I'm going to try not to rant in this, but writing this review directly after the match I'm not sure that'll be possible. I'd also like to start off by saying well done to Brentford and on balance they probably deserved to win by more.
Did anyone apart from Bettinelli show up in that first half? I'm not sure whether it was the fact Brentford were really good- or we made them look good. Either way it wasn't good enough on our part. They should have put us to bed in that first half, and the fact we went into the dressing room at 0-0 was a miracle in and of itself. We just didn't seem up for it, and considering the comments made by Kit before the game you can only presume they thought Brentford would be a walkover because of what happened earlier in the season. Every game we went through with our unbeaten record intact the bubble we were in under Kit grew bigger, and we've perhaps not deserved to win/draw in quite a few of them- namely Huddersfield, Norwich and in terms of execution of a game-plan Blackpool.
Kit has to acknowledge he got his tactics wrong today on numerous levels. If we were going into the game planning to play a Flat 4-4-2 Ruiz shouldn't have been considered for a Wide Role under any circumstances. Ruiz as I said in my Preview Blog is good in a role where he can dictate the tempo of a game, and in turn slow it down to his pace- sometimes that works sometimes it doesn't. What he isn't suited to is a wide role, especially against a team that does exploit the flanks like Brentford. The formation simply didn't work, and left us vulnerable right from the start, and I hope against Brighton we revert back to our narrow diamond that has at the very least suited our style of play and created space for our danger men. We should also have made more than one substitution, Eisfeld wasn't the substitution I'd have immediately thought of when we were looking to secure our one goal lead, and with Ruiz coming off- perhaps because of his impact on the game, and also the fact he was coming back from Costa Rica (or another place in the CONCACAF). I'd have looked at bringing on Hyndman who can pass the ball a lot better, and from what I've seen of both men is also a lot calmer in comparison to Eisfeld- this'd of course meant reverting back to the Narrow Diamond, but as long as we used it to keep compact I think we'd have at the very least gotten one point out of the game. I'd have also looked at bringing on Woodrow as in terms of hold-up play Woodrow will have helped slow the game down, something which we struggled with all game.
If you are to look at some of the positives you don't need to look much further than Bettinelli's performance. He's probably the only one of our Back Five who can take any positives from tonights game. He kept us in the game in the first half, and it makes you wonder what the scoreline would have been had he not been fit enough to start the game and we were forced into having Kiraly in goal- despite conceding two goals Bettinelli was our best player by a mile today, and its not like he could have done much for either goal.
I'm praying between now and next Saturday we find the miracle cure for Hoogland and/or Amorebieta because Stafylidis looked completely out of his depth today- and was shown up completely by Odubajo and then Jota. Zverotic was better, but was still nowhere near good enough- however I don't think this was entirely his fault; Bodurov was drawn way too central for large parts of the game and left Zverotic vulnerable on the right-hand side. Dan Burn was the architect of his own downfall tonight; he picked up a silly yellow card, and that of course meant he had to temper how he played the whole of the second half as a result. We saw after the Wigan game when he (allegedly) had a bit of a falling out with Ruiz that he has a bit of a mouth on him, and he was skating on thin ice for the majority of this game. Bodurov, who I've praised very highly in previous games was very bad today- with the pressing game they played against us he was shown up on more than one occasion.
Onto where we lost the game in my opinion; the midfield. I thought Christensen played well (ish), and should have probably had a Penalty; but the midfield never really got into the game, which was a by-product of our Long-Ball game plan which we implemented. I put this largely down to the formation we played, as we've seen in previous games all three of our midfielders are capable of much better; however they were completely overwhelmed by Brentford's midfield in this game and need to play much better against Brighton. Parker was completely anonymous in this game, and (I think) let the ball run through to Dean for their first goal.
McCormack had a very mixed bag tonight, his play for the goal was very good; but he spent too long on the ball on more than one occasion and in his attempts to seek out a goal he (in my opinion) blew goalscoring opportunities for others. The same can be said for Rodallega; his header in the first half was placed in the one area where it wouldn't have gone in, and he was quite anonymous for large parts of the game; but again thats a by-product of the long-ball game we tried playing, because as I've said on numerous occasions in this blog he simply isn't a capable Target-Man; and we should have played either Woodrow or Smith if we were going to employ that tactic, however he took his goal well, and whether Woodrow/Smith would have finished that its too hard to say.
This simply put wasn't good enough, it wasn't in previous weeks but we've managed to get points from those game and without that deflection we would have probably gotten a point from this game; however we've rode our luck in recent weeks against teams like Norwich and Huddersfield so I suppose it all balances out in the end.
Thanks for reading, I hope I've not rambled too much; and as always appreciate any feedback on these blogs- now I'm going to go into a corner and curl up into a ball until Survivor Series on Sunday.
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