He's too slow and the older lads in J Mac, Luka and Schlupp are better at moving the ball forward despite their age IMO.

A progressive coach is going to need better players and not a squad of thirty plus average players who got run off the pitch by a youthful 10 man Aston Villa.

Absolutely no disgrace in losing to an full strength Wolves team. Not having a shot on target and playing the way we did, however, is disgraceful.

In a cup match you may a well have a bloody go. Instead we done the usual tactic of trying to hang in the game by doing nothing then waking up in the 80th min when it’s too late.

Edited by Mathers (08 Jan 2021 11.41pm)

When I say progressive I can't imagine Roy blending U23 players with senior players and evolving the playing staff that way.

It does seem weird to imagine players knowingly pass the ball backwards and sideways with the understanding that this ball they're playing is just continuing the awful prospects of them as a team achieving anything, why would a team on the pitch do that? Why would a player knowingly reduce their individual value by continuing to play this way with the double whammy of not personally going on a cup run or to see themselves involved in a squad that is very well placed in the league, the very same can be said for the manager.

I saw a very brief change just after Zaha came on when he actually closed down and won the ball from one of their players as he tried to move forward and suddenly we were at them and they didn't seem so happy when he put a wonderful pacey ball behind their defence, it was a very brief moment but it showed an awful lot to me that Benteke and Batshuayi totally failed to show any attempt to close any of their play down and to show any intention of getting into their faces,
So did Zaha show his contempt towards his managers orders to allow them to have the freedom to just room at will by forcing one of them to make a mistake and then attack as he did or did he play as his manager informed him to?

I feel the ability to do what Zaha did was because he had the ability to do it also the criticism aimed at Eze is not justified because he appeared to be willing to run forward with the ball as did Ayew but only towards half time did he start to play this way and then quite a few times during the second half, I thought Ayew looked our most dangerous player.

I see Hodgson is saying we lost to a Wolves wonder goal. Might be better if he explained why we allowed him the time and space to take that shot. If Mitchell and Schlupp had been down the left side I’m fairly sure they would have been tight on the scorer. Eze in my mind was the culprit in giving him that space to shot. All goals come from mistakes but that was lower league defending. In truth the whole 90 plus minutes were poor by us and we got what we deserved :-(

Eze needs to contribute more from a defensive standpoint but I am not suggesting he should be turned into a defensive midfielder!
Probably about 2 or 3 years ago whilst at QPR, it was said that he needed to improve his work off the ball and that they needed to add discipline and workrate to his game.

Edited by Willo (09 Jan 2021 12.16am)