Piss poor. I can't escape the feeling that we're still relegation scrappers. We still look tactically pretty clueless. We look good at full pelt, hitting teams quickly on the break, but our system isn't really set up too well for telling possession in the attacking third.
Lowton, Westwood and Wiemann have all been poor, not just today, but they've all been below par this season. In all honesty, I'm not sure, as a right sided forward, Wiemann is ready to be starting week in, week out. He's certainly not good enough in that position. The problem is, with 3 central forwards also in the squad, he's left essentially filling in as a right forward. He does often look like a square peg in a round hole. At the moment he just can't hit a barn door either. If he wants to keep his place he's got to start tucking these goals away.
CB hasn't had any service, and has been quiet today. Gab has had sparks but again, we all know what you get from the Gabster can be erratic.
KEA is looking out of his depth again.
For me I'd be tempted to bring Helenius or Tonev on for Wiemann, and perhaps Sylla on for KEA.
Newcastle have been the better side, but they're not great. However we look very susceptable to diagonal long balls on the counter. They've had some good breaks, cutting out our fullbacks, but haven't made the most. A better team might be murdering us today. Tony needs to get a lot tighter on Ben Arfa.
And yes...I really wish we had an Ozil kind of player. Even a poor mans equivilant. We're sorely lacking guile in midfield. We don't do subtlety, but sometimes you need that to win games. If we rely purely on picking teams off when we hit them at top gear on the counter, we're not going to pick up enough points to do anything but the same as last season and that's look over our shoulders at the trap door for most of the season.
