Quote Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie View Post
I would argue though that being lucky not to go one goal down was more down to an individual error rather than the whole set up of the team

Not that i'm saying the set up or game plan was correct. But i also think we would have had difficulty anyway simply because of the amount of west brom players sitting in front of us, we were actually putting low crosses in and trying to go in behind them at times (of course that would help more if we weren't playing Giroud because of his immobility) but they were always able to cut it out because of simple number of players they had in the box.

I don't think we were brilliant, but neither were we terrible....this is not a side that is going to be torn to pieces by sides playing away from home....Liverpool, Bournemouth, Chelsea and us have beaten them as the home side and all by only a one goal margin.

Palace are much more porous and i don't think Fat boy is going to have been there long enough to address that (plus he has a dreadful managerial record at the Emirates...think he's come away with a draw once in a cup tie) so i expect a few more goals against Palace on Sunday.
All goals conceded are down to individual errors. Especially for us when we concede from corners and set pieces. The tactical set up plays it part because we played a system that makes it difficult to break teams down that sit deep. You can't play it through the middle with Giroud. The longer we go without scoring a goal, the more vulnerable we are to being sucker punched because tiredness and lapses in concentration.

Pulis will always set up a stubborn team but our best result against his side came at the end of the 2014/15 season where Theo scored a hat trick. They sat deep and in numbers but worm to bits and we won 4-1. City beating them 4-0 recently is another example of what happens with a quick nimble striker can do to them. It makes no sense playing that way with Giroud against teams that park the bus.

Need to rewatch that Liverpool game but they scored two goals in the first half and conceded late on towards the end of the game. That suggests a different sort of game compared to ours.