Three points from a truly awful Leicester side, but one that caused us plenty of problems, and had us hanging on for the last 10 minutes. I thought we were pretty good value for the win in a game that was spoiled by anther bloody dreadful refereeing performance, and one in which we created plenty of chances but for once our finishing - including Shearer's - was all over the place. In addition, Ian Walker made several very good saves.

The first half was dreary, brightened only by Solano's goal that was well created by Bellamy, plus an incredible miss from 3 yds by Robert, who looked as though he was fouled as he was about to knock it in the net. The Ref was only 5 yds away so presumably Robert must have kicked the ground instead of the ball?

I thought we were brighter in the second half with Solano, Bellamy and Robert knocking in a whole stream of decent crosses without any reward. Our best effort was a good header from AS from an excellent cross from the byline by Elliott, that was heading for the top corner until Walker tipped it away at full stretch.

We seemed to run out of steam with about 15 minutes to go, dropped deeper and deeper, and put ourselves under more pressure that was warranted by Leicester's attacking play. Leicester started putting the boot in during this spell as we tried to waste time, with Lilly Savage right in the middle of things, diving to get Acuna booked, niggling away at Robert, and constantly yapping to the Ref - what a prat this guy is.

Given seemed rather jittery and several times stayed rooted to his line when he could/should have come to take balls into the box to make things a little easier for his defenders. A 'clean-sheet' was very welcome, with plenty of enthusiasm and committment, although you certainly couldn't say it was an accomplished defensive performance. Griffin made one or two distribution errors, but I thought he played qite well. He made a couple of excellent last-ditch tackles in our penalty area during the final hectic 10 minutes.

Bellamy ran and ran, and created several chances for his colleagues - including the winner. Robert was a curious mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous, missing a couple of good chances, but hitting numerous good crosses that were generally handled very well by Leicester's defence. He really is a very clever player, but I have to say he didn't look 100% fit to me, and seemed rather disinterested at times.

Not a great game by any means, but a lot more committment and desire than Sunday - three points and a clean-sheet. Can't be that bad.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2001

Answers

A poorish match, actually.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2001

Wasn't an all out struggle, but we won against a lower team which is what we want to be doing. It's 3 points and that's all that matters.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2001

Cheers Clarky, nice report for us who didnt get to see it.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2001

Fair shout Clarky tho I thought Lily Savage had a great game. OK, the attitude left a bit to be desired but he covered every blade of grass and seemed to be the focal point of everything they did.

Some of those in the Straabeery after the game thought that Griff had a poor first half, but like you , I thought he had a good game. No nonsense. Ball and man into touch on more than one occasions.

We had more movement than has ben seen for a while and I actually thought Solano has by far his best game of the season tho WTF he thought he was doing in the centre of the goal when he scored, I have no idea - well, apart from scoring ;-)) Nice one Nobby, nice one son.

Elsewhere, nobody had a particularly bad game, tho Shearer tried. I was hoping YBR would sub him and at last we have a manager with b@lls. IMHO, it should have happened earlier as he was having a relative mare (no, not the mother-in-law). Quite how Robert got MotM I don't know. IMHO both Griffin and especially Bellamy played better than him. I also thought Robbie Elliott had a canny game.

Not a classic but 3 pts in the bag which moved us up the table.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2001

Clarky and Screach, appreciate your reports, keep up the good work chaps!!

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2001

Thanks for the reports, guys. Sounds like things weren't quite as bad as Lily's Mum (sports.com) was trying to make it sound. Let's hope we can keep grinding out these wins against mid and lower table teams this season.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2001

The Foxes were crap I agree as an attacking force but at the back they defended quite well. Some of the crosses winging in were very good and a team not as phyically massive would have struggled to cope. Our finishing wasn't the greatest but we did create a number of clear chances which is always a good sign.
Bob instruction to the defence must have been "If in doubt boot the bugger out".

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Robert had his leg chopped out from under him as he was just about to pull the trigger....poor decision from the ref to miss that but sounds like you lot did as well :))

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Gav, I have to admit it happened so quickly and that Robert seemed so far away from the defender, my initial reaction was that he'd stubbed his toe! However, looking at the TV "clip", that's exactly what it was. I couldn't quite believe the reach that Izzet (?) had to catch him from that distance. As Clarky said, the ref had a cr@p game - that was probably the first major thing he got wrong.

So, 2 games on the trot we've been robbed of a spot kick. No wonder Al was so p!$$ed off.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

They aren't always easy to spot....my initial reaction watching on the telly was that he'd falled over it...it wasn't until the replay that I really saw what happened....the look on the poor lads face as well.....

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

We won, but stil unconvincing. any repeat on Sunday will result in a Liverpool celebration. On the matter of crossing, although Elliott still got lost occasionally he did deliver three fantastic crosses into the box. But as has already been said finishing was not the best.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Gav,

My reaction at the time was 'stone-cold, dead certain penalty'. However, I also noticed that the Referee was very close to the incident, and just couldn't believe he wouldn't have awarded a penalty unless Robert had simply kicked the ground instead of the ball.

As the game progressed, the Referee demonstrated a lack of common sense and sheer incompetence time and time again, which got me to thinking again about the earlier incident. The standard of refereeing in the PL right now must be at an all time low.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Alan Mullery on Sky reckoned the REf was truly abysmal and that it could have been four or five if Walker hadn't played so well

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

I was watching Sky as well Bake....Mullery was gushing in his praise of us but worried that they might undeservedly get back into it....

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Check out this quote from IC

'Savage hardly lives up to his name and the most dangerous thing about Leicester's answer to Donna Air is that his favourite food is swordfish.'

Had to laugh.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

The first thing is that we are three points nearer to safety and it's hard to be churlish about a win. The good points were Robert who had a belter, Solano who seemed to have got a bit of confidence back and Craig Bellamy. I thought Lee and Acuna did canny, too, although Lee much more so in the second half, Griff was mint in the second but his passing and general distribution in the first half was awful. Shearer had a funny old game, missing chances all over the place so if we'd got the penalty, I don't think he'd have scored: It was that type of night. Once he skied the ball so badly that the Gallowgate wondered whether he was applying for the job of Commanding Centre Back. Just an off-night, I think. It was excellent to see us creating so many chances and they weren't all down to how poor Leicester were. However, I can't agree with the papers about our defending been good. It wasn't. They seemed to have stopped trying to dribble out of defence etc but we were still really vulnerable (why do the opposition get so many free headers against us?) and the last ten minutes were painful: their trying to get a goal should have been a mere side show but we hadn't put our chances away and they did look like scoring. Still, Lolo wanted us to learn how to win 1-0.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Henry Winter's report in the Telegraph is lovely: he seems to like us unlike most journos.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Henry Winter's a Gooner but has a soft spot for the toon - always fair in his reporting, top journo.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Nice commentary on last night's Ref in The Indy today (also quoted on ".com"):

"...the performance of referee, David Pugh, will linger in the memory".
"So inexplicable were his first-half decisions, including failing to note a blatant penalty as Muzzy Izzet took Robert's back leg as the winger aimed at a virtually open goal, that Robson was left on the touchline at the interval shaking with unhealthy rage".
"The official is not, however, believed to be a distant relative of Blind Pugh of Treasure Island fame!"

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Nobody has mentioned O'Brien, who, I think, is getting better by the game. I disagree with Dougal about Robert - he does some things beautifully, but is 'missing' quite a bit. Also in the first half he seemed unwilling/unable to try and skip past their defence on the outside ( and we all know that he could ). Maybe he's carrying an injury. Shearer could have played until my hair grows back, but he wouldn't have scored last night-it was one of those nights for him. He looked knackered late in the second half, and I thought YBR showed some bottle by taking him off. Not too much mind, there was only a few minutes left, but it was the idea of being strong enough to remove our main man when he struggles. Thought Elliott played well, especially going forward. Leicester were very poor and are headed one way. 3 points. Good enough.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Tony, Robert is carrying this heel injury but how bad it is, no one seems to know. I thought O'Brien was the better of the centre halves yesterday but we gave away free headers and had their centre forwards repeatedly unmarked and in acres: if that had been a better side, we'd have been stuffed.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

I've watched very game we've played this season - Chelsea & WHU on tv, the rest live. Our defence play every game as a group of individuals - there is no cohesion whatsoever. They tend to ball watch, lack awareness of the position of opposition players, and don't appear to talk to each other. The keeper is an excellent shot- stopper who doesn't command his area, tends to stay on his line, and doesn't appear to talk to his colleagues
Every game we are at full stretch defensively for the full 90 minutes - if we get lucky we get a result, if not we concede goals.

O'Brien and Girffin improve things as individually they are decent defenders, but we still lack defensive organisation.

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2001

Re the defence Clarky, it's a question of whether cohesion will come with familiarity and stability, or whether we need to chop and change - again. Tough call for YBR, as there's no point continuing with pairings that are never going to work, but the best defensive pairings always seem to be borne out of stability. It's not like attacking positions, where squad competition can be an incentive to perform. You still need a squad of defenders, but they need to ideally be team players who like and understand each other, as so much of the defensive game is about shared responsbility and understanding of each other's game. Are Dabizas, O'Brien, Hughes and Distin that squad?

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2001

The biggest problem for me is that we don't have a great centre half: we have about 5 decent centre halves, all of whom can perform all sorts of individual heroics, but none of whom can command the penalty area. Any of them would be great next to a top class centre half. Sadly, top class centre halves are as rare as rocking horse shit so the best way forward is probably to stick with the back four who are currently in possession until there's an injury that forces a reshuffle.

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2001

Peter,

There isn't an easy answer to your question. Playing the same players together in a settled defence would obviously help, but I'm not convinced that would necessarily eliminate/minimise the incidence of personal errors, and poor marking that presently characterises our defensive performances. There could be defficiencies in our defensive coaching, or in the playing personnel - and I don't know which it is.

I certainly agree with Dougal that we have several decent support CB's, but lack a leader and commanding centre half. I also feel the lack of a commanding CH/defensive leader is exaggerated by having a goaly who tends to stay on his line and doesn't command his box.

I suspect the back 4 that played v Leicester might be our best back line - however, we presumably have to try Sylvain Distin before long to see if he might provide the answer. I would also rather like to see Steve Caldwell playing alongside Dabz in a couple of games - perhaps in the Worthy Cup.

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2001

Tend to agree with you both, Clarky and Dougal, re the commanding figure to pull things together. Gut feeling at the moment, though, is that we desperately need some stability in the central defensive areas and just bide our time. There'll be mistakes and bad performances, but as long as the overall trend is improvement, because we have youth on our side, we should be avoiding toying around looking for the instant magic formula.

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2001

I know it will never happen, but I just wonder what is the feasibility of giving Steve Caldwell a regular start? He lacks experience, but has the size and mouth to be the commanding centre half we need. Maybe just train him into it?

Just a random idea fueled by a late morning chocolate rush. ;-)

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2001

Chocolate rush? Been snorting Cocoa again, Ciara?

As much as I tend towards the youth argument, it's difficult introducing a young defender into an unconvincing line up, which might unfortunately mean we never see what the Caldwell's are capable of until too late. I think it's criminal that Arsenal didn't use the stability that they had for so long to slowly groom someone young, as an off the shelf defence is nigh on impossible.

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2001