Was that we didn’t concede in the first 20 minutes. I always feel like this side crumble at the first sign of pressure, but not last night. They stood up to the fight and allowed themselves a chance to claw their way back into the game. We don’t win that game if we buckle in the first 20 mins. I’d like to see us pick up a lot more points when not at our best, but the signs are good with the first 20 yesterday and the second half at Milwall.
Our defence has to withstand a lot of continuous pressure imo from losing the ball too quickly in midfield and bearing that in mind don’t do too bad considering . After first twenty minutes of being under pressure and coping very well our defence seemed more composed and able to deal with sporadic QPR attacks imo .
Which is why James needs to play when fit. I found the comments from Murray before the game about James not playing because we wanted to attack quite strange. It's generally easier to attack when you have the ball.
I think Oduor coming off and being replaced by James was a tactical masterstroke. We were more solid but also more of a threat second half once we'd negated their threat.
I think I said this in a separate thread last night but Oduor would have been hauled off by Struber in those first 20 minutes (rightly or wrongly). He was completely away with the fairies. Like he'd won a raffle to make an appearance. He grew in to it slowly as we composed ourselves, but it was definitely the right move bringing him off.
I think the same about Simoes, Chaplin and Schmidt second half they've been starved of quality service for that long they didn't know what to do with it.
Schmidt was unlucky with the header really (what a cross by Simoes) and at least hit the ball clean, whereas Chaplin and Simoes on their best chances couldn't have messed it up more. The Simoes one at the end I just had to laugh. You're right about being out of practice. I can't remember the last game where we created more than one chance similar to what we had last night.
