Half way through the season and this is what we're reduced to; scrabbling around to pull out a solitary point against piss poor sides already broken by the man supposed to lead us upwards. And all the while the team falls further and further apart.
Like so many recent games this could have been different, and like so many it was never going to be. We are singularly incapable of even looking like we can defend a lead, even when we do somehow manage to take it twice. It's quite some surprise that we manage to cling onto draws so many times (and the ensuring slide which occurs when those draws turn into defeats doesn't bare thinking about). Restored to the starting line up almost by default of being available Robert at least spent the first half applying himself. The display was capped by one of those unstoppable free kicks that sometimes seems to be all he ever produces these days (does anyone quite understand how Robert came to find he had such a shot---he wasn't doing this a few seasons ago). There is some argument that a goal is worth an awful lot but something more must come to the party. At times in this game Robert showed what we know, that he is capable of something more, but at others, especially after the break, he showed what we also know---sometimes he just doesn't produce.
Talking of not producing, Kluivert (perpetually "unfit" it seems) had to be withdrawn at half time. Such an occasion is exactly why the stadium announcers tell the crowd substitutions. Otherwise it's possible no one would have noticed. As his replacement Ameobi did more lumbering around but not much else. To be fair to Kluivert he wasn't the only player one had to check the team sheet to be sure he was playing. With a midfield anonymous (particularly second period) the ball kept coming back towards a defence being switched around even as we played, as if there were some magic combination of inadequate players to save the day. Woodgate may not have kicked a ball in anger for the white clad Spaniards but at least his waiting presence would have offered us some hope rather than bewilderment at selling the only player this club has had in the last ten, fifteen years who really knew how to defend.
We have one more humiliation (surely we can't expect anything better) at Arsenal to come before that mysterious window opens and we perhaps find some solutions. The worry is the man supposed to find them is the man who produced the very poor side we're so upset with drawing with. It can't be that hard though. Take fifteen million that we started to chase Rooney with and buy a true world class defender. Then do it again. Until then, we'll be struggling for midtable superiority even if the players up front remember how to play.
(@13:12)
