1) I spent the whole game being jealous they had Vassell. He causes problems, turns random punts up the pitch into pressure. He was like Yates and Simms in one body.
2) The inverting was ok when CJ was on (cos CJ actually wants to play that role) but when demi came on should have swapped him as he's hopeless on the right.
I'm not having a go at Kaikai, its probably more a criticism of Critchley. Sullay is one of the square pegs in a round hole.
He works a lot harder than he used to but he doesn't seem to play with the same confidence he did when he first came. Every match I just desperately want him to prove me wrong but he doesn't.
Bottom line though I would have played Ward ahead of him today and I don't think he's a winger either.
I think Sullay has been a project of Critch's and it's good and bad. He's learned to trot about doing shadowing and working up and down the line but he's lost the risk taking that he had.
Critchley doesn't ever tell anyone to roam about. When do you see us employ that ever?
We're very rigid in what we do and it clearly works defensively but there's never much swapping of positions or rotating of the forwards.
I picked this in one of the first pre season games - people were saying "why's Sullay so quiet?" and it was clear to me that he'd been given an imaginary box on the pitch and told to do his work within it. That's been followed up all year.
Sullay is playing within himself, but he's playing under instruction. It's obvious. If I could be bothered I'd go and find the thread from that game - I said something like "he's clearly been told to simplify his game and work up and down"
Cos he obviously had and has continued to be told so. And, he's doing what he's told. The Sullay we saw at points last year wasn't playing under instruction. He was being told to go and 'express yourself'
Larry often picks 8/9 cloggers and a wizard or 2 Critch wants 11 all working to the plan, filling in, tracking back, keeping tight lines and all that. There's no room for individual wizardry as it disrupts the system.
Can you think of one really ** great individual piece of play that isn't Jerry or CJ versus the last man this year? I'm struggling to think of a really audacious risk anyone has taken, other than against the last man.
The converse is, can you think of us gifting the ball with a risk like that and conceding a really stupid goal? There's probably one or two but not many.
It's all about solidity, it's all about not conceding.
It's mental when you think of what we were doing in August. We're a totally different beast.
).
