Another two points pissed away with idiotic mistakes.
Defensively, we were poor against a team that offered virtually no threat. I've watched Whitbread a few times now and he's a liability. In every game, he makes one or two shocking errors. Yes, the penalty he conceded was harsh but he defended the situation very badly. Shortly afterwards, he also blatently man-handled a Florist player in the box for a clear penalty and the ref bottled it. On the plus side, Schlupp was excellent. He's definitely got the potential to be a better left back than a striker on that showing. Maybe he needs to reconsider his future.
In midfield, once again King was anonymous and poor. He had an excellent run early in the season but its all gone very wrong. Along with a drop in form from Drinkwater, the centre midfield simply isn't controlling the side in the way that it needs to. Dyer was good, Knockaert terrible. Knockaert is starting to seriously annoy me. He plays for himself too often. Yes, his pass to Nugent was excellent, but his constant self indulgence to the detriment of the team and sloppy passing make him a liability rather than an asset too often. Marshall was poor once again coming on. I don't know what's happened to him but his fall from grace is astounding. He has been terrible all season.
Both the strikers played well. Nugent is so key to us and we dropped off considerably as soon as he went off. His replacement, some child from the stands by the look of him, played like a rabbit in the headlights. Utterly embarrassing performance from someone patently miles away from being ready for this level. Waghorn played like he used to when he was on loan to us. It was the first time I've seen the old Waggy for a long time. However, he also has to be blamed for the result more than any other player as he missed two very clear chances. He is clearly lacking in confidence in front of goal and we can't afford to wait around for him to find this confidence.
Tactically, NP ballsed it up once again. We should have won that and he made some daft mistakes. The most obvious one being effectively putting us down to ten men in order to do a favour for Fergie. However, his decision to send Beckford out on loan was the right one. Don't forget how inept and shambolic he was in his substitute appearances earlier this season. Either he doesn't want to play for NP, or he does an excellent impression of it. Forget him and move on.
Overall, that's just one unconvincing win in six games now. Our form is definitely gone and we're throwing away points and opportunities all over the place. That will probably cost us when it counts later in the season.
