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Thirsty Lizard

Superb Defensive Effort Today

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Number of shots saved by John Ruddy in today''s match. Zero - zilch - nil - nada - nothing - nought!

Our defence was on it to today. Concentration, marking and keeping our shape even though Swansea had lots of possession. Credit to the players and to the manager and coaching staff.

Overall We defended well last week at Man City too. After the shambles at Newcastle a very welcome improvement.

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A big gamble to change to such a defensive approach. Wasn''t always great to watch. But once Dieumerci came on we had more bite going forward. As AN said afterwards, no-one will remember the performance in a week''s time, just the result.  I hope it restores some confidence in the dressing room. Well done Captain Tettey!

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I''ve been wanting Ryan Bennett back in the team for a while and pleased also that Wisdom has hit his chance. Well done Neil for identifying the fact that speed on the wings is not Whitts best suit.... He is quite useful going forward though. We could now have some settled defence in the shape of the back four given that Olsson is back to LB releasing Brady further forward. Interesting times

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why / care to elaborate ?

they were restricted to half chances and long range efforts by a well organised, disciplined and patient set up.

It was obvious from the moment the team was announced it was going to be a different approach today.....

Wasnt pretty at times, we didnt dominate the ball like we can and have done BUT we won, kept and clean sheet and picked up 3 very valuable points.

Problem is some people just dont understand football

Personally I''ll take todays chess match and a win over the basket ball game we had at Newcastle a couple of weeks ago !!

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They were poor. They were fine passing the ball around 40 yards from our goal but had no real ideas in the final third.

We did fine at the back but not many questions were asked.

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[quote user="GJP"]They were poor. They were fine passing the ball around 40 yards from our goal but had no real ideas in the final third.

We did fine at the back but not many questions were asked.[/quote]
That''s the point though.  The whole team defended from Jerome backwards, squeezing the space and giving Swansea no options in the final third.
The reason no questions were asked was because our midfield shut down the people who could have asked those questions.

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I don''t think thats quite true. Yes we did really well defensively, but Swansea really didn''t help themselves and were poor. We made it hard for them and they didn''t look like they were up for the fight to get through us (perhaps lack of confidence and quality in Gomis?). They had no runners from midfield, they didn''t move the ball around quick enough and they didn''t have enough variation in their play. If they had tried these things and we still stood firm defensively then we could really say we are defensive Gods in this league, but as they didn''t I guess we won''t know if Wisdom Bennett Bassong Olsson is the perfect partnership until next week (and perhaps not even then as I''d expect Martin to come in for Wisdom).

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I thought the back 4 did well today and am liking the partnership of Bassong and Ryan Bennett, also thought Wisdom had a decent game.
Difficult decision for the next game, does Alex keep it as it was today or change it to accommodate Russ?
What did everyone else think of Wisdom today?

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[quote user="GJP"]They were poor. They were fine passing the ball around 40 yards from our goal but had no real ideas in the final third.

We did fine at the back but not many questions were asked.[/quote]

Agree completely. Typical Swans performance. Plenty of possession with a lot of square passing. But no pace and rarely troubled our defensive line up. First priority was to gain 3 points but I would not want to watch this set up every week.

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[quote user="Bor"][quote user="GJP"]They were poor. They were fine passing the ball around 40 yards from our goal but had no real ideas in the final third.

We did fine at the back but not many questions were asked.[/quote]
That''s the point though.  The whole team defended from Jerome backwards, squeezing the space and giving Swansea no options in the final third.
The reason no questions were asked was because our midfield shut down the people who could have asked those questions.
[/quote]Exactly. I thought Tettey and O''Neil marshalled them well. We didn''t go diving in, just stood them up them didn''t leave any gaps for runners and waited for them to lose the ball. Brady was excellent in the second half.

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Not a superb defensive effort but a good one. Yes Swansea were lacking bite up front, its not hard to see why they are on a poor run of late, but how many times have City played teams in such a position as Swansea and allowed them to end a poor run?. We all know our club just dont have the greatest defence in the world, but today Wisdom, Bennett, Bassong and Olsson were solid, plus Tettey and ONeill helped the solidity. A poor Swansea up front and a decent defensive display left the Ruddy / Rudd situation simmering  for another couple weeks, but all in all its one of those days...a win after 4 defeats. This league is just so unrelentingly hard and every win is like gold dust so lets just enjoy it and say well done Alex and well done the team.

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