saintant

Important that we give a good account of ourselves here win, lose or draw. Injuries to key players make this a game where Tonda needs to have a good tactical game plan in place much like when we went to Coventry and beat them last season. I hope our ball retention is better than it has been lately because it will need to be to get anything here.

Yeah, maybe Bolton made things easy for Boro or maybe Boro's good football opened them up and they couldn't deal with the passing and movement. We are doing ok but we don't look after the ball as well as they did tonight and that is something we need to improve on because we do give it away far too cheaply.

Pains me to say it but Boro were very good tonight and are currently ahead of us in terms of the way they look after the ball and transition swiftly. If they maintain this level they will have a good chance of top 2 along with West ham so we may have to settle for play-offs. Early days and a lot can and will happen but they laid down a marker tonight with that performance against a side we couldn't break down.

Nor should we. This is the Championship not the Premier League and we should be disappointed after any games we do not get a win or, at least a point for the tougher opponents. I'm pretty sure this is the attitude of Tonda and the players.

Never fear, Tonda will have a masterplan up his sleeve for the Hammers.

The problem for many refs is, they get so used to the safety net of VAR, they almost freeze when it comes to something like awarding a penalty in a Championship game and end up giving nothing as we found out to our cost.

Thanks.

Was he the number 9?

Anyone have details of our starting line up? I wasn't sure who was who and it didn't help that the stream was in Italian 🙂

Enjoyed that and we were by far the better side with Juventus only able to lump long balls other than their one wonder strike for their goal. Lallana has the side well drilled and we were very neat and tidy on the ball. From what I saw we deserved to win and gave them plenty of problems. Sometimes the final ball wasn't quite there but some good individual performances especially the big unit at centre back who looked class.

I don't believe officials are consciously treating us unfairly. However, when you watch back the penalty incident at the weekend with the ref looking at the lino and neither of them giving the blatant spot kick it does make you wonder.

It's clear that Tonda believes a solid defence is the route to producing a winning side. Three clean sheets in a row suggests that he is succeeding. We now have the second best defensive record in the Championship. His task is to make sure this is not to the detriment of our goal scoring stats.

Reading between the lines I get the feeling you think there may be an agenda at work against us 🙂

I know we didn't beat Bolton but let's be honest we should have and Tonda can't be held accountable for missed chances and a bent referee. I quite like his tactical changes and would much prefer a coach who uses his brain and tries other options over one who does the same thing week in week out. He won't always get it right but will learn more this way than sticking to a rigid way of playing in every match.

Yeah, saw him leaving St Marys accompanied by his guide dog.