My theory for yesterday's performance was that he was told to last the game or as much as he could and therefore had to pace himself and just pick moments to show his stuff.
He definitely is still getting up to full match fitness
I would encourage anybody who can download the game on catch up or recorded it to see just how many times he had a abundance of space around him calling and gesturing to be fed the ball only for it to go to another player being marked more tightly.
In actual fact when i got home to watch the replay Harps made a point of saying in the call it took us the best part of 60 min to switch on too the fact that we were not using him as we should have.
So this
I thought we missed a lot of tricks with him
Firstly he should have been sent to find where they were hiding Broxham for a start
Secondly there were times in the second half when Victree had us back defending
Duncan gets the ball
Pato is on half way in miles of space and the ball goes short down Hoff's side
This and the countless other times we just refused to feed him the ball
Third I don't think he had the best of games either
Fourth it wouldn't surprise me if he has been over worked recently fitness wise trying to get him up to standard and is a little flat at present
Thought it was also weird that (whoever the Melb right back was) the dude marking him wouldnt ever get forward to help Barbarouses.
It would have helped out their best attacker, and also made Pato track back. So either Muscat was scared of leaving Pato alone and told his bloke to sit, or he wanted to leave Jackson and Barbarouses one on one and hope his bloke won the contest.
both strategies seemed to fail and it meant a lot less defensive work for Pato.
and yeah i noticed Duncan not even trying to hit him on the break but can only imagine he didnt think he'd make it going against the wind.
on the ball though, geez he looks nice.
The Championship Chronicles - The Jetstream's review of the 2007/08 season. www.newcastlefootball.net/chronicles
Thing is, he doesn't have to output a lot of energy in attack necessarily, he's quite happy to play pass and move. The problem is our team actually has to pass it to him for this to happen.
If its a fast break, yeah sure, give it to him and have a run. But I'd love to see us stop pumping balls straight to their keeper and play feet some more - play to his feet and provide an option.
Pato out for 4-6wks with a calf strain!!
ffs
Fold the club
Who will leave the fullbacks exposed now?
Big shame. Should have decent coverage with champness and McGree. When Vargas returns Dimi and Nabs go wide.
Middleby, sign another injury replacement.
Get another one of Ronnie’s mates.
Deal with the salary cap drama later.
Simple really.
Big shame but was never quite sure how it was panning out with Pato drifting centrally all the time leaving us skinny on our left defensively. Just didn't seem to be a smooth thing with Dimi and Pato on the park together in there respective roles. I actually thought one stage we may have to shift Dimi left and Pato centrally if they are to be on the park together.
Anyways don't have to worry about that now. Not being familiar with calf injuries but it did seem to take a while to get Pato off last Friday once he looked like he was struggling with his calf. Could this have been made worse because if memory serves me right he put in a few runs on a couple of occasions in the minutes waiting to be subbed.
So he'll be back in time to play during the finals series which is a positive at least.
If he holding his leg and then is allowed to play on for a couple of minutes and not be replaced then some SERIOUS questions have to be asked of the medical staff
A couple of mins without him on the park his much better than 4-6 weeks
Why exactly was he allowed to hobble on until they hooked him anyway??
Pretty amatuer really.
Hope Bert goes through our medical side of things in the off season.
We have had a lot of needless injuries Roy Duncan Georgevski Hoffman Pato etc where blokes just disaappear from view for perriids of time for littler reason
Been a great season but this is one area we really need to be improving on.
Cant do much about Vargas type of injury but the amount of soft tissue injuries we have had has been a joke
soft
Yeh it certainly looked to take a while to acknowledge he needed some attention. I must admit however my medically uneducated thought was cramp at first so perhaps the bench seen it the same way.
Yep - shit happens but we have to play the blame game and find a patsy.
Talk of Mcgree to start on the left. I would have thought Champness and even Hoffman would be ahead of him in a wide role. Roll of the dice but guess it shows we have decent depth.