My thoughts on the results whilst I have been away.....

Contrasting performances and thoughts on the 3 games that have taken place.

Good Evening Ladies and Gents,

I am now back from my holiday and back speaking to you all Mon-Thurs every week (Tues this week). I have been laying on my sun lounger and keeping up to date with everything Si and the team have been doing and reading all of your comments as well, Si has had some cracking articles out recently!

You will have a bumper loan army report from me later this week which I am very much looking forward to bringing to you all.

On to what I have missed (on here at least) and my thoughts on the 3 games that have occurred.

It’s nice to be able to do this now rather than straight after a game, it allows me to have time to be level headed and take any heat of the moment passion/anger away from my thoughts.

So firstly, the City game…… I only caught the first 30 mins live as we were heading out for dinner for my Daughters 1st birthday, but I have since watched back and gathered my thoughts. City were obviously exhausted and morally beaten up with their result against Real Madrid 72 hours before, they were pretty lackluster and we thoroughly deserved to win the game off of the balance of play, chances created and tactics on show, Poch got the game plan spot on.

It was however the same story as it always seems to be and has been for quite a while now, when you play the bigger and better sides (and even the lesser sides) you have to be ruthless and you have to be clinical in front of goal. Nicolas Jackson has received a lot of stick in recent weeks and yes he missed multiple chances but his overall performance was very good in my opinion he just lacked the clinical nature that a club like ours needs to push on progress in competitions.

I had no real expectations going into that game and was pleasantly surprised by our performance when watching it back, I expected us to get knocked out so to have been disappointed with the result in the end is a good sign to an extent but not one we have become accustomed to at this football club.

Next up was Arsenal……. To be honest the less said the better, they are clearly a far better side than us at the minute and although we had opportunities in the first half and wasn’t completely awful, the second half was a shambles, one of the worst performances I have seen from us in quite a while. 1-0 at HT and somewhat creating opportunities I was naively positive going into the second half that we could nick a point, oh how wrong I was, utterly dreadful 2nd half and not one I want to relive too much.

On to Villa….. There is no doubt in my mind that on the balance of play we were the better side, we as usual started very slow and was slow out the traps but once we got a grip in the game and especially the second half, we played some good football and were unlucky to come away with only a point, I am still fuming Disasi’s goal was ruled out, Diego Carlos was blatantly looking for Badiashile in the lad up in order to block him from the ball, Badiashile just beat him to it.

There are however some question marks over Mykhailo Mudryk at the minute for me, they aren’t entirely his fault as he gets taken in and out of the team a lot but also he needs to take his chances when he gets them and he hasn’t been. He looks massively uncomfortable out wide and it seems that we have seen the best of him in the No.10 role. He needs to go out on loan next season and play consistent football at the top level.

Thanks all for reading

Luke Rushbrook