Written by kirsikka
Back on track in the last match, we needed to follow it up and cement the return to form. Happy to say that it was objective achieved.
The first quarter was a little like watching air hockey at times the way the ball flew around off the slick surface slightly out of control at almost all times. When we settled down we looked much better.
One thing to note is the offside trap, so ruthless and efficient earlier in the season, looked shaky. Time spent apart due to injuries perhaps telling and let’s hope we can get it back to where it was.
Travers is really growing into his role. I wouldn’t even consider a keeper in January considering how he’s played.
The red card was as red a red card as you will ever see. Really nasty.
Glad to see we weren’t passive in the second half. It would have been easy to knock it about slowly and then face a last 10-minute onslaught from Cardiff. No sign of that tonight. The game was chased and well and truly put to bed.
Solanke is a striker on a roll and looks a totally different player to the one we saw in the dark PL days.
Notable performances:
Billing: When you see PB muscling people off the ball you know he’s on his game. That was him tonight.
Lerma: The man is a monster. Or a machine. A monster machine.
Zemura: Looked much more himself tonight. Great to have him back.
Room for improvement:
Kelly: Some of his passing left a bit to be desired. Needs to get back into full match practice to iron out those errors.
Stacey: All the work was there but it’s still somehow not clicking for him.
Overall, a good night for the team and puts some pressure back on Fulham.
Man of the match against Cardiff
Christie
Billing
Solanke
Travers
Cahill
Lerma
Someone else
AFCB_Liam wrote…
– Lerma immense
– Billing was on it today and is clearly our most creative player
– Not much to say on Stan. Hope he is OK but this is becoming a parody
– Travers is going from strength to strength, just looks so solid in all aspects of his game, one dodgy kick though
– On which note, Kelly really needs to sort out those lazy, sloppy passes. Unacceptable for a captain to switch off so many times. He needs to stamp that out if he wants to make it to the top, which he has the attributes to do
– Zemura making a huge difference…we will miss him in Jan!
– Stacey great energy but sometimes needs to relax. It’s like watching on fast forward when he plays
– Delighted for Christie. Fitting that he got off the mark with a tame strike, only way it’s going to happen…his finishing is abysmal but I love the rest of his game
– Tackle for the red was a disgrace. The guy should be ashamed of himself for doing that to a fellow pro. Could easily have broken his leg(s)
– We are back! Bring on 2022!
London Cherry added…
Thought it was a scrappy first half and our goal came at the perfect time. Travers made some excellent saves in front of us as if they had scored it might have been a different game. It might have been a tense second half but the sending off changed the flow of the match. It was an awful challenge and fully deserving of a red card. Second half we had complete control but I was delighted when Dom scored our second as it killed the game off. Sad for Jeff he won’t get credited with our third as I thought he was outstanding. Overall an important win and I was delighted to be able to watch it!!!
SlowDownDerek said…
First half was quite dull but I thought we were the better team in both halfs. The passing in the first half was quite poor though although the work-rate was very good and the reason we comfortably won the game.
Christmas is always about results over performances, especially when you need to turn around a bad run. We’ve been comfortably good enough to win both games and got exactly the results we’ve deserved despite people trying to suggest we were lucky.
alwaysacherry wrote…
We weren’t great but we’re comfortably good enough to beat what was in front of us. Yes, they had the odd chance but our keeper did his job when called upon.
No one played badly but there was the odd blooper e.g. Kelly misplaced passes, moments of miss control etc. I’m not sure why people are complaining about Lewis as I thought he had a decent game.
The biggest positive for me was that we came out in the 2nd half and put them under sustained pressure for pretty much the entire 45 minutes. Kept it up even after our excellent 2nd goal and deserved the third at least.
Of course, there will be games when we need to play better but QPR showed we can when we need to so I think we can look forward to the rest of the season with a high degree of optimism. – Join the conversation, click here.
