Yes were still in it and probably should do the job at Anfield however it shouldn’t have come to that against a very poor Reading side ! All i can say is it was good we were not playing leeds otherwise we would already be out.

C’mmon lets here the excuses now!!!

When a game is tight or tension is high the last thing you want is someone who gives away free kicks like sweets …

From the off that suggests negative/ defensive mindset which filters to the players and allows reading in to the match. Don’t get me wrong the lads ( minus reina, darby, carra ) did nothing against a really poor side and rafa can’t be blamed for these shameless players lack of effort “AGAIN” but when you start like that against a side like reading who’v struggled just as much as us this season then people are going to ask were rafas balls are ? and the players…

Our biggest problem is that overall our players are not good enough. The standard of our ball distribution and ball retention was awful last night and as per usual we were a disjointed mess. A classic case of square pegs in round holes. Why do we persist with this pedestrian approach to the game? Clearly we struggle to break teams down with a patient measured build up of sideways passing. At times we resorted to lumping hopeful balls in the general direction of Torres. This is all Aurelio did for 90 minutes. If we play with no pace (in our passing) one good recognised striker (Ngog was very poor and unreliable) and no wingers capable of running the ball to the by line, how the hell do we expect to score? When we do get somone out wide into a decent position to cross, we have about 2 players in there. We need to flood the box with more red shirts if we want to score. Our attacking corners are awful and we dont seem to have anybody in the team that can shoot from distance.

Clearly we have a confidence crisis. Rafa is a brilliant tactician in one off games, but his man managment skills are shocking. I ever those players needed a kick up the backside it was at half time last night. We should come out second half like men possessed intent on writing the wrongs of the first half. This is where the top managers come into their own. Our players were worse second half than first!

The overall performance was poor, these are the teams we have failed time and time again to break down.

We can sort of understand the reasoning to start Aurelio on the left wing – he has been relatively good in a couple of recent games. We think Benayoun, who is better on the right, should have started instead of Kuyt.