First of all, I have not changed any marks out of 10.
Johnny Mac was not as good as Nugget or Warmers. A 'three-point turn' in the centre of midfield when their No.10 went past him too easily to set up No.18 for a shot into the side netting (bad miss) and then trying to play the offside trap on No.17 for their third goal instead of closing down No.6 (who ran through and crossed it) let him down...these being the same sort of reasons why nine of our other players were not worth a 7 either. Generally we were a bit off the pace at times and Europa forced us into making errors like that defensively and into panicking with our finishing or with our final ball.
We all know Nugget strolls about in comparison to others, but he was involved in virtually all of our chances on Sunday and didn't make any bad mistakes.
That's what he gives us, and as we have argued on here before, we give marks more for ability on the day as everybody should be getting 10 out of 10 if it was for effort only and there would then be no point in doing marks.
As for the 'clear-cut chances' count, they had two more than us and they had twice as many shots as us, most of which were from ridiculous distances though.
A draw would have been a fair result from what I have just seen on video, but we didn't deserve to win. They played very well defensively and were just too competitive for us...like London Ajax. We are going to have to start trying harder to overcome these sort of sides.
I know the non-appearance of three players and the injuries to Speller & Terry were a real downer, but they only had a bare eleven and six key players missing as well, so we can't really use that as an excuse.
The goals looked bad on video I'm afraid. I was trying to be 'kind' in my match report, but they were bad mistakes by Simon, Stuart & Ritchie. Having said that, Marchie didn't look too clever for them when he let in Nugget's free-kick ! (You can now see this on Clip Of The Week).
We really do need to start punishing other teams' mistakes a lot more...like they are doing to us in every game at the moment.
A couple of other things I noticed from the video...
Del was NOT offside for that disallowed goal in the First Half, but Nugget was in an offside position although clearly not interfering with play.
However, the ref awarded the free-kick from where DEL had been standing !
If their lino told him that, then it was an extremely dodgy decision...although Trev did a couple of strange ones late in the Second Half.
I presume the ref had told both linos to flag 'whatever' and then he would decide ?!...something I will be writing to the League about later this week as it is causing major problems where players think all club linesmen are 'F**king Cheating Kants' (eh, Stuart ?!!!!)
Just to let Stuart know that when he called their lino that in the First Half, the ball was only fractionally out of play and there was no way he could have seen it properly because of the angle that their No.17 approached the ball, Robin being in his line of vision and Rebairo & Tarby swinging Ben on and off the pitch at the same time !
I have never seen Stuart so wound up (all match in fact) and he was lucky not to get booked at least ! Why, Stu ?
As for the oil cloud from Buncefield, on the match report page there are now a couple of 'unreal' pictures taken from the video footage of our game with the cloud overhead !
Definitely some of the strangest conditions we have ever played in.
Hope none of our players are coughing and wheezing as a result ?
Chz for that LOL........Location noted!!
So to clarify the marking system:-
If I play in all 11 positions, score a minimum of a hat-trick, cover every blade of grass, win every tackle, never give the ball away, produce incisive passes, and never make a hint of a mistake.........then I could be up for a 7 ???????? I feel like I'm Alex Ferguson and you're the tabloids!!!Baaaaaah!!