Now, I wanted Newcastle to finish in the top 4, because I thought van Egmond had done a brilliant job turning the team around, getting them to play good football, and consequently bringing crowds back to matches. Essentially, Con Constantine would be mad not to keep him. As things turned out, Newcastle needed to beat Melbourne in the final round...
They smegging demolished us! And like the Queensland match last week, I'm furious at Melbourne.
Let's look at the first goal - Allsopp had the ball, was facing our goal, smothered in Newcastle players. Let's forget to ask where the hell our right midfield (did we have one?) and right-back were (smegging Lia - grrrr), that's another issue which I won't cover with any detail today...
Back to Danny - Leijer was facing him, but far too close to risk passing the ball too. Vargas was relatively free in the middle, with Bridge nearby, but at least he wasn't outnumbered. I think Allsopp did the right thing, to try an maintain possession - you're struggling on the right, let's switch play to the uncrowded left side, using Vargas as a pivot point. Bridge read the ball and applied pressure to Vargas. Vargas received the ball, and turned around to shield it without having touched or made any attempt to control the ball. So, when Vargas ended up completely mistiming whatever he planned to do, the ball had not changed its path whatsoever. Making it easier for Bridge to do something, and something he did do... Even a slight touch would have altered the path, thrown Bridge's run off, even only slightly, but perhaps enough for Roddy to get back in to it, or for Theoklitos to smother the ball. Grrrr grrrr stomp stomp.
The second goal... trying to remember... (do I want to remember?) No, I don't want to - this was the Lia moment of how he cannot be good example so he set out to be a horrible warning. Again, credit to Bridge for following the play, and not assuming Lia won't control the ball. In fact, you'd assume he wouldn't control it really as Lia is truly awful...
The third goal - Have I told you how I dislike Theoklitos? If you're going to come out from under your goal, you come out and attack the ball (and player), you don't reach 16 yards and decide to just stand there and watch Coveny. I don't care if you thought that you were going to be ineffective. Come out, put pressure on the player - perhaps by forcing him to rush the shot he'll miss! But no! Theo's chicken...
The fourth goal - I'm over it now. Do I have to go through the pain, because this was a shambles. Complete and utter rubbish. I think Theo was left standing in the middle of nowhere again here, but with two opponents breaking through what can you do? Well, you may as well pressure the one with the ball - as I said before, he may just stuff up!
It is unfair to solely blame the defence for what happened. I'm a believer in defending from the front, and a reason why I'm not an Archie Thompson fan is because too often he will lose the ball and not try to fight for it back. But the main problem we have is a lack of width. I had a Caceres/Storey/wingers rant last week. And how did Newcastle exploit us? They used the width. Fred, Muscat and Brebs play as central midfielders, and were largely absent during the game - effectively giving us no mid-field.
On the left we had Alessandro, backed up by Byrnes. I think Byrne's needs a confidence boost, he is capable of playing decent football, just not lately. Alessandro's been figured out by other teams and is no longer effective going forward, and was never effective coming back. On the right we had Lia. I think most of Newcastle's goals came from the right, via Lia... who was effectively unprotected by the midfield...
Anyway, I saw this match at a pub (the Royal Derby) with some lovely Victory supporters, instead of the comfort of my own home. And it was probably a little more difficult for me to follow the match as I was getting far more fired up than usual when it comes to away matches. This, combined with Queensland's loss has set up a pretty poor weekend for me - can it get any worse? Yeah... if Central Coast win tomorrow, Newcastle come second.... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Going for Adelaide, two weeks in a row? Someone medicate me!
P.S. Very disappointed Steven Old didn't even feature as a benchwarmer.
3 comments:
Vargas is crap. next rio ferdinand i think not.
- spankytheking -
For everybody else's information, I came across spankytheking at the Perth forum first. But he has a bit of an appreciation thread at Newcastle...
Note to our defenders, touch the ball before you try to turn if you are the last defender and under pressure... (actually this turning in defence shits me altogether, control the ball and pass it back to Theo ffs...except that theo will probably hesitate and stay stuck on his line.... arrrggghhh!!
Bloody hell, it was painful to listen to it in SEN, and even more painful when one reads how annoying the mistakes were no wonder you were yelling at the TV at the pub.
Lets hope it was a momentary lapse of reason.
Nice writeup for a nasty game :)
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