Blackburn Post Match thread

[Larry_LCFC]

Incase anyone is yet to see the goal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziPU16zyOoI&list=UUnUYcNCgmmL4y63bXGWCktA

[Mickyblueeyes]

Good point against a good team. We've got a lot of games in the next couple of weeks and we are going to drop points.

The fact is that when we are dropping points we are drawing rather than losing. Say we beat Yeovil, draw against burnley, we go into our game in hand against a inform Wigan side 4 points clear. I'd take that any day.

We are fine and are getting results even in games when the opposition would nick it last year.

[Tuna]

Need to sort out those fooking set pieces. Defend!

[Hungry Hungry Fox]

Need to sort out those fooking set pieces. Defend!

Oh shut up! We've hardly conceded any goals recently

[SlaneyLCFC]

Happy enough with a draw. Some of the lads had a bad day but not the end of the world. Some people in the match thread baying for players blood at one point made me laugh. How overdramatic can you get.

Roll on yeovil and COYB

[Deucalion]

To be honest no, some people on hear seem to think we aren't going to do this easily... we have a game in hand... and are 15 clear of third... no one can f**k this up not even us. I was merely being sarcastic...

 

It's all relative though isn't it?

 

Any erosion of our lead will make people nervous.  We are, of course, having a remarkable season.

 

But...a few things not going our way will have people's nerves jangling, mine included !!

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

I'm fairly happy with a draw.

 

We need a solid performance and three points against Yeovil, and be at our very best against Burnley. That is probably going to be the most important game of those left this season. They are a difficult side to break down, and it is key that we don't waste any easy chances.

[midland_red]

so what can we say after today?

- we didnt play well, we had enough chances to wrap it up in the first half, let them score and they then came back into the game

- the ref was poor

- but all in all we can;t reasonably complain about the result. I thouhgt we would squak a 2-1 win, bt this was never going to be like the last few teams we've played.

However....

- it gives us one more point and we're still unbeaten.

- defeinitely need three points again yeovil.

- we can't win all the time - even Bayern Munich don't

- so no cause for despair or demoralisation

- but a useful reminder perhaps tht our promotion, while likely, is still not guaranteed yet.

[theessexfox]

What was the De Laet mistake people have mentioned? 

[Zear0]

What was the De Laet mistake people have mentioned? 

The corner we conceded from was a result of a back pass to Kasper from Richie on the half-way line.  Was an outside of the boot jobbie that was massively over-hit.

[ScouseFox]

Yeah RDL went for an outside of the boot backpass under no pressure and didn't get it right. He'd done really well to get back and win the ball off his man too, just a simple pass he messed up and it gave them the confidence they lacked and rattled us a tad.

[Carl the Llama]

Incase anyone is yet to see the goal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziPU16zyOoI&list=UUnUYcNCgmmL4y63bXGWCktA

This is all I've seen of the game so I'll keep my comment to the goals:  Lovely stuff from De Laet and Vardy, though Blackburn fans have a right to wonder why their defence were so lacklustre.  As for their goal: Ouch, goals from set-pieces always hurt, even more so when you nearly clear the ball off the line but don't.

 

Towards the result my feelings are slight disappointment yet contentedness.  I think if we don't win against Yeovil I might get upset though (not in a Pearson out way, in a disappointed that we should be winning these matches way).

[GingerrrFox]

Are we gonna say anything about Vardy scoring once less goal than Nugent this season and he hasn't taken a single penalty? Or do we still say Nugent is worth starting consistently over Wood/Phillips/Taylor-Fletcher and dare I say it Martyn Waghorn who scored the winner for Wigan today? 

[Hungry Hungry Fox]

Are we gonna say anything about Vardy scoring once less goal than Nugent this season and he hasn't taken a single penalty? Or do we still say Nugent is worth starting consistently over Wood/Phillips/Taylor-Fletcher and dare I say it Martyn Waghorn who scored the winner for Wigan today?

Nugent is worth starting and will do so IMO unless injured or suspended

And waghorn? Please

[Brooksy]

Are we gonna say anything about Vardy scoring once less goal than Nugent this season and he hasn't taken a single penalty? Or do we still say Nugent is worth starting consistently over Wood/Phillips/Taylor-Fletcher and dare I say it Martyn Waghorn who scored the winner for Wigan today? 

 

Wood deserves a chance now imo. I'd give him a start next to Vardy on Tuesday.

[GingerrrFox]

Nugent is worth starting and will do so IMO unless injured or suspended

And waghorn? Please

 

Yeah lets laugh he's only scored 3 goals and had 4 assists in 5 games, slowly helping Wigan up to the playoff positions but **** it he's shit. 

[Grewks]

Nugent is worth starting and will do so IMO unless injured or suspended

And waghorn? Please

 

 

 

you cannot be serious about nugent can you?

 

 

It has been like playing with 10 men all season with him in the side. He bottles every single tackle unless it is 90% to 10% in his favour. He takes 2 to 3 more touches than every other player to get in under control and play a pass. His shooting is some of the worst i have seen from a striker, his technique is terrible and to average a shot a game going out for a throw is quite frankly embarrassing.

 

The only reason he is in the side is because of Nige's reluctance to change a winning side..

[Monsell1976]

Are we gonna say anything about Vardy scoring once less goal than Nugent this season and he hasn't taken a single penalty? Or do we still say Nugent is worth starting consistently over Wood/Phillips/Taylor-Fletcher and dare I say it Martyn Waghorn who scored the winner for Wigan today?

I've defended nugent at times this season, but after that performance today and the last couple, he doesn't deserve a place in the team, and if I was any of the other strikers, I would be asking why they are not in the starting 11

[theessexfox]

you cannot be serious about nugent can you?

 

 

It has been like playing with 10 men all season with him in the side. He bottles every single tackle unless it is 90% to 10% in his favour. He takes 2 to 3 more touches than every other player to get in under control and play a pass. His shooting is some of the worst i have seen from a striker, his technique is terrible and to average a shot a game going out for a throw is quite frankly embarrassing.

 

The only reason he is in the side is because of Nige's reluctance to change a winning side..

We're so good that we're 15 points clear of 3rd place from playing with 10 men!

 

Oh wait, that missing man is our top scorer, has contributed a decent number of assists and has contributed massively to the cause this season. 

[Monsell1976]

Just got back, my take on the game is, that we were lacklustre and slow early on, with flashes of brilliance, and the rest of the game followed the same sort of pattern, and we were bullied, and I'm not even going to comment on the ref, except he's not even Sunday league standard.

[Babylon]

Just got back, my take on the game is, that we were lacklustre and slow early on, with flashes of brilliance, and the rest of the game followed the same sort of pattern, and we were bullied, and I'm not even going to comment on the ref, except he's not even Sunday league standard.

Pretty much how it looked on tv.

[Dr The Singh]

Very unlucky not to win with the chances we had.  Didn't dominate as much and a few players not there best, again i thought Nugent was the poorest of performers, and again feel he has been off the boil for quite a while.

 

Still a good point, roll on Yeovil

[Freeman's Wharfer]

Frustrating match. We should have walked all over them and blew it. We didn't take our chances and conceded a very silly goal.

 

2nd half performance was very poor, the worst I've seen us play bar Leeds away pretty much all season. De Laet was hopeless and rightly subbed.

 

What is baffling though is how Hammond got on. I really cannot see a thing this man offers. He's probably the worst player in our squad at the moment. We've got Wood and Phillips sitting on the bench meantime. He really annoys me.

 

I think a draw was a fair result but we've given them the point because frankly we know we're miles better than them and only have ourselves to blame for letting them back into it.

 

Oh well,  we should beat Yeovil at home and then hopefully we'll put more of a gap between us and Burnley next Saturday.

 

Hammond came on for a very specific reason which Kitchandro has obviously failed to spot...

 

Every goal kick they were looking to Gestede who was taking up an awkward position for us on our central midfielders and too deep for Was/Wes to go with him. After him dominating for a good 10/15 minutes in the second half Pearson decided to stick Hammond on who then very clearly marked Gestede at every goal kick/offside free kick and was a much better match for him height-wise than James or Drinkwater.

 

Putting Hammond on also freed up Drinkwater to play further forward and wider which was definitely worth doing at a time we were struggling to get the ball from midfield to attack or to hang onto it in advanced areas. There were countless times Drinkwater kept the ball and helped us fashion openings on the right flank in the last 20 minutes. Without Hammond in behind protecting the back four he would have been less free to do so.

 

It's little, unglamorous jobs like that which players such as Hammond do but often go unnoticed. Certainly don't think he detracted for us in any way today.

 

Thought Deano did well when he came on, his presence helped us grapple control of the game and put us on the front foot. Gestede was an absolute monster in the air by the way. Could possibly envisage a few changes for Tuesday resting up some of the lads as well as giving a few that are out of sorts a breather. 

 

Agreed

[Guest ttfn]

Just got back.

It was a really weird game. First half we were the better side and to be honest aside from one Rhodes effort they never really looked like scoring. Then De Laet, after surging back and making a great interception suffered what appeared to be a complete meltdown, his backpass to Schmeichel being not only completely mis-directed but massively overhit. Obviously they then scored from the corner.

 

The first 15 minutes of the second half was an absolute shambles - the players were almost to a man half asleep. Blackburn to their credit really took a hold of the game and were assisted by a succession of odd refereeing calls in their favour and really should have gone ahead in that time given the quality and quantity of possession they had. 

 

Pearson then got a grip on the game by bringing on Hammond, who had one of the best games I've seen him have for us. He also took the wise decision to put De Laet out of his misery. After a pretty good first 42 minutes, De Laet completely fell apart after his backpass disaster and made a mistake almost every time he got the ball.

 

As soon as those 2 came on we got back on top, and the quality of chances we created and squandered was remarkable. First Vardy rounding the keeper, electing not to shoot left footed into an open net (as he has done successfully a couple of times lately) and bringing it onto his right as the angle narrowed. He still should have scored, hit the post and Nugent's reaction was too slow to turn it in. Then Drinkwater (a couple of times), James and Mahrez (a couple of times) all had great chances to win the game but it wasn't to be. There was a really odd reluctance to shoot from Vardy on a few occasions when he got put through.

 

Anyway all-in-all it was a fair result. As Shakespeare said we had the better chances but overall they were on top. Certainly some food for thought for Pearson though as Drinkwater and James were overrun for a 15 minute spell at the start of the second half for the first time in a while. I wouldn't be at all surprised for us to move to a 4-2-3-1 against Burnley next Saturday.

[Freeman's Wharfer]

Just got back...

 

It says a lot about how far you've come when you're coming away from a ground like that disappointed to only have drawn the match. I think the most frustrating aspect of today was that we were clearly head and shoulders above them when we got going in the first half. It all changed on a silly error by De Laet and we never reached the same levels again.

 

With regard to De Laet he certainly cost us with the goal but let's not forget that he also laid Vardy's goal on for him so people shouldn't be too critical. What I will say though is that he let the mistake get to him and from that point onwards he was very poor. It put Pearson in a bit of a difficult position as to whether to leave him on and hope he'd recover (and not have the blow to his confidence of being subbed), or take him off because he could quite easily have cost us. I think he did the right thing in bringing him off but I'd hope that Richie will keep his spot on Tuesday night.

 

One of the encouraging aspects of today was that, even though we weren't playing great in the second half and were really pegged back by Blackburn, we still created chances. Not so encouraging is that we didn't take any of them. Vardy and Mahrez both had chances that they should have buried.

 

On Vardy, I thought there was something missing today. It felt to me like he was playing with his mind on not getting booked. There was one occassion where he could have gone down in the area and clearly thought about it but then stayed on his feet to the detriment of being able to cleanly play the ball afterwards. By the time he'd made his mind up not to risk it the chance was gone. I wish he'd be more selfish at times as well, there was one he pulled across the box with no-one anywhere near whereas he should have taken it on himself and a couple of other occassions he seemed reluctant to just get a shot off. We've seen he can do it (e.g. QPR away) and in The Premiership where you get less openings he'll have to be a bit more selfish with his openings.

 

I thought Mahrez was the best player on the pitch today, we've certainly found a real gem there. The way he's so effortlessly slotted into the side and the style of football is commendable and the players clearly recognise how good he is as they're happy to give the ball to him when any opportunity arises.

 

Out of the others Schlupp was fantastic going forward, hot and cold defensively but managed to not get exposed. Nugent was a bit poor as others have said but I think he's too important to our shape to be left out at the moment. He does a lot of unseen work in terms of our defensive shape but he needs to offer more than that if he's to be of use to us in The Premiership. He's been great for us since he arrived but I'd back Pearson to spend some good money replacing him next season.

 

All in all it's another point on the road to promotion. Good to keep the winning run going but with a 5 point gap to Burnley (and a tough fixture as the game in hand) we need to make sure we do the job on Yeovil on Tuesday because, were we to lose at Turf Moor, the fight for the title could get pretty tough. Burnley are just a results machine this year!