Originally Posted by
SWv2
There are indeed lots of factors that can influence and decide football matches – quality of players, quality of preparation and tactics, individual moments of brilliance or indeed the opposite and even intangible things which we often like to mock and dismiss such as the much vaunted issue of desire which can manifest itself in many ways.
I see someone (PRSB?) pointed out earlier how stats wise they covered a cumulative distance of greater than 8-9k more than us. Sounds a lot but it isn’t really when you average it out over 10-12 outfield players.
I also see that one of their players (Gosling) himself covered over 14k last night, the highest on record for any player in the league this season. An extra 24 hours rest, or simply a desire and willingness to run his little south coast *******s off for the team?
I would suggest the latter based on the fact that their players on average covered a greater distance than any other PL team. Desire again, a willingness to work very hard to overcome perhaps a technical deficiency on other better teams.
We actually had greater possession than them, more passes completed yet not one shot on target in the opening 45 minutes. That is not fatigue, just plain and simply playing ****.
No invention, no creation, no Ozil, an off-key Sanchez, midfielders allowing opposition players to run past them, a keeper who we all know to be brilliant but increasingly has us shaking our heads, too many Oxlade Chamberlains on the pitch, Giroud being the utterly useless ******** Giroud that we all know for the first 70 minutes, utterly ****ing abysmal.
Or just fatigue.
We've seen it many times before.