I have to be happy with the final result, as in my opinion, it was about as much as we deserved.
Albion taught us a lesson in naviety in the first half.
While the first goal from Shane long was sublime, in the way he took the ball down to score, the second was ridiculous in the half-hearted way the ball was passed back from (I think) Bacuna.
Ok, we all make mistakes and that’s fair enough.
But just a few minutes later, Albion had a free kick on our left side.
The kicker was about 20-25 yards out, but Albion had a player free in our left back position, with no-one covering him and the ball was duly passed to him.
It came to nothing, but you really have to wonder what’s going on.
This is not basic for young 20 odd year old lads. It’s basic for 7 year old lads.
Suffice to say, I wasn’t happy with the way things were going.
Albion were better in every way.
They out-worked us, they hunted us down and looked like they had some idea of what they wanted to do.
The first part of that is what hurts the most, for me.
We’ve a team of young kids and our biggest strength ought to be our workrate. Today, it wasn’t.
Getting the negatives out of the way, if you don’t get the ball to Benteke, we look so much like a one man team, it’s crazy.
That said, I know many of you disagree.
We created nothing in the first half, apart from some speculative efforts from Tonev, who I agree with BWS, has the makings on the left, if he get’s a bit of luck.
He’ll bang one of them in soon.
Anyway, even Lambert could see it just wasn’t working and even though I always view 3 subs at the same time as a sign of desperation, this time it worked.
We looked totally revitalised and the added energy was obvious.
And so it was El Hamadi scooped one in and Westwood scored a very nice first goal.
You have to be happy at the result, but I just get this yearning to say that we played well.
It eluded me again.
