Quote Originally Posted by army88 View Post
Never came for a ball Sinkov - never helped his defence - a good shot stopper is where Tom s attributes end.
If you go back a few seasons the two centre backs were at their pomp and made heatons life easy -

More than one way to look at things.

Tbh I don’t think Pope is much different to Tom only that he commands his area much better
Tom very rarely came off his line, it's my understanding that this was quite deliberate and worked on in training, Tom only came for balls he could collect easily, otherwise he let the defenders deal with it. You seem to be suggesting Army that this was a weakness, but I thought it worked perfectly, there was never any confusion in our defence, and we ended the 13/14 season, Tom's first, with the best defensive record in the league with just 37 goals conceded and only 5 defeats in 46 games. Tom kept 19 clean sheets, and let in just one goal in 19 others.

But I digress, I'm not trying to pick on Nick, like I've said before, I don't think we have a defensive problem, we're fine imo, but if you are going to claim our defence is not functioning as well as it used to, I just find it perverse that every man and his dog is getting the blame, except the goalkeeper. If any defence is not functioning properly the first position to scrutinise is surely goalkeeper. I do get the impression that Nick is a blue-eyed boy with many of our fans, somehow above criticism, but he shouldn't be, that's all I'm saying.