Thud. That’s the noise when you come clattering (or Clattenberging) back down to earth. It’s taken 24 hours to recover and put together the usual drivel. After missing the Stoke report I was hoping for a happy return.
You knew the run would come to an end at some point. But you’d have guessed that would be at Man City; not at Everton. And it was so unnecessary. We should have put them away in that first 20 minute period. We started brightly – a continuation of Stoke. We dominated and scored (fortunately though that was). And then Everton woke up. They started to press us. But even then Cech had no saves to make. Not that Stecklenberg was tested too much either.
This was one of those games we did not deserve to lose but we did not do enough to win either. After our goal we seemed to retreat and lose our fluency. All the second balls seemed to fall to them. They had more energy but we had the better style. Our game was still superior but we could not take our chances. Ozil had one slightly difficult one in the first half after Alexis pulled the ball back. And then in the second half he had an even clear chance that he blasted over the bar. Given that we did not have that many direct chances on goal, that was a game changer. Aside that is from the injury time chances we missed. How Ob1 managed to find the one player – Coleman – on the line to block a certain goal is beyond me. And then how Clattenberg did not see the penalty foul on Alexis is equally annoying. Under any other circumstances we’d have come away with at least a point. There’s no doubt who were the better team but if you don’t take your chances it matters not.
Unfortunately both goals came from unmarked headers. The first one came as Theo failed to tackle and then closedown Baines. Then the late arrival of Coleman was not tracked by Ox. Two of our players who, more generally, were off their game today. Neither really contributed much aside from defensive mistakes. As for the Williams header, that looked to be the breakdown in zonal marking. And it looked like the only way they would score.
What did we learn today? Well, aside from trying to find a less painful and emotionally stressful way to spend 1 ½ hours, it does seem like tiredness is starting to creep in. Of course, this is no different to other teams. Except that the core of our team is critical. And they play most of every game. We also need to give more time to Giroud. When he came on he seemed slow to the ball – waiting for it to come to him rather than him moving towards the ball. This comes through rustiness. He needs more playing time. Somehow we have to rotate Theo/Ox to get him in there. And then there’s OB1. He’s morphing into our Ramsey replacement. He’s passing today was poor and that miss was appalling – it costs us the point.
It’s a long season and we still are moving in the right direction. But we’re at risk – as we’ve always been – to Ozil and Alexis. Today demonstrated we’re not as good as our all the pundits claimed nor as bad as this result would indicate. Having said that I would assume that a team like Liverpool would crush Everton – which, of course, we should have done. They wont waste chances and they’ll be more of a direct threat. It’s funny, the one fear I had going into the game – that Lukaku would overpower us – did not happen. Yet somehow we manage to throw away the points.
I thought Coq was big today. In fact, though Clattenberg was poor in so many of his decision (not least the penalty), it was surprising that Coq did not pick up a yellow card. He’s partnership with Xhaka is certainly gelling. It was noticeable how Xhaka dropped to take the ball off our defenders. And it was noticeable how different our distribution is with BigEars as opposed to Mustafi. Not that BigEars can be blamed for anything. It just cuts into our fluency.
There were periods in the first half when we were aggressive and shutting down their movement but as the game wore on that wore off. We seemed to surrender our advantage and the initiative. We invited more pressure. In fact, any every opposing manager to play a high pressing game on us; that’s where we shown ourselves to be vulnerable.
And who was scared stiff when Cech went up for the corner? Last time he did that he hurt his hamstring/calf (against Swansea I think) and was out injured for 2 months. Let’s hope he did not repeat that feat.
So, onto Sunday and a super important game. After all the results from yesterday and today we really must come away with at least a point. But, even in the worst case, it would not be the end of the world – except our collapse usually does not start until we reach February.
We did have excellent periods during this game but we, in games of fine margins, you have to take your chances. Pleas take note Mr. Ozil.
– LB7