Some of thre negativity on here is so bizarre. Lets take a bit of a reality check with this game:
firstly, the Chinese team have been in camp for 3 weeks, playing together multiple times - we literally had players landing in NZ the day before the game, so it's not shocking that China looked more organised for chunkc of the game.
Secondly, China's tactic before our red card was to have all 11 players defending when we had the ball, hence the back and forth passing between our back, trying to draw the chinese players out of their shape to create space, it worked in the first half and when we found space we managed decent balls into the attacking zones - defensivy the Chinese were good and we were lacking in cohesiveness. It happens. Payne was being used as the main distributor for most of the first 60 odd minutes, and he made some decent threatening passes, we missed having a real target man up front (Wood), so if that is the plan on Sunday hopefully the Woodsman is available.
Sure we havent scored in around a year, but lets be honets here - we are not the flashiest team in the world, we do not have an abundance of strikers scoring 20+ goals a seaon in their league. Our best is currently only playing as a substitue in the EPL.
International football is not like the video games - scoring 6 goals or having 30+ shots is unrealistic - especially if you are playing a team that is set up defensively.
Yes it would be nice to see us play more attacking football but right now I think we are stuck in aholding pattern until we have a new coach announced.
Bazely was never gonna change it up too much because losing would be the killer to his hopes of getting the job.
We all need to chill! It's year one after the world cup - we have three years to build something with the players we have - and then we get to beat up on tiny tiny nations for a couple of weeks before we get to play the real footballing nations again.
firstly, the Chinese team have been in camp for 3 weeks, playing together multiple times - we literally had players landing in NZ the day before the game, so it's not shocking that China looked more organised for chunkc of the game.
Secondly, China's tactic before our red card was to have all 11 players defending when we had the ball, hence the back and forth passing between our back, trying to draw the chinese players out of their shape to create space, it worked in the first half and when we found space we managed decent balls into the attacking zones - defensivy the Chinese were good and we were lacking in cohesiveness. It happens. Payne was being used as the main distributor for most of the first 60 odd minutes, and he made some decent threatening passes, we missed having a real target man up front (Wood), so if that is the plan on Sunday hopefully the Woodsman is available.
Sure we havent scored in around a year, but lets be honets here - we are not the flashiest team in the world, we do not have an abundance of strikers scoring 20+ goals a seaon in their league. Our best is currently only playing as a substitue in the EPL.
International football is not like the video games - scoring 6 goals or having 30+ shots is unrealistic - especially if you are playing a team that is set up defensively.
Yes it would be nice to see us play more attacking football but right now I think we are stuck in aholding pattern until we have a new coach announced.
Bazely was never gonna change it up too much because losing would be the killer to his hopes of getting the job.
We all need to chill! It's year one after the world cup - we have three years to build something with the players we have - and then we get to beat up on tiny tiny nations for a couple of weeks before we get to play the real footballing nations again.