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Friedel Shares The Praise Around

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Brad Friedel has said his clean sheets lately are down to the team and not simply little ol him between the sticks.

Yes it’s your typical, slow news day, fluff but I become discombobulated unless I do something useful during a day so I’m sort of honour bound to mention it.

Speaking on the Official Site Big Brad didn’t want to talk so much about the string of fine saves he made during the Spurs match, preferring instead to talk about the ‘collective’ team effort needed when it comes to clean sheets.

He even went as far as praising our strikers for their defensive work in cutting attacks out further up the field.

I could be sarcastic and say they’ve cut out attacking completely, but they do say it’s the lowest form of wit – so suits me perfectly.

‘We appreciate it when the strikers and midfielders stop that source and we have something in the team right now where it is instilled into us to do that.’

I think it’s pretty clear Big Brad was less than impressed with our attacking intent during the last match, let’s face I don’t think anybody was impressed with that, but defensively he couldn’t have been happier.

‘We were up for it. I thought the team defensively was brilliant.’

He adds they knew what they were going to get from Spurs, and Appy Arry’s team didn’t disppoint, but Friedel was very pleased with the number of blocked shots and thinks that shows perfectly well the type of defensive performance the lads put in.

The plan it seems was to catch them on the break – you know that counter attacking stuff everybody who doesn’t watch us thinks we play week in week out – yet it didn’t happen and it wasn’t to be.

Before the match the game was tagged not as a must win, but as a must not lose and being fair it’s not as if Spurs aren’t a good side, so a point and clean sheet would’ve been taken by most before the match.

It’s just frustrating that again our ineptitude upfront for the second season running as we head into the final months of the season is still what’s holding us back.

Strengthening the team defensively during last summer O’Neill can take a bow, I just wish I could say the same about attack.

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