Malcolm Dawson writes….even this early in the season I had a feeling this game could be the defining one. The way I saw it was that a win would engender confidence and the belief that those teams who will be lower half were beatable, leading to a comfortable campaign and a top ten finish. Lose it and we allow a team we should be expecting to finish below us to snatch the initiative with three points, meaning they are a point above us rather than five behind. Today’s result, though only one game, could well be the precursor to yet another season of underachievement. Gus sees it differently as he explains in his post match e-mail to M. Salut.
If we analyse the whole game we can say that we were very good for the first 25 to 30 minutes.
Away from home we were expecting them to come straight at us and put us under pressure but they couldn’t because we had the ball and the best of the chances.
We were in control but maybe that shot from Leroy Fer that hit the crossbar created momentum for QPR. We didn’t cope well in the last few minutes of the first half and we made mistakes that we shouldn’t have made and ultimately conceded.
We adjusted and then in the first 15 minutes of the second half there was nothing in the game but we just couldn’t break them down. It would have been totally different to go into half time at 0-0 – like I said we made three or four consecutive mistakes before the goal and we gave them the momentum.
The timing of the goal did kill us and I was not expecting to concede from a set piece as we have been very good at defending them so far; it is something we need to look at and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Robert Green was very good today, he is an experienced goalkeeper and they had an experienced backline.
I don’t like to lose – I hate it – but there is a big difference between the way that we lost today and the way we were losing last year.
Thanks for your support,
Gus Poyet
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Poor result and performance. We played far too narrow on the smallest pitch in the PL. We lacked imagination after the first 20 minutes which was very promising.