Magpieszone

Things to learn from the match against Arsenal

Cheick Tiote 31122013

If you ask me about how I feel after watching the game, my answer is quite happy in terms of the way we play against the real contender for the champion of this season. A different result, i.e a draw, can be real satisfaction. The Lads were playing much better than we have seen against Stoke. We edged a very good side on Sunday and should have had at least a point if we have at least one centre forward with physical ability to hold up the ball and score a few goals. Remy is a fine player but is not effective playing up front on his own imho, while Shola was worse than useless when he came on. What’s worse, despite having HBA and Haidara playing wide in second half, we immediately stopped playing football and started lumping it forward to the utterly ineffective Shola.

For me the only real problem was the failure to get the ball to HBA and Haidara often enough during that last 15 minutes, and the preponderance of lumps up the field towards Shola – a tactic that failed totally even in spain where you can bet using the codigo promocional vivelasuerte as soon as you grab one.  HBA had the beating of Flamini, who had already been booked for a savage foul on him, and imho was our potential match winner. Numerous times he was wide open on the right, looking for the ball that rarely arrived.