[Archived] Carling Cup Qtr Fnl. Home To Arsenal

[92er]

In the first half we were truely diabolical.

Warnock for England???????

Savage showing why a lot of peolpe wanted to get rid of him.

The centre backs a complete disaster.

Reid showing why he should never be played at full back.

Dunn useless in midfield.

Add any other problems you wish.

Now think back to the second half. None of the above was true. We went from a continuation of our current form, if not worse, to a fantastic performance in the 2nd half.

The contrast was that vivid. I could almost have seen myself walking off early if the first half performance had continued. And the change indeed started before half time.

Now in my opinion, and in the opinion of those around me, the change in the the 2 halves was down to the change of formation.

Suddenly the defence was no longer vulnerable, Warnock and Reid started contributing a great deal more.

We also noted Bentley playing a freer role;he was working with MGP and Dunn and between them, they created a lot more danger.Savage probably played his most creative through ball since he has been at the club!

I stand to be corrected but I can't think of any chances Arsenal made during this time, whereas there were a number we made. And we were creating panic in their defence. We were attacking their full backs and indeed the whole of their defence and they didn't like it.

So why, when we had all this going for us and they went down to 10 men did we lose it?

The problem was we changed the system again, we lost our tempo and stopped creating. In addition, the centre backs became vulnerable again which is what contributed to the winning goal. Nelsen doesn't appear to be the player he was and is even slower.

I hope MH takes on board the effect of the 2nd half system- it looked like 4-5-1 and uses it again.

It gave us the opportunity to be creative and yet support the defence more and the defence certainly need that help.

The headlines should have been not about the quality of the Arsenal youngsters, but of how they were overcome by a remarkable Rovers' comeback.

[AggyBlue]

I was sick of the referee blowing his whistle for virtually any physical contact that was made in the game. If you tried to tackle someone, the majority of times he blew and gave a free kick. There were one or two exceptions, but what made it worse was that these tended to be actual fouls!

Exactly, how long has touching an opponant been a foul.

There's more physical contact allowed in basketball than the Premier League.

I watch quite a bit of Scottish football on Setanta, they are allowed to get stuck in to each other, it's real football.

It's all down to our referee's and the blame has to lie with that muppet Hacket.