The Tanner Report
It’s a case of back to square one, or the bottom 18, as this performance was palpably worse than the last home one – when Rene Meulensteen was in charge – and we narrowly lost to Liverpool. Bizarrely, Felix Magath dropped Lewis Holtby, who appeared to be his lieutenant on the pitch and our most effective player these past few weeks, for Clint Dempsey who conforms to that old adage they are as never as good second time around. Also our expensive Greek God Mitroglou has yet to start and one wonders why £11m was splashed out on an unfit player. Magath is both relying on experience and stamina, which looks to be impossible.
After a first half when we held Chelsea but crucially lost Hangeland to injury, we all rather hoped that Chelsea would be tired after Istanbul and the now super fit athletes of Fulham would dominate the second half. The opposite proved the case as we were lifeless and Chelsea went up several gears to win comfortably with a chronic failure by us to track runners. We still play 3 teams in the mire, starting with Cardiff next Saturday, and then Norwich and Crystal Palace and another 3 who have little to play for – Hull, Villa and Stoke – but what we have yet to see is a significant raising of performance. In his programme notes, Chairman Khan spoke of his unconventional and unpopular decisions. Its not those we mind, we just want effective ones, preferably informed by those who understand our club.
Alan, why are we so soft in the second half? You have espoused the theory of superannuation, which I’m sure contributes to our second half issues.
I want to espouse a different, perhaps complementary, theory. Our managers have had no idea whom our best eleven are. So the intensity of the competition in practice each week to get into the best eleven leaves us short of the requisite energy to perform at peak level for the full 90 on matchdays. Stated differently, we’re spending more time beating ourselves than beating the opposition. Needless to say, beating oneself is very frustrating!
Hopefully Hangeland will be back soon. I can’t help but think we missed his nous in the second half yesterday.
Excellent point. Dan Burn was shown up for failing to close down. I don’t normally watch the opposition but Terry and Cahill gave a masterclass in blocking and closing down. I would like to see fresh legs after 60 minutes.