Who do you want in the final ?
Albion for me, as think Southampton are a better allround side. But...as you say, it will all depend on whether we turn up first and foremost, to give ourselves the best chance.
And this is what I am struggling with after last night. Can accept the 1st leg v Norwich because we were obviously playing to a plan to not lose at any cost. But the 3 or 4 games prior to that, we had very ordinary and had no attacking flair whatsoever! If we played like last night, we would already be auto promoted wouldn't we? How or why did our game suddenly reappear now? 😮 Only thing I can suggest is that we were on such a good roll that we just simply expected those last few fixtures to fall our way....and basically underestimated our opposition. 🤔
Largely agree.
However, I don't think it was underestimating so much as the fall off of our "welsh connection". Rodon was a beast last night and Ampadu picked up for him when he want up.
The other huge factor that I felt was different than the last 10 games of the season was we did much less back passing. It looked like this was a coaching decision. Norwich was looking for the back pass to push up and press. we did it very seldom yesterday and it definitely caught them off guard. I would want not to defend us when we are pushing on every play rather than distributing from the back. I think it really messed them up.
To answer the question. Baggies all day. we are a much better squad than them. Not so sure we are better than sotown. If both teams came to play full blast we'll beat the baggies. Again, not sure thats the case with Sotown.
Yeah fair call on the back passing. It certainly did go up quite a few notches towards the tailend of the fixtures. And I guess in turn that affects the quality going forward also. The only thing it doesn't explain is why we were so timid in having a dig at the defenders when we got near the penalty box. They looked shellshocked.
Anyway, if we go back to the conservative play after seeing us last night, then I might even start up the "Farke out" call! 😁
WBA i think. Whoever its is, we need to put in an all around performance like last night, then have a real chance. After a move up in gears in both Norwich games, team has to maintain current level, no place or time for repeat of Sunderland / QPR.
Last night had shades of Bielsa, control & speed throughout, dont think many teams could have lived with that.
Just had a pop on the Albion board and a few seem to fancy the gig against us with one even stating that we ain't that good.
We'll see.....
We were pretty poor against both of them in the regular season but if we play like we did yesterday it (hopefully!) shouldn't matter.
I'll watch their game later today just to torment myself though...