20-02-2021, 19:20
(This post was last modified: 20-02-2021, 19:21 by Slick_Footwork.)
Yet another sending off on the back of a comedy of errors, hospital ball from Gallagher followed up by Ajayi simply failing to put his foot through the ball and clear the danger...
As soon as he handled it I thought it was likely to result in a sending off. It was one of those scenarios where the ref could've either booked or sent him off and either outcome would've been accepted given the distance away from goal where it happened. But I think 9 times out of 10 it's going to be a red when it appears to be a deliberate attempt to handle as last man.
All comes down to the same old poor decision making we have come to expect from this bunch of players...
Bizarrely though, it seemed to play into our hands. Burnley felt they had to win the game and were overcommitting men forwards to offset their lack of guile and craft. That lead to gaps appearing at the back that they wouldn't usually leave if they were playing XI on XI. With the number of opportunities we had, we should've won easily, but our lack of finishing and picking the right pass came back to bite us. The Diagne and Maitland-Niles chances they did everything right except the finish. The Pereira chance, well, you expect your star man to sort his feet out for that even if the pass was a tad behind him...
The positive we can take is that the performance was good with 10 men.
We struct the right balance of being solid, while breaking with purpose. With Maitland-Niles and Yokuslu we finally have the legs in midfield that enable us to get from back to front with quality. I'm convinced if we had these guys - or similar - in the side all year, we would've been in the mix. Too little too late, but at least we're looking like a proper Premier League side that is capable of salvaging some pride in these last 2 games. But it's bitterly disappointing not to win with all of those chances created.
As soon as he handled it I thought it was likely to result in a sending off. It was one of those scenarios where the ref could've either booked or sent him off and either outcome would've been accepted given the distance away from goal where it happened. But I think 9 times out of 10 it's going to be a red when it appears to be a deliberate attempt to handle as last man.
All comes down to the same old poor decision making we have come to expect from this bunch of players...
Bizarrely though, it seemed to play into our hands. Burnley felt they had to win the game and were overcommitting men forwards to offset their lack of guile and craft. That lead to gaps appearing at the back that they wouldn't usually leave if they were playing XI on XI. With the number of opportunities we had, we should've won easily, but our lack of finishing and picking the right pass came back to bite us. The Diagne and Maitland-Niles chances they did everything right except the finish. The Pereira chance, well, you expect your star man to sort his feet out for that even if the pass was a tad behind him...
The positive we can take is that the performance was good with 10 men.
We struct the right balance of being solid, while breaking with purpose. With Maitland-Niles and Yokuslu we finally have the legs in midfield that enable us to get from back to front with quality. I'm convinced if we had these guys - or similar - in the side all year, we would've been in the mix. Too little too late, but at least we're looking like a proper Premier League side that is capable of salvaging some pride in these last 2 games. But it's bitterly disappointing not to win with all of those chances created.
