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With having a break in Premiership action, due to the recent
internationals, it’s giving us a well earned rest from all things Black
& White. However, no doubt like most addicts you won’t totally have
switched off and will have used this time to reflect on what’s happened
and what the remainder of the season holds.
Disappointing but not surprising would sum up my overall feelings on
season 2006-2007 so far. It’s strange to think if we hadn’t conceded
that penalty in the 1st leg against AZ and went through to
the Quarter-Finals, we’d all be pretty happy to still be in UEFA Cup,
dispute our poor league position. Now football is a fickle game but our
situation is not as straight forward as that (when is it ever!), as we
all knew the team were painting over some obvious cracks by progressing
through the UEFA Cup and the moment that came to an end, the hash
reality of our situation kicked in like an almighty drug come down.
Our defence is much maligned, and rightly so, but two or three half
decent performances gave us some hope that we could get through ok till
the end of the season with what we had. The two performances against AZ
and Charlton certainly blew that theory away and after some scathing
remarks in the press, it seems Glenn Roeder has also lost patience’s and
has finally woken up to the fact that our defence yet again needs a make
over. Roeder can’t solely be blamed for the state of our defence, for
years and with various managers, our weak link has always been our
defence. It’s as if poor defending has been culturally accepted at this
football club and this has to stop.
In a perverse way I quite relieved that our defence has again blown up
to show Roeder that they aren’t good enough. Can you imagine if we had
got through in the UEFA Cup and continued to defend ok for the rest of
the season? Next season Titus Bramble would have a new contract (god
forbid he still might), Stephen Carr would be classed as our first
choice right back, Oguchi Onyewu
would have signed
permanently and the only new player would have come in at left back.
This defence isn’t good enough and Stephen Taylor aside, it won’t be.
Roeder will live or die by him summer signings but if he can get two or
three new defences who can actually defend consistently, he’ll given
himself half a chance of staying on as manager.
Something else that has become very apparent is that despite doing
fantastically well in turns of goalscoring,
Obafemi
Martins has
been left brutal exposed upfront due to injuries and he still has a lot
to learn at this level. His first touch, his ability to hold up the ball
and his composure in front of goal, all have to be improved upon. The
two one-on-one chances he missed in both legs against AZ were crucial
and you do feel a Michael Owen in those positions would have scored at
least one of them. So the return of Michael Owen and Shola Ameobi (to a
lesser extent) will relieve the pressure off Martins shoulders next
season and if we can have three strikers who can all score some goals,
it will only benefit the club.
The (hopeful) rebuilding of the squad this summer are important but we
still have the little matter of 8 league games this season and the
outside chance of qualifying for Europe. Granted we are clutching at the
proverbial straw here but whilst it’s mathematically possible to do so,
we would be doing ourselves an injustice by not thinking we can.
4 of those 8 games are at home, starting with Manchester City this
weekend, and you’d have to think we must win all 4 of them to stand any
chance, especially given our poor away record. Throw in the fact that 2
of these home games are against Arsenal and Chelsea, it makes our
chances of doing that very remote indeed. But as the classic football
cliché goes ‘we’ll take each game as it comes’…
Man City at home then, jeez I’ve got no idea what could happen in this
one but the fact that Man City are playing even worse than us is
something positive to get excited about at least.
So just like an addict who’s had a big come down, they can’t wait for
the next hit, so roll on Saturday night as I’m looking forward to
watching or listening to the match again, it’s been too long.
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