Firstly there are a couple of things I should point out:
- I don’t mean to sound too negative about the games we have coming up. I just have reasons why I think we did well today but might struggle in the ones coming up. If we keep on doing some of the things we showed today we will be absolutely fine over the course of the season and have every reason to be positive though.
- News of Lukaku’s mate’s death (Junior Malanda of Wolfsburg, 20 years old) will have shaken Big Rom up massively. Him being out for a while to grieve is not something I’m criticising for. It’s something I’d expect with our next game against West Ham 3 days away. Shame is that he’s coming into some great form, but again some things are bigger than football and I’m not saying that he should play for us until he’s ready.
So, as for the game? Great match, end to end. We rode our luck at times in the first half especially due to silly mistakes giving chances to Jovetic especially. Jagielka got away with being unable to control a football which was just embarrassing.
However, as the game went on our attacks became more threatening, with Lukaku’s shot being saved by Hart and Coleman’s follow-up rattling the bar. That gave us loads of confidence and even after City took the lead we still went forward and were very deserving in Naismith’s equaliser.
Those deserving specific praise include Besic, who was everywhere. He and Barry did pretty well although McCarthy and Besic is clearly one we should be encouraging when the Irishman is fit. And it was hilarious when Besic was pulled up for a foul and hit the ground so hard that the Park End was shaking. The ref looked at him and decided it would be best to ignore that…
Lukaku also excelled as our new-found tactic of ‘kicking the ball forward in front of him’ seemed to be something he rather enjoyed. We could really do with him against West Ham on Tuesday night and against West Brom next weekend. Him not being available to us will be a big blow to our chances of progressing in both competitions. John Stones was quality at the back and made everyone feel a little more assured. Hopefully he can stay fit and keep Distin as a backup-only option.
Those not so great? Well Coleman needs to get a new trick on the right as most of his touches seemed to be concentrated on dribbling straight at players or flicking the ball out of play. McGeady wasn’t much better – it’s a shame as he should be great but he seems unable to do the basics well at times, running at players and giving the ball away ALL the time. As for Robles, he did okay. He shouldn’t get too used to being in nets though as it seems we have put an £8m bid in for the Cardiff keeper.
Okay, this is why I don’t think we should get ahead of ourselves. I had a feeling that we’d have chances today – it was just a case of whether City would be able to take their chances with Aguero still clearly unfit. City came to attack, leaving spaces open for us to hit them on the counter-attack, meaning we were always going to be able to build attacks with pace. Those teams that we’ve struggled against are those that will pile players behind the ball – it’s all very well grabbing draws against the ‘big’ teams but we have some huge games against the relegation battlers that we have to win. And I’m not so sure that those teams will let us play like we did today.
Lastly, how good is David Silva? He ran the show. What we’d do for him playing behind Lukaku and giving him the kind of chances that Jovetic skanked into the stands or scuffed past the post!