Form is mysterious. Good players become shit, cloggers suddenly can't stop scoring. You can see how much of technique is about being sharp in the mind - our guys kept misplacing passes, screwing up their first touches, losing confidence in themselves to make threadier balls in the tight spaces, while Sunderland's gang feel on a role, they kept being able to do what they wanted, find who they were looking for, win the duels.
It's a kind of collective psychological phenomenon - playing with good and confident players will make you better and more confident, and viceversa, and the reverse. We need something to push on the wheel to make it go the other way for us again.
I've said before that I think it could be a tactical thing that helps, and Emery seems to agree. He said (more or less, to coin a phrase) that everyone knows what we want to do, and we have to find new ways of doing it. Obviously the players need to step up too, but he can help them by giving them a better-adapted gameplan, and I think he knows it.
