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Post by visunita442 on Nov 16, 2008 0:00:11 GMT
It's becoming more aparent week by week that survival will depend on how well you fair away from home. Most teams around us look decent enough at home so picking up at least 3 away wins will be crucial.
The question is how do we get those wins away from the Britt?Firstly by NOT adopting the same attitude away as at home.
For sure no one seriously thought we'd get a result today but it is worrying that we have no plan B when things start to go wrong & they did after just 2 minutes!
Secondly Tony has to show a degree of flexibility in his choice of players & 'style' of play. How many of us cringed when we saw the first eleven? I did for one. Diao, Amdy & Oli in the same team. These three are cut from the same mould. Now at home that's ok. Arsenal at home certainly proved that but away, on lot larger pitches than ours it just ain't enough & in such a crucial area as centre midfield it highlights their shortcomings.
If Tony's intention away from home is to soak up pressure and hit teams on the break then we have to have better ball retention and quicker players to exploit that. Surely Soares, Whelan & Tonge give us that dimension & moving Delap back in to centre mid to add bite would make us more competative.
Our fromation or as today showed lack of is also costing us. Now I know systems are only as good as the players you have but it was all to clear that Man Ure had all the time in the world to pick their passes & Carrick never broke sweat! Would it have been better to play five across the middle, deny them the space to pick their passes & make us the thing we all keep banging on about...competative?
I don't claim to be an expert and I'm not attempting to tell Pulis how to do his job but we need to be far more positive in our away matches. Simply lying down and allowing teams to keep coming at us will get us nowhere fast & makes the 3 wins on the road we need seem like a pipe dream!
Come on Stoke let's take a leaf out of Hull's book and have a go. It surely would have gotten us more that 2 points away if we had?
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Post by ryan3067 on Nov 16, 2008 0:02:26 GMT
I agree, I really didn't understand the reasoning for bringing on cresswell today, Whelan is a good distributor of the ball, I don't know what he has to do to get a decent crack in the team
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Post by JoeinOz on Nov 16, 2008 0:04:12 GMT
I disagree. The most important thing is to win home games. After that picking up away points is a welcome bonus.
Apart from Wigan and Liverpool we don't usually lie down and let teams come at us. I don't think we did at Man Utd it's just that we'd press forward and we lacked the technical expertise to break them down and their technical superiority meant that in three passes we were camped in our own half.
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Post by visunita442 on Nov 16, 2008 0:12:46 GMT
I'm not so nieve as to think we'd actually win at Old Trafford & I agree that our home form will be crucial but as I said at the top of my post all the teams in and around us will more than likely have similar home records to our own come the end of the season. So I say again away wins are vital to our survival. Get 3 and we stand a good chance of staying out of trouble come next March/April.
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Post by Miniman on Nov 16, 2008 0:14:03 GMT
We can manage 57 points at home(51 now)
We can still get 41 away from home.
I think that we could be able to get around 92 points this season with this but we would have to be unbeten all season. Lets just hope we can gradually find our feet away from home before eyebrows are raised over our strength away from the brit and whether 28000 shouting stokies are our only real weapon. Nothing to say after today's midfield performance but only positive today is that boxing day fixture, Usain Bolt is going to be at the brit says Riccy.
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Post by ryan3067 on Nov 16, 2008 0:14:40 GMT
home results are the main priority but we do need to startpicking up more points away, I have faith in tone and the players that they will do the job and we will still be a premiership team next season
gooooooooooo arnnnnnnnn
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Post by JoeinOz on Nov 16, 2008 0:15:35 GMT
At the start of the season if we got 10-12 points away from home we'd have done well.
I actually reckon our home form could end up being superior to that of our contemporaries. Wigan have only won one I think. Brazil two?
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Post by visunita442 on Nov 16, 2008 0:21:09 GMT
Yep I firmly believe we can stay in the prem & I have the utmost respect for TP & how he's put us back on the footballing map but his singlemindedness can also be his achiles heel & continually playing in the same manner & with the same 'core' of playes week in week out & not looking at and picking from the whole squad is singleminded and costing us on our travels. Come on Tone time for a rethink away from fortress Britt!
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