Not a knee jerk reaction..

But Malky will never get the Club promoted with his present use of tactics, team selection and use of subs.

Favourites appear to be preferred over other options.

Favourites like Cowie, who scored today? Or Connoly who beyond the mistake with Marshal made several vital interceptions?

It is knee jerky because the side have put sublime performances in in the last two games before this one and this game always stood a chance of being tricky with Palace desperate for our blood. Yes, the second half was shocking, but what side doesn't have bad halves, especially one with as many new faces as our own?

Red614 wrote:Favourites like Cowie, who scored today? Or Connoly who beyond the mistake with Marshal made several vital interceptions?

It is knee jerky because the side have put sublime performances in in the last two games before this one and this game always stood a chance of being tricky with Palace desperate for our blood. Yes, the second half was shocking, but what side doesn't have bad halves, especially one with as many new faces as our own?

No excuses for bad Management, tactics, and use of subs today.

I'm not sure the tactics really had anything wrong with them and the problem was more our defensive communication broke down. The tactics worked excellently first half and I highly doubt he changed anything at half time for that reason. We just suddenly started getting caught on the break time and time again and our defence were too slow to spot it. I think it's too easy to immediately say the manager got the tactics wrong when actually I think the players were below par and there's not much he can do to fix that while a match is on. The subs, yeah maybe you have a point that they did seen to come on a bit late to change anything but also I don't think any impact could of been made anyway, the spirit had already gone.

Time and time again we've critiscised Malky and time and time again he's proved us wrong. We said he was relying on Cowie in that wing too much and suddenly Noone shows up and sets the stage alight. We said he was too stuck in 4-5-1 but then he gets the squad he wants and everything fits into place. I've critiscised myself but now I feel I can face the fact the guy is a damn fine manager that has worked miracles with the team time and time again. What actually happened today was the players, in particular the defence, threw him off a cliff. And he should be quite rightly furious with them.

We gave away TWO penalties. That was the players fault. If we hadn't given them away I have little doubt we would have won today.
We have a fine team but they can't win every game, even Newcastle lost games the season they went up.

Happy Days wrote:We gave away TWO penalties. That was the players fault. If we hadn't given them away I have little doubt we would have won today.
We have a fine team but they can't win every game, even Newcastle lost games the season they went up.

The first penalty was a bit ridiculous by the sounds of it. I didn't see it but a handball by a player in the wall for a free kick either sounds ridiculously petty or horrendously stupid by the player that did it. The second one was caused by a tactics breakdown to be fair. Any counter attack that leaves our striker as the last defender is straight away an obvious defensive disaster. But definetely not Malky's fault, afterall making sure you don't leave a gap for a striker to drop through in a counter attack is defending 101, nothing to do with tactics. It'd be like a striker fluffing an open chance but blaming the manager for some reason for not showing him how to kick the ball properly.