We showed the Jekyll and Hyde of our play once again. It seems we cannot play a full 90 mins of football. First half was another poor display of misplaced passes, being high pressed, trying to play out from the back and making mistakes. Their goal was coming and after a few close calls a mistake at the back led to a ball over the top to a suspiciously looking offside Semenyo breaking away for Wiemann to shoot past Fisher. Linesman was behind play and kept his flag down, it reminded me of the Carroll offside goal allowed earlier in the season and from the same position on the pitch.
Whatever Martin said in the dressing-room, we were much improved second half. After a drought of only two goals in six matches we proceeded to score three in one match.
That was more like it but can we continue this good spell in future matches. There are some tough ones coming up, next three are Sheff Utd away, Bournemouth at home and West Brom away.
My worry is that teams know how to high press us into making mistakes with our insistence on playing out from the back and our lack of goals from set-pieces, over 120 corners without a goal and counting.
Martin’s system is flawed because he doesn’t have the players to play his system like Man City do, and he tries unsuccessfully to fit square pegs in round holes by playing players out of position to compensate.