Should have been a goal down in the first minute but for the next hour dominated the game and should have been at least three up. However, for the last 20-25 minutes our defending was shambolic and we were lucky to survive. They picked up every second ball, caused chaos in our penalty area and in all honesty should have equalised.

While I'm not advocating the long ball, this obsession with playing out from the back on every occasion is putting us under pressure in our own half. Mix it up a bit more. There's nothing wrong with the long ball as an alternative. I'm not convinced with a back three either. Dawson was poor tonight and I'm still not sure as to who should be in our back line, with the exception of Gibbs. Hopefully Dawson will get his 'mojo' back and Hegazi the same as Bartley hasn't filled me with confidence. I know one thing, and that is that we will have to defend much better against Stoke than we did in the latter stages of tonight's game.