Few decent individual performances, thought Fabio Silva had a decent game and battled for the ball a lot more. Semedo was decent too. Traore bright (even if wrong decisions were made at points) but far too much was asked of him. Overall it’s shit.
Even if you ignore it being a derby (which is hard to do), losing to that weak a West Brom team at home is unacceptable. Don’t think they scraped past us either, they looked dangerous and were good value for a result overall even if we did have some chances. We do have a healthy point advantage but this game and the performances of late suggests relegation dogfight. Really hope it’s not the case.
Tactical thinking was all disjointed. A lot of half-measures, I am guessing Saiss was at LB to help with set pieces, but it really hurts the width. If Nuno wanted him, Boly, and Coady all to start then just do a back three and play Ait-Nouri at left-back, think that would have helped give us some width and provide Neto with an option as often he looked isolated especially first-half. Back four was disjointed, passing options restricted and when one of the two centre-halves was actually up against Robinson I thought they struggled a lot, they could have had a bit more luck running at us if they were so inclined. Dendoncker still being played as the most advanced midfielder is annoying. He was offering options for link-up but he misses good chances repeatedly, as we can expect – why is Nuno forcing him into that role? Leander gets criticised pretty much every game he plays, hanging him out to dry by expecting something that he isn’t capable of. Subbing off Coady was pretty shocking, felt like a knee-jerk. Hard to work out intentions and formations from subs. Do we have any idea of how we want to play anymore?
This might be a bit hyperbolic and I’m not equating the magnitude of results, but there are similarities to the last time we lost to West Brom at home, when Mick chose some random team with three strikers starting and a paper thin midfield that was tactically abject. We chucked some players on the pitch and hoped some individual quality would produce something. Something deeply wrong currently.
