Just got home. Some parts of the game were like a testimonial, down to walking pace. But there were plenty of moments of excitement. One thing was clear to me, and that is we have very little creativity in the team. We always went backwards as the first option. I remember two clear moments where Brunt and Field had the ball, facing away from goal with lots of time to turn, but they hoofed it backwards. This has to change.
Wigan added some early pressure and won about 5 corners in the opening 20 mins, but it didn't come to much. After the goal the game seemed to come to life a bit and Wigan upped the tempo but I think they lacked the overall quality to truly test us.
I think Holgate was superb. Read the ball well, classy touch and not afraid to tackle. It was disappointing that he kept making runs down the right and was in acres of space but the ball rarely went to him. Surely this is tactical, because I don't see why they would ignore him so much. Hopefully he will be a regular at right back as he looks a class above anything we have there at the moment.
Field looked more comfortable in midfield and I thought Bartley had a fairly decent game to be fair. Made a few decent challenges and played two good diagonal balls out to the left wing. Another good runner was Hoolahan, sadly lacking the pace, but didn't stop chasing the ball all game.
On a negative note, I know Sako scored the winning goal, but he offered nothing to the rest of the game. I thought he was a willing runner, but was very poor overall. His touch was diabolical and he was slow to release the ball when he had a good opportunity to. Also ran offside a few times when he was looking along the line. He had the chance to show DM his capabilities, but on today's performance I wouldn't have him anywhere near the starting XI.
The young guns did well but their lack of experience showed with some of the balls into the box. They'll come good though in time.
A better team would have destroyed us today, which shows the gulf in class between our starting XI and the second XI. Our squad seems to be either very young and inexperienced or very old with no pace or creativity, which is alarming if we have any injuries or suspensions, or we lose Barnes.