He gave the ball away a few times today but bare in kind it was like a monsoon for most of the match! Must have been difficult to get your head up on the ball.
Admittedly he’s got a lot of talent and he does need game time but he does play backwards and sideways too much, but even today he had a shot which is another step forward I suppose,
It seems though that when he goes backwards or sideways, it's because he doesn't have any movement ahead of him. I thought Palmer was very poor yesterday, particularly out of possession, because he didn't offer Gomes much support in the middle of the park. It's no coincidence that Gomes only seems to play a forward pass when Morris or Woodrow drop a bit deeper. My main concern with Gomes is, when he does play a ball out to say Styles or Brittain, he doesn't then advance 10 yards to leave himself open for a return pass and move us up the pitch. He offers the same return ball along the half way line. Styles and Brittain then seem to try and find Iseka or Morris somewhere near the corner flag. He could have shot on more than one occasion on the edge of the box. But having listened to Poya after the game, I believe he's being told not to. Rob Staton asked Poya about us only having 2 shots on target, and Poya basically said that didn't matter, what matters is the quality of shots we have. He seems to want us to get the ball in wide areas so we can drill the ball across the box, or pull back to around the penalty area. Which is why, any time Styles or Gomes picked up the ball 20 yards from goal, they often opted to play a pass out wide. I must admit, this worries me a bit, because it could take another 5 or 10 games for us to improve 'the quality of our chances', and we simply don't have the time for that.
Our main problem Gomez: clearly talented but completely lightweight Benson: clearly talented but completely lightweight Palmer: clearly talented but completely lightweight Hondermarck: clearly talented but... Oh you get the idea
His brain is too far ahead of his team mates in his thinking. They aren't on his wavelength enough to know what he's going to do next. Case in point the second half yesterday when he took on a couple of players down the east stand side, put a brilliant ball in to the box that was begging to be put in the net and nobody did.
He was great at times really good on the ball but he had that spell where he couldn't find a red shirt and almost gave a goal away. If it wasn't for that spell he would have been a contender for motm. In January center midfield needs strengthening.
I think he did far more good things than bad but sometimes people only remember the bad.As for Palmer I thought he was a little in and out of the game but I thought he put more tackles in than he has all season.Vast improvement as a team we've got to keep plugging away and see where it takes us. If Poya can keep improving us like he has in just over a week you never know.
Maybe, but for all the eye catching moments he has in his cameo appearances, he still struggles to find a team mate when he does pass it, which undoes a lot of the good work he does. Last week was a prime example, wins the ball, drives forward then looks like he doesn’t know what to do.
Spot on, we wouldn’t be in as much mess if we had the calibre of Mowatt beside him. We were commenting on how he hadn’t wasted a pass all game then he hashed three on the trot as soon as we’d said it. As opposed to wondering how many times Palmer and Styles passed to our men. Palmer set off like a man possessed, he’d clearly been told he needed to offer more and bite more. Then apart from one or two times he settled back into the usual minimal effort and shirking the responsibility to cover.
I have to agree i thought he was mom yesterday' he had a couple of tired passes 2nd half but i thought he broke up play very well always wanted to be involved and looked for a forward pass...
Isnt football strange. One set of fans think he's dog ****, one lot think he was close to our MoTM. I think when some people lock onto their targets, they only see the fault of that one player, and dont aknowledge the good they do, or compare their performances to others ( who btw, gomes played alot better than imo ). I think he's been much better than either Palmer or Benson so far
He's on a different level to most of our team. He gave the ball away a couple of times 2nd half when he tired a bit. When the others, particularly brittain yesterday, get on his wavelength some of what looked like misplaced passes will bear fruit. I'd like to see gomez, palmer and benson all starting. Benson didn't replace palmer very well either.
