Slaven Bilic was left bemused and anxious after last night’s defeat baming a “slow start and mistakes for the crushing EFL quarter final defeat against Manchester United.
And reporting on injuries to Michail Antonio and Aaron Cresswell he said: ““Cresswell’s injury doesn’t look that bad. His groin felt very tight and hopefully it’s just fatigue from Sunday.
With Antonio, hopefully it’s the same but we don’t know yet. We have a tough game on Saturday and we have a couple of players who came off injured, but we wanted to preserve players for then and Dimitri Payet also.
“It is unbelievable that when we get a couple of injuries like the ones we got today [after them all this season] and it’s very tough for us now.”
He was disappointed with the performance saying: “We can’t have a slow start against them because they are very good when they are one up. They have those kind of players.
“After the slow start, we recovered and looked good but you can’t do the same. And we did. They totally deserved it then after that. You just can’t have that kind of a start in a game like this.
“They are really good on the counter attacks and all that but that happened to us in the first half and then we recovered and started to play after 25 minutes. They played with more energy and quality and a bit more passion.”
I thought we had a decent first half but losing Cresswell and Antonio didn’t help, and Borat made some great passes as the extra quality of a team costing £140m more told.
I’m sorry Slaven but the reason we have so many injuries is bleeding obvious to me. We spend more time than most teams running and chasing shadows/the ball. Our woefully unbalanced team selections result in our wide players (loath to call them wingbacks) and midfielders are running all over the place constantly as they’re expected to be in two places at once most of the time. Add in the lack of defending from the front from the striker (bar Sakho in his two games), Payet and (to a lesser extent) Lanzini, we overload the players, who inevitably end up shattered at 60 mins. Then they end up just playing in the back line leaving us with 5 or 6 at the back and inviting constant pressure (see spuds game and various other examples).
Worst of all, the sum consequence of the above is that we hardly ever keep possession of the ball. The possession would allow us to rest and recovery between phases of play but we never get the opportunity any more. This game is far easier with the ball than without.