Once the referee gave a free-kick rather than a penalty in the red card incident, I felt in my bones that we weren’t going to win. With a man advantage we could either go for Bolton’s jugular or the pressure of expectation to beat 10 men and get that first win on the board was going to inhibit the players - I didn’t expect us to look quite so clueless when it came to trying to do so.
It’s odd because apart from Jon Nolan, who was terrible, nobody really played any less than OK. Defensively we looked fine apart from those moments when Nsiala and Pennington went for the same ball or when Nsiala and Chalobah let a pass go between them without looking. Edwards needs to work on his crossing, which was poor. Ward too wasted the ball in good positions but his movement to break three Bolton tackles and set Jackson away for the red card tackle was wonderful. Skuse was OK, him and Edun tried to push us forward. Graham provided the one decent cross we saw all day while Jackson faded as the game went on.
To have a man advantage for 40 minutes and not work the keeper is an indictment of our side, and the majority of it is Hurst signings trying to implement Hurst’s style. It has brought us 29 minutes of leading games in 9 league matches. The team not only can’t win, but doesn’t look like it will either. Hurst is taking us down. If we don’t manage 4 points minimum from the next 3 games, he should go. |  |
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