Worst performance of the season - team seamed to be drained of confidence at the minute.
Sending off early in second half at 1-0 was clearly a factor in final score but we were poor before that too.
Our defensive record is shocking.
Broadly agree. Just on the way home.
This is a massive generalisation but this had me thinking back over years gone by, and how we've seen us lose in lots of different ways.
We've seen us lose cos we're bad allover the park, like the end of last season. We've seen us lose because players literally cannot be bothered, like under Hughes.
But this is one of the few times that springs to mind where it's because the defence in particular are quite so poor. We've proven, even less than a week ago at Fulham, that elsewhere on the pitch we can knock good teams about. The difference this time is that, as vofster says, it seemed to drain confidence around the team rather than existing in isolation.
Every single goal was straight up avoidable.
1. Cross from the left, free back post header, barely challenged.
2. Ameobi, in 2019, being able to first skin our full back and then knock a simple, hopeful ground ball through the box that neither our keeper or defenders deals with, for a tap in at the back post. Unmarked. The ball travelled half of the width of the pitch, through our own bloody area, unchallenged.
3. Went through us like we weren't there. I mean, just look at it.
4. Lumley doesn't just fail to smother a shot, but presents it for an easy tap-in. Imagine his head has gone to pieces at this point.
Only saw it live but the red card looked stupid to me. Maybe I just don't get it because so many defenders seem to do it allover the world, but at that point in the game, at that scoreline, why did he haul him down? Yeah Wallace was turned but I'd rather risk a one on one and potentially going 2 nil down than going down to 10 men with plenty of football to play.
No point in labouring it (after I've laboured it) because we all know having a poorly performing defence is crap. It's genuinely a bit odd seeing so many of us announcing that you can't go through a season conceding at least two every week, as if it's some kind of profound revelation. Maybe it's just the shock of it.
It matters less because you can play superb in every other part of the pitch and it wont matter with that standard of defending, but we did look a bit ropey in places we normally look strong. It's cliche but we just didn't seem to look after the ball. Loose passes. Everything about half a second too slow.
Added bonus to a cold, crap Wednesday night to see Ben "I don't do tackles cos I'm off to Wigan" Watson putting in a steady shift in the middle and Jack Robinson celebrating at the end like he'd won the league.
All the usual caveats that I don't need to repeat. Had a great start. Massive squad overhaul. New system. Cheaply assembled. Not pushing any panic buttons because we have to ride this out. And at least we try. People backed us to be far lower down the league than this before the season started, but of course the pitch forks are emerging, as they always do at this time of year, which should probably tell us something. I still believe in what we are at least trying to achieve for the long terms. We collectively need to take a big deep breath.
This lot are going to need us behind them during the 90 minutes longer term this season because these kind of mistakes are only going to get worse if we make our stadium a toxic place to play.
But bloody hell, all of that aside? That was an absolute turd of a performance.