Timmins was grindingly average. No pace and no quality delivery. Nothing to get excited about.
Losing Riera was a blow but there just a little bit too many players of average quality in the midfield. Hicks isn't good enough to do anything other than flicker occasionally and while I loved Ridenton's performance he's still 17 and there's rough edges that come with that. I'd still play him until the end of the season because I think he'll be a big player for us next year.
Overall that was a performance that could have earned us three points but in the end we absolutely lacked the quality to convert chances. Just relying on too many players who aren't good enough.
Cunningham showed a real desire to win which I really liked, if we'd got three points it would just about have been down to him and him alone
That's so harsh it actually made me laugh. What exactly did you expect from a ring-in CB on his debut in an unfamiliar fullback role? He was never likely to tear them up. And if you want poor delivery look no further than Carlos and Kenny whose crossing and dead ball delivery honked like a Bombay traffic jam all afternoon. At least Timmins managed to curl a pinpoint cross right onto the head of Kenny who blew the chance from two yards.
Of course he played like an NZFC centre back at left-back, that's what he is. I just don't see why he was highlighted as a positive from the game - he did fine, did a job etc. Don't particularly want to see him there again. As Smithy said a few pages back, it's meagre pickings if fourth choice in a position doing ok is the highlight of the match for us. Fullbacks are an important attacking outlet for us and we need pace and penetration there.
What's the view on Krishna? Praise for getting into position to take chances or criticism for missing the chances. I really can't make my mind up
Final point on Sunday - I thought from our side it was a game littered with small mistakes based on a lack of technical ability. Passes were behind a man when we were on the break or had an extra man in attack, an underhit pass to the wide man when we needed to move it quickly, poor touch allowing the defence to re-set, final ball was never quite where the man would have wanted it, bad touch slowing things down when we looked like we could attack down a particular side. It's why I think it looked like we deserved three points but at the same time we didn't create a lot of really good chances. Contributed to the "blah" factor in the whole game