You shouldn't have! He set himself up so well but didn't pick a corner. He lacks that classy finish. And then the shot he took right after was embarrassing. Both were right footed, so maybe that's the problem.
Well, Gressel played a lot of minutes a few days earlier, and then flew on a plane to he could play in subtropic heat and humidity. In fact, in general I'm not reading anything into this game--other than this team is starting to incorporate this new style into its DNA; and it's a lot easier to ride out a scoring drought when you're going hundreds of consecutive minutes without conceding.
After ruminating on the game, here are some random observations. Perez -- he is better used as a 60 minute sub. He lacks the pace to consistently turn defenders and his head down dribbling doesn't really help the offense. Instead I would take the cue from Ryan Nelsen and move Paredes to the spot occupied by Perez and use Mora as the Paredes replacement at wingback. Gressel -- He really needs to be carefully monitored. The guy has no left foot, so defenders know he won't try to cut back on them and move centrally. Instead, his only move is towards the goal line to turn the defender. He's not the paciest guy to begin with and when he is tired, he doesn't have the legs to do it. To compensate he tries to immediately hit a cross, which the defender also has figured out. Think of how many of his crosses were blocked last night. He should be rotated more with Asad and Yow. Asad looked very good and dangerous in his cameo last night and he is capable of using his left foot. Yow started hot last night, quickly ran out of ideas and became invisible. However, most of this is "meh" if this team could find or develop a clinical finisher. The three nominal strikers last night were making Gelmin Rivas look like an all star. When you get 25 shots in a game -- you should score at least one goal simply by accident.
People focus a lot on old hats like Kamara or Gressel, but let's not forget that their support are young players that have flashes of good play, but aren't really at the level they need to be. So if the older players aren't getting it done, the younger ones absolutely can't be expected to fill the gap. Fundamentally we need to get a few better mature players and keep the young guys as support.
How refs are to look at handling the ball has changed - it is no longer simply, "was the arm in a position to make the body bigger?" His arm is definitely away from the body but he did not move his arm to the ball. It is a no-call because his arm was out because he was falling. He had his back to the ball when it kicked so he couldnt even know where it was when it caromed off his body, into the ground and then into his arm.
I think if that happens outside the box in the run of play, it's a handball. He fell on the ball and handled it, after he handled it when it deflected under him. Had his arm not been there, it's at very least a goal scoring opportunity for us, lost. I'm sympathetic. He didn't know anything about it. But last game, that guy didn't know anything about it either. When will the sport wise up and understand there should be levels of guilt and levels of reward for fouls inside the box?
Only 5 shots on goal (and I think that stat may have been generous last night) - their shooting is almost as bad as their passing. Even with only 10 players on the other team we quite often passed straight to them. By minute 65 I never expected a goal, not for us anyway, it's like no-one was at all interested in adding to their goal total.
You're right about the accuracy. What I was trying to say was that if you shoot towards the goal 25 times in a match, your odds of one of those shots, accurate or not, deflecting off someone and going into the net should be reasonably high.
Our old complaint was that no one would try to take a shot-that they would try to walk the ball into the goal.
I heard on an earlier broadcast (Euro2021 or maybe UCL Final) that when a player is on the ground or falling it is not a handball if the ball strikes the arm on the ground (or the arm closest to the ground)