Against 10 men, we didn’t even put them under sustained pressure, garbage to watch as well, shit and its not getting better, its not like he is good at the press conference explaing his reasons, the man is a twat.
I don’t think anyone’s a Puel-lover. We’re more just, Puel-toleraters/accepters. The players are the problem. Our central midfield doesn’t have a forward pass or a shot from distance in them and we don’t have a target man to cross the ball to.
Given both of those things being the case, its piss easy to defend against by getting men behind the ball.
Having said that, I must admit, Koeman wouldn’t have tolerated the crossing we saw tonight. If this was last season and Mane was hanging up very nicely-weighted floaty crosses to precisely no-one in the box (or just Redmond), rather than taking the risk, beating the full back and skidding it in low along the six-yard box (where it might actually do some damage), then we’d have been hearing the faint cry of “Shhhadio! SHAAADIO!” coming from our technical area throughout the second half.
Puel made some questionable substitutions tonight, would’ve kept Long on and stuck Jay up front with him. 3 in midfield was utterly pointless as they all ended up camped on the edge of the Stoke box for most of the 2nd half anyway - we needed a goal threat so swapping one striker for another was a big mistake imo.
As for JWP, we should’ve stuck him at RB in the second half I think. David Prutton on my stream was congratulating Martina on putting some good deliveries into the box but all he did was loft it gently at the 6 yard area, which the Stoke back 4 dealt with all night. Needed something whipped in with a bit of pace for our players to attack as they had a huge height advantage on us.
All in all, another disappointing night but Stoke sat back and defended with their lives for 70 minutes - we’ve never been good at breaking that down or playing against 10 men so it could have gone worse. Some very dodgy stuff coming from the bench and not much invention on the pitch despite Boufal and Tadic both being out there.
Being honest and saying they can’t cross for shite and shoot for toffee goes a long way, would Koeman, Pochetinno, Strachan or even Redknapp excused that shite? No they wouldn’t but watch this fucking clown do it.
Sadly Austin, our main source of goals he’s out for 4 months. Boufal has scored a couple of screamers. No one else is looking like scoring. Who would you have brought off the bench?