Board struggling to understand what’s gone wrong
The board has gone public in revealing it’s confusion over our form with David Sullivan declaring in his “From the Boardroom ” column: “We haven’t lost any key or influential players since last season, which was one to remember, so we are all currently struggling to understand why the team is under-performing at this moment in time.”
And in describing his attitude towards the next two games the joint chairman shows how the pressure is building adding: “We know we have to improve quickly, and upcoming fixtures against Crystal Palace and Middlesbrough now become cup finals.
He adds: “Manchester City may be an excellent attacking side, but we allowed them to carve us open time and time again, which was very disappointing. We simply have to concede that last night’s performance was just not good enough.
Although it’s hard to take any positives out of the game, for 25 minutes, until we conceded what many experts thought was a marginal penalty, we were holding our own.
Furthermore, at 1-0 down we had what seemed a simple tap-in to equalise, but the performance after that, and the result, was simply not good enough.”
He concludes: “As we showed over Christmas, though, a string of good results can move you up the Premier League table very quickly, and I am confident we will be heading in that direction over the coming weeks.
“We have seen performances improve recently, even in defeat at Leicester City and against Manchester United, so I truly believe we can continue to progress if we all push in the same direction.
It’s another London derby next weekend against Crystal Palace, which brings back memories of our 1-0 win in the reverse fixture at Selhurst Park, where we began to turn our season around earlier in the campaign.
We will also welcome back our former manager Sam Allardyce, in what will be an exciting encounter for many reasons.”