I'm still terrified we'll blow it. I never seem to have England win at cricket and City win at football on the same day, that's another bad omen
Hate to say I told you so!
Got to blame the manager for today IMO, he got the 2nd half completely wrong. Gael was terrible-I can only think Thorn couldn't see it as he was on the other side-but he was just constantly marking space and not picking up his man. So many goals early season involved experienced players working the ball down that flank and exposing Cyrus and Gael, and it was similar today-there might as well have been nobody playing in that position. Clarke was defending that entire flank on his own with a traffic cone in front of him for help. It was crying out for Deegan, whose movement, defensive positioning and awareness are one of his strengths, but we left it too late.
It was also a mistake to come out so deep at the start of the second half and try time-wasting from 45 minutes onwards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we clearly came on with the gameplan of hanging on for the second half, we were so deep. We aren't good enough to do that! Fergusons switch to 4-2-3-1 completely outsmarted us: our formation in response was bizarre, shuffling Sheff out wide (where he seemed to be under instructions to stay on the half-way line and play hollywood passes..) and leaving the middle of the park to Posh, which possibly sucked Gael even further inside. We were back to the old problems of early season, with Gael and Sammy trying to play in the same deep, central role. And we didn't start attacking and looking for the 3rd goal until we were level.
Very naive of us.
And it was possibly a mistake bringing Platt on-or at least then making him the sole focus of every single attack when we did, and in the air,
not to his chest. It was agricultural football at its worst, and not "how we play". When the opposition have 2 6ft+ beasts at CB, the answer to being out-muscled is
not to bring on a big man and go long-it's to attack them on the deck with pace. Platt was meat and drink to them.