Sitting on the dock of the bay
Playing ten against eleven against a team that is leading by two goals wasn’t easy for us. When we went into the dressing room, the Manager changed things around and we pushed forward, pushing the right and left backs more forward and that changed a lot for us.
I’ll do the Telegraph density maps later in the week, but from them it’s clear that Simon Davies was operating as a second forward, playing, in total, further forward than both Zamora and Johnson. Now we get confirmation from Paintsil that the full-backs were pushing on. I noticed Paintsil roving in the second half, and thought he did that quite well, but Paul Konchesky worries me somewhat when asked to do too much attacking.
Paul Doyle of the Guardian has something about Roy’s subs too, incidentally.
That could be construed as an admission of the lack of his squad’s depth, and certainly the absence of a specialist left winger was punishing, though either Seol Ki-Hyeon or Clint Dempsey could reasonably have been expected to be more visible than the ghostly Zoltan Gera. Chris Baird and Toni Kallio may also have been more reliable in the full-back berths than the negligent John Pantsil and Paul Konchesky. But not “definitely”.
“Definitely” was the key word in Hodgson’s explanation. By using it he left himself open to accusations of indecision or excessive caution. If we reflect on a record of success that extends well beyond last season’s great escape, we may instead deduce that his refusal to gamble on a substitution attests to the strength of his conviction in his methods, a belief, borne of his rich experience, that if you keep performing well you will eventually be rewarded.
Fair enough, all this. I think that, as usual, we’re slightly overreacting, but it’s a trend that does bear watching. Roy must have purchased the likes of Andreasen, Andranik and Etuhu for a reason; I’m sure if we’re patient we’ll see them.
The main thing is points on the board, and we’re about par for the course at the moment. No need to panic just yet.
There’s been a lot of talk on TiFF about visibly tired players – I just didn’t see that. Am I wrong? My feeling at the time was that no-one appeared to be running out of steam. In fact I was amazed at how strongly we finished. I thought we were creating chances and would not have done any better by bringing on a sub. I think Paul Doyle’s comment regarding Roy’s strength of conviction in his method’s is spot on.
Again, I agree. I think people are loading up on nice sounding but largely baseless ideas and spouting them off over and over in the hope that they sound more plausible. I won’t blame people for this: I watched John McCain do the same the other night and he could soon be president of America ;-)
Seriously though, players were tiring but they always do in games. There was nobody visibly flagging, and Murphy and Bullard were so important to our play that they were sure to stay on. Gera shouldn’t be bullet proof, but he’s done enough to stay with the other big 3 midfielders.
I’m certainly not going to argue with either of you, since I wasn’t even able to listen to this match. But, I’m thinking about someone’s earlier point about strikers actually scoring more [per minute played] when they come on as subs. This is the best use of Nevland, in my opinion, and — two seasons ago — it was the best use of Zamora. Pardew brought him in at 65 minutes or so to just hammer against an exhausted back line with devastating results.
I think that most posts dispairing the lack of substitution Saturday were pretty much hangover from the Blackburn match. Had Roy substituted during that match — which I think most of us will agree he had good cause to — there probably wouldn’t be half the hue and cry about no subs against West Ham. I know I’d have been a lot more patient.
fair enough, but against Blackburn there was nothing really happening to suggest imminent defeat. To me – and I was only watching online – the game seemed to have reached a sort of stalemate, with a point each very likely.
While there were no visible signs of outright fatigue, the team definitely showed a lack of energy after a certain point in the 2nd half and the real chances were coming from the Hammers, not us. We had gotten a boost from Murphy’s PK, but you could sense that momentum sliding away as time went on. You could also see that by not having pace up front, West Ham was able to crowd our midfielders and we struggled to create space. While tactics are very important, it sometimes just comes down to a side’s mental outlook. By inserting players who bring a new energy to the match, you can also energize the players that are already out there. We’ve all seen it happen before.
While Roy clearly knows this team (and the game of football) much better than any of us, I do believe that he was mistaken in not using any subs, especially after being a man down for over an entire half. I don’t think that any of the ten players that were out there were having such a strong game that they would have been shocked to have been replaced. And I’m certain that his desire to stand pat further eroded the confidence of the available subs which is a shame because as Hatter Don said it quite eloquently, we’re not going to survive the season by only using 11 players.
Ah, who cares? The world is ending as we know it as everyone & everything goes financially belly-up.