With a better defence, we could have…

…taken all 3 points against Arsenal yesterday. If fit enough for the bench, why was there no Vincent Kompany for such a crucial and tough away game?

Glass half empty…

Just a quick posting before I set off on holiday…

Liverpool (H), Arsenal (A) & Chelsea (A) is a fairly daunting prospect, even for a side packed with quality and with a top Manager. But for where we should be right now – and looking at all 3 teams and where they are at the moment – I think we should have been looking at least for 5 points from 9 there. Don’t you?

As it is, I’m sorry to say, with a predicted point at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday night, a possible 3 points from 9 looks pretty lame and a little woeful – for me it’s a case of…what could have been / what a missed opportunity going off other team’s results last weekend.

Sane, Silva, Aguero and even Navas played decent against The Gunners, I thought; Sane in particular giving the home side all sorts of problems, especially in the first half. Caballero, who is having a decent season since stepping in for the other fella, had another calming and assured performance and Stones came out of it with some credit too. Fernandinho also performed well in his defensive midfield duties, although that shackled him somewhat from getting involved more attacking-wise. 

I did actually predict a 2-2 or more score-draw but if there was a match that summed up how we’ve undone all of the hard creative / attacking work time and time and time again this season – missing several opportunities to really put pressure on teams just above and around us – then it was yesterday’s game.

And I’ll say it again, if he has been ‘worked on’ for weeks since recovering from his latest injury and was okay for the bench…why no Vinny?

After coming back following his / his agent’s club ‘spat’ looking lean & mean and rolling back the years to a few seasons ago again, Toure seems to have slipped into his often-seen, ‘end of season mode’; where he looks to have something on his mind other than what’s happening on the pitch. Capable of so much more; he just ‘ticked along’ for the most part yesterday I thought.

De Bruyne is frustrating me of late too – another player with TONNES of ability but who only seems to switch it on in small doses for some reason. I can never fault his desire but yesterday, once again, his ‘passing radar’ was ‘on the blink’.

Moving on…

Not wishing to sound too dour about it – there was a time I’d have snatched a draw away to Arsenal and a half-decent performance off anyone’s hands – at least it was an away point at a tough place to visit and…who knows; a win on Wednesday night and that 5 points from 9 will have been achieved!

A friend of mine who’s staying in London for both games spoke to a couple of Chelsea lads the other day and they said they’d, “…take a draw” against us. Of course, they say that with the comfort of being 7-points clear of their nearest challenges, Spurs, but it does say something about the threat we can carry.

Get Zaba back at right-back and Vinny in for Nicholas and we might just sneak ‘all 3’…

I’ll hopefully be back posting just before the Hull City home game next Saturday but if not, then before our trip to Southampton on 15^th April I’m sure.