Alex McLeish has said that following our blistering start to todays game and taking the early lead, he fully expected us to go on and take all 3 points.
However, he believes we lost the impetus with injury niggles hitting Warnock and Petrov, and following that we never quite got back in our stride.
Speaking to the Official Site after the 1-1 draw, the boss said.
‘The way we started the game was blistering, it was fantastic. We opened them up and we looked really dangerous. Then we had a couple of problems with Stan Petrov and Stephen Warnock and we lost a bit of momentum with these injuries. I was expecting to win after the start we made. We are all a bit frustrated.’
Now I do seem to be in the minority as I actually quite enjoyed the game, it was end to end, we had a number of good chances to kill the game off before we let Newcastle back in to it, and at points we were knocking the ball around beautifully. But we lost it in midfield and we lost our shape why was Bannan removed, again being the main outlet for creativity?
Why was Zoggy left on the pitch despite clearly not being in the game today?
With the introduction of Albrighton we at least had some width, but we lost all creativity through the middle in terms of picking out runs. Ireland wasn’t bad for a change, but he’s not a battler when a player needs to dig in, and again tenacity is something you at least get with the wee one.
Strange decision that seemed to hamper more than aide us, although the strangest one with the substitution of Bent does seem to have been a precaution as he is set for an assessment and possibly a scan on Monday, along with Petrov and Warnock.
On the subject of the performance itself though, by Eck adds.
‘Benty had a good chance to make it 2-0 and it’s not like him to miss those sort of chances, he’s only human though. We could have been better in the final third, we were a little careless. We had opportunities that we weren’t ruthless enough on.’
In what will rile some up, he also says he’s not too disappointed with the start to our season.
‘I believe the players can get better, I can’t say I’m disappointed with our start to the season at all. I’m really pleased with their application, they have been receptive to the ideas. We just needed a bit of a break and, as I said, being more ruthless.’
There are plenty of aspects to our game that can and should and I hope will, be improved. Some of the wayward passes are amatuerish, individual form of some clearly needs to be improved. Alex needs to select the first team based on who offers the most for 90 minutes, and possibly not, who he signed.
It’s not all doom and gloom, but there are plenty of simple things that crop up game in game out, that should’ve been sorted out already.
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