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Comments
-Antonio may not have had the cutting edge but even showed what he can bring on the wings, and he will cause problems especially when his confidence comes back
-Burke is a very good young player and is a useful addition to the squad
-Calleri showed some nice moments and given he's only had 1 day to train with the boys think he can be useful, definitely a better player than Emenike
-Can't afford to lose Obiang have may not be spectacular but he's a great squad player
Tore hasn't really had a pretty season, and is just back from a injury so while he's struggling you can tell he isn't match fit and last night
Missed Payet and Lanzini quality but both will be back to full strength within the next few weeks, think Payet will likely to feature against Bournemouth in some way
One big thing for me is Valencia. Like I get he works hard and has done ok in pre season but he just isn't a goal threat simple as and we shouldve cashed in when we could
He did unbelievably well to get up in support. He was miles behind Browne when he made his break.
Browne's ball was a bit too far in front for Antonio to get a clean strike on, and he was being closed down by the covering defender.
Don't think anyone else in our side could have got there to be in a position to get slated for missing it.
And while we're at it:
Tore - turned over possession as he tried to play his way out of defence several times, as did young Oxford.
They don't seem to be getting the same pelters that Antonio got.
first half - lots of decent crosses - no AC
second half - lots of AC - no decent crosses
;hmm
Before last night Lung and Morias started all 7 of their games,
Teixeira started 6
Vagnjeli, Fabricio, Seto and Ionita started 5
Alves, Lovin and Niculae started 4,
Sapanaru started 3 but he only joined the club 21 July.
Of the players on the bench Florea and Oros had 3 starts while Stan had 2 and Boubacar had 1.
The only other player who started this season was Boudjemaa with 3, he'd been subbed all three times and didn't even make the bench the previous two games.
Alibec had been out injured and that was the first time this season he'd made the bench!
They sold two first team starters, William, 4, and Boldrin, 6, at the weekend so that was Astra's first XI
You're also right Oxford gave possession away quite a bit - I recall one big error in this regard against Juve too. That's why I said above he had rough edges. He certainly doesn't look ready to start at CB yet, but then why should he. Good for him to get more games under his belt but feel like he is part of Slav's plans - hence the importance of getting to group stage (I think you've said the same too).
Again, agree on Tore. I think plenty were slating him early on in the game, but he did grow into it and produced some good crosses. My point at half time was that he looked like he was good at crossing but not so good at coming inside and passing. So perhaps putting him on the left would have been better, since he's left-footed (though he also put in at least one decent cross with his right). His going off in the second half might explain to a large degree your point about lack of good crosses in the second half. Certainly when we went three at the back, we couldn't expect Burke to get too many crosses in from the left. Hopefully Arthur will provide this for us until Cresswell is back.
But you'd also expect crosses from Byram. I don't recall him getting up the pitch so much yesterday - perhaps a function of being up against Teixeira in the first half, through which most of their attacking came. Or perhaps due to Tore doing all the attacking for us in the first half. Or just our general lack of pressing and intent... Don't know. How did people think Byram did yesterday?
I thought Byram did well but probably gets caught abit too much over at times, by tucking in more he would allow himself the opportunity to recover and react, but getting caught out too much across only results in space between him and the CB, him getting too tight and having to either let the OPP pass him and get 1 v 1 with our CB (and drag the other 2 defenders out of position as well) or to foul and most likely get booked. Its a learning process but he has all the attributes to be a fantastic RB and IMO could be one of the surprise packages in the season for us.