on the ball. id like to see how NRC and petrov do together

glad i chose this match for my free tickets after the rapid game!! thought we played very well today, could even have scored more i reckon. all of our attacking players were on fire today and all scored. carew bullied cahill and scored an excellent goal. knight couldnt cope with gabbys pace and strength, and gabs hold up play and running of the channels was excellent today, he deserved his goal. crossing was much improved today from ash who looks like hes getting back to his best, and also milner which helped, jimmys ball for cuellars goal was excellent, and those 2 cross field balls he played to ash were absolutely brilliant. need to find a new penalty taker though. defence was solid and coped well with the threat of davies and elmander. i think cuellar was the best of the back 4 and his goal was a great header i thought NRC got stuck in well today and his passing was good. i think he really makes a difference to us. sidwell started well but then seemed to disappear as usual. lost the ball too easily for my liking and didnt really contribute much particulaly in the 2nd half. missed an easy headed chance and an even easier rebound from the penalty. i hope when stan comes back it is for sidwell and not NRC, because id like to see how those 2 work together. thats a minor complaint though, really pleased with the result and we passed the ball better today. funny that keeping the ball = more goals!

1st half we pass it around, keep the ball better. this equals chances created and green having to make good saves. we are on top and west ham cant get the ball. 2nd half we revert to long ball. we create hardly anything, give the ball away all the time and west ham dominate. ash's goal was a brilliant shot/cross, but it came from warnock playing a nice incisive through ball into gabbys feet, gabby laying it off nicely along the floor and then ash cutting in and letting rip. the one time we tried to construct something decent along the floor in the 2nd half and we score. had warnock lumped it long to gabby it would have come straight back. it was the same for the goal against everton. that came about from some nice build up play, warnock got in behind the defence and had a chance to get a dangerous ball in which eventually came to carew. so the question is why cant we do this regulaly?

we played decent first half, had west ham on the backfoot by keeping the ball and actually made the keeper work. so why 2nd half did we revert back to MONs shitty long ball tactic, considering we now had an extra midfielder on? we created hardly anything 2nd half, apart from a young screamer. makes no sense, we just slacked off and let west ham back into the game. last half an hour it was all them, the only villa players i heard mentioned were the defence and keeper. noble, parker, hines and collinson were being mentioned practically constantly. MON should have done something but made no changes! and its not just tonight, this has been the story for most of the season- inability to keep the ball, little or no creativity and relying on set pieces or moments of individual quality. its not good enough, we must be the worst team in the top half at passing the ball. big opportunity missed tonight

sounds a harsh pen but we should have made it so it didnt matter. its been all us but as usual we have failed to create enough good chances. greens made a few good saves but for how we have dominated posession we should have at least scored 1. west ham are there for the taking but we are not taking advantage

big gamble that, having gabby or heskey infront of beye. beye is very poor positionally, so whoever plays RM is gonna have to track back well im worried that we could get overun through the middle with a half fit stan, the ghost that is sidwell and 2 players who arent that good defensively on the wings, especially as i think west ham have players suited to playing through the middle. we are going to have to find our shooting boots tonight i think and hope we can get more than them

only listened on radio, we sounded poor first half but better in the second. good to see carew score against everton again! he sounded involved today. defence seemed good again as well, every time you hear collins name it is followed by "great tackle/header/block". unfortunatly every time you hear heskeys name it is followed by "ends up on the floor". a point at everton is always good, they are going to be up there at the end of the season. still disappointed with our style of play though. it sounds as though the goal came from us keeping the ball and passing it pretty well, yet we then just revert back to hoof. i heard too much "chips it up the line and looks long for carew" going on ref sounded rubbish

from listening on WM we were poor tonight, worked hard but created hardly anything. guzan and the defence (particulaly collins) kept sunderland out superbly in normal and extra time. we need to retain possesion and not just hit and hope all the time though. we have some very good players but the system/tactics/training whatever is not quite good enough at the moment. still, its always nice to win a shootout, and you would think it will give the whole side a boost. carew and young finally stepped it up to score crucial penalties. MOTM guzan by a mile. 4 penalty saves and some other excellent saves in normal time. he has won us the game

WM said NRC looked like he was struggling a bit with a knock so was subbed. and i think delph will provide way more attacking threat that NRC, a gamble yes but we are trying to win the game

WM say heskey misses a great chance from a superb ash cross

sounds like absolutely no creativity from open play again, and its been a problem all season. if playing direct or setpieces dont work we have nothing we are probably the worst team at passing in the top 8 and it needs to be sorted out if we are to move on from that to top 4. and im not so sure its the quality of the players- we have good players and teams with lessers quality individuals can pass better.

we cant keep the ball, and its something we have to improve massively. our passing is dreadful and it leaves us totally one dimensional- all we can do is play direct.

sounds like sunderland are all over us at the moment... unsurprisingly we are failing to keep the ball and pass it effectively

there is nothing creative in the middle of the park, if crosses or long balls dont work we are poor. several reasons for this- stan and sidwell dont get up to support play enough. how many times do we see the wide players or forwards isolated with no support inside within 20 yards however in the event they do get there the wide players just bang it in the box anyway. we make no attempt to pass the ball to retain possesion, even when there is an easy pass on. our players always take the direct option which often gives it away. there was also too many poor individual performaces today- carew and ash were awful. sidwell runs around but cant tackle, cant really pass and loses the ball too easily. his main contribution today was to miss an absolute sitter and give away the pen cuellar and collins were good, as was milner most of the time. gabby held the ball up way better than carew and scored in a derby again. shame it wasnt the winner this time. disappointing result

we are playing dire football. its wet and windy making it difficult to control long balls, yet we continue with this approach. no attempt to retain possesion at all, sidwell and stan have been poor. carew has been crap as well, dominated by craddock FFS milner has been good as usual, and both fullbacks are doing well. gabbys hold up play has been good, though he messed up in first minute when he should have scored a massive improvement needed 2nd half, passing the ball might help

lichfield

why did it take you so long to buy the club? err.....err...... err........ yeung sounds dodgy as ****, your supposedly mega rich and yet its taken you 2 years to buy that poor excuse for a club. i read in the telegraph the other day that he owes money to Seymour Pierce, his associates have been done for taking bribes from the triads and financial malpractice and that noone in Honk Kong actually knows who he is. apparently his grandtop company hasnt made any profit in the last 4 years!! the main person putting the money is actually a woman who owns a string of casinos and has been fined in the past for financial malpractice. and then Peter Panu the new finance chief has been accused of taking triad bribes amongst other things when he was Hong Kong Chief of Police, but he was cleared when the triad boss was murdered and another key witness said they no longer wanted to testify. you couldnt make it up. just when you think it couldnt get any funnier at the Sty the porn barons sell to this joker, brilliant!!

yeah collins has really looked good for us so far. and since he left west ham they have looked alot worse defensively!! if he carries on like this he will be one of the bargains of the season.

i am really pleased with our defence this season, looking very solid overall and i cant fault the effort tonight, we grafted. but i still dont like that we dont keep the ball enough and can only play direct. we are very poor in possesion and that is what is stopping us taking the next step up. yet again we seemed to sit back in the second half with a 1-0 lead, city started to control the game more and got the goal. if we showed a bit more quality on the ball to go with the immense workrate and fight we displayed tonight we would have won. maybe it sounds a bit harsh and i realise man city are a good side, but this is MONs 4th season, he has spent a lot and we all want to get top 4, so is it too much to expect that we can string a few passes together? for all their supposed talent we had man city really rattled tonight and i actually feel a bit disapointed we only got a point.

looks like city are playing 424!!

hmmm, not sure about that team. i dont think sidwell and petrov will be able to cope with man citys 3 man midfield. theres no pace in there as sidwell isnt much quicker than stan and we all no how he also goes missing too much. i think it will have to be a case of us outscoring them, so a big game needed from carew tonight in particular.

i think its clear that hes just not going to be any good for us. i thought when he signed he would help create more space for ash milner and gabby to play in, but he doesnt do anything. watching footy first his first 2 "highlights" were him falling on his backside, the first one nearly cost us a goal as well. time to just cut our losses with him i think, and get the fonz more involved. at least he has the ability to score.

i dont think its 442 thats the problem so much, and i dont think its right to say petrov cannot play in 442 at all. weve won plenty of games with him in a 442. i think we can play it certain games. 1st half today we were fine, seemed to be passing it around better. however, 2nd half blackburn stepped it up a bit and we got outmuscled, especially when MON put milner in the middle to accomodate heskey. with that bit of pressure we seemed to totally change. we werent passing it any more and reverted to long balls and get it out wide and cross it in. blackburn are strong in the air so it was never going to work. somebody like NRC in there would have given stan, milner and young a bit more time on the ball to create something, so MON messed up the subs there. but still, we have got to improve our keeping of the ball, even if teams arent allowing you much time on it. there was no threat through the middle 2nd half today and even when blackburn went to 10 men we couldnt keep the ball, tire them out and get a goal. we just kept with the long ball and crosses. for me that is down to tactics and what is done on the training pitch because we do have technically good players like petrov, milner, young and carew. MON said before the season that he knew this was a problem, but he doesnt really seem to have done much about it.

1st half we were fine apart from a bad error by the defence, blackburn only threatened with set pieces. 2nd half was very poor. dunn started to get too much freedom and MONs solution was to take off delph and put heskey left wing!! hes crap, he does nothing but fall over. this also took gabby out wide where he was ineffective, and move milner who although did OK was less effective than he was out right. he had 2 ready made replacements for delph in NRC or gardner who would have given us some more muscle and drive through the middle, which we needed. yet he changed the whole shape of the side to shoe horn in heskey and it smacks of pettiness that NRC was once again ignored. poor subs from MON and poor tatics- we have to learn to keep the ball and play through the middle as well. we let ten man blackburn dictate the game and that is not good enough