Ray Stewart: “Why did we change a winning system?”
Let me say this straight away – nobody loves Mark Noble and what he’s done for this club than me. Amazing and loyal servant!
However, the minute I saw the line up last night I knew we were very unlikely to win the game – and I don’t understand why we changed a winning system to that extent.
We didn’t need Nobes when Declan and Tomas have been working so well together – with Fornals injured we needed Benrahma or Lanzini as we saw when they came on.
Mark has already shown what we can rely on him from now these days – coming on as a sub to close the game down. He’s not going to be a player we use when we need to go and win a game.
It was obvious from even before the start it wasn’t going to work and the fluid football we have seen for most of the season was no longer on view.
The truth was that we didn’t turn up for a long time and when we did it was all too late – I didn’t understand it last night and I don’t get it this morning.
Mikey Antonio was entirely isolated up front but I have to say he doesn’t look 100 per cent fit although hen he did get service there were a couple of nice balls into the box from him but no one forward enough to get involved.
It was disappointing and it’s difficult to have to blame anybody because we have been so special this year.
But we don’t want any repeats.