How much worse is this going to get? I had hoped that Goodison would be rock bottom but if anything this is worse. Not because of the result or even the performance, but because of the lack of a bounce back, the drama and the sadness we’re all feeling as everything just falls apart around Jurgen. It’s fucking miserable and for him to be going out like this is just awful.
I’ll get to all the Salah stuff later, but that was just the fly on top of the shit. The performance wasn’t terrible but it was nowhere good enough under the circumstances either, especially the first half (where have we heard that before?). I wasn’t surprised because I’ve gone past the point of expecting this team to bounce back and show some real fight and desire. If they can go to Goodison and be as meek and pathetic as they were then why should we expect any kind of response?
We didn’t get a response, even if we were the better side and controlled the first half. The reason for that was because West Ham are on the beach now having been knocked out of Europe. They shipped five last week, so the fear was that they’d come out firing and looking to make amends for that. They didn’t, they were even less intense than we were.
So we started fairly brightly and had a few openings we might have done more with. It looked like we’d been awarded a penalty at one point but it turns out Diaz was offside in the build up. He was the one bright spark again. Say what you want about the lack of end product (no goals in six for him during this awful run we’ve had) but at least he doesn’t look scared and he’s carrying the fight whereas others have shrivelled like balls in the cold.
I thought Gravenberch was quite lively too and this is the most involved he’s been in a game in ages. He wasn’t anything special but he did some nice things and was generally positive. Robbo was fine too. So the left side of the team was ok, but the right and the centre weren’t giving us much.
And then we conceded the obligatory stupid goal to fall a goal behind. Defending set-pieces is matter of effort, desire and wanting to attack the ball. We haven’t had enough of that recently. If they bypass Virgil then we’re vulnerable. The other night it was Trent just watching Calvert-Lewin storm in to score, this time it’s Gakpo not handling a player he’s half a foot taller than. Quansah to some extent too, but whoever you want to blame the bottom line is that Bowen shouldn’t be winning headers in our box. He’s not Calvert-Lewin for fucks sake.
As usual, we improved after the half time team talk and the start of the second half was really good. We had them penned back, we were getting runners into the box and putting loads of pressure on them. We got a goal fairly quickly when Robbo popped up in the centre forward position and produced a sharp little touch and finish that caught the keeper flat footed.
Robbo looked like he wanted to put the entire team on his back in that second half, he was popping up everywhere. In this bad run the only thing he’s been guilty of is a chronic lack of quality in the final third. I’ve said before that they all have blood on their hands, in Robbo’s case it’s more of a splatter on his clothing whereas some others are positively dripping in it.
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