Malcolm Dawson writes….I find it hard to comment on games I haven’t seen live, but I was doubtful when I heard the starting line up and the comments from Nick Barnes and Gary Bennett early in the Radio Newcastle commentary only served to back up my apprehension. A tactical substitution after 20 minutes was either a reaction to the early setback or an acceptance from Big Sam that he’d got it wrong. Read his comment below and make your own mind up as to which it was. Still he feels we did enough to earn at least a point (an opinion not shared by one word maestro Rob Hutchison) and says as much in his post match e-mail to M Salut and others.
Dear Colin,
It’s a case of the old saying in that it was a game of two halves; we weren’t good enough in the first half, but we did well enough to have won the game in the second. We should have scored at least one goal today and come away with a draw; if we had been on song with our finishing we would have won the game.
The other disappointing thing is how we started. We started poorly and I was forced into making an early change. We did improve and we improved again after [Adam] Johnson came on.
The lads did well to contain Watford, [Odion] Ighalo was through on goal but unfortunately the ball came off Seb [Coates]. I thought we did enough to come back from that but unfortunately it wasn’t the case.
It’s now essential that we get points from our next three games, had we got three points today it would have been nice to get points in those games, but not as essential as it is now.
Thanks for your support,
Sam Allardyce
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You’re deluded Sam.