Apart from a brief ten minute spell after Soldado came on this was unremittingly awful. The bovine ‘passing’ of Dawson, the callowness of Bentaleb and the Tom Hanks like isolation of Adebayor made you almost pine for AVB when at least all these things seemed to be happening on purpose.
The ineptness of our full backs was shameful, the fact that Dawson was lowering the bar even further embarrassing. The midfield was slow to support in attack and weak in the tackle in defence. Even during the all too brief period when things appeared to be knitting together, when Soldado was linking well with Badebayor, Lennon and Dembele, we were let down by the finishing of the front two who failed to hit the target with a number of presentable opportunities. Our spell of dominance (in the loosest sense) ended when Sherwood brought Townsend on and we went three at the back thus allowing Norwich to break into the extra space. Our three was effectively one given the form of Dawson and Naughton and that was that. Norwich looked more likely to add to their lead rather than us reduce it.
Only Dembele, Vertonghen, Chadli (though he should have scored) maybe Lennon and of course Lloris escape with any credit in my opinion, most of the rest should be marked as negatives out of ten if possible.
The frustration of the fans around me was mostly based on our lily livered unadventurousness. Both sides were awful at the start; we just hoped we’d be the first to snap out of it, we never did though. We weren’t good enough to match them for endeavour and organisation, it was clear from very very early on that the situation was crying out for the double-pronged, more gung-ho approach that Sherwood first succeeded with when he came into the job. As it was we got sucked into a war of attrition that made the inflatable human hamster wheel race at half time look like the very definition of joy.
What’s happened to Kaboul? 90 minutes against Newcastle and then gone. I said at the start of the season that this was a big season for him and Sandro, principally due to their liking for stretcher-based transportation and both so far have been found lacking.
I despair.
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