Leaving it late

Well that was another tough watch. I hate games like that, where the opposition make no attempt whatsoever to win the game and it’s just attack v defence for the whole 90 minutes, as Burnley’s only tactics were to spoil and defend, however they very nearly pulled it off.

So poor was the first half that the main talking point was Kerkez getting hooked after 37 minutes, due to being booked for an embarrassing dive and then giving away another foul that definitely left him in the danger zone for being sent off. I totally agreed with Arne’s decision to sub him. What I don’t agree with, is his deciding to keep starting him. We have to be honest and say Kerkez has been poor in every game apart from Arsenal and I don’t see how we can justify starting him over Robbo. He’s still young with time to develop but at the moment there’s not a single thing he does better than Robbo and for me, our vice captain should be starting ahead of him for now.

We got better after Robbo came on, indeed his first touch was to nutmeg a defender and register the first shot on target of the match. He also put a brilliant cross in for Chiesa who should probably have done better with the header, although it was his first touch as well.

The form of Salah and Wirtz remain something of a concern. They certainly don’t seem to be on the same wavelength as each other and Salah in particular is struggling to get involved and impact games. Salah being Salah though, he still bagged the winner, albeit from the spot and is still our joint top creative player with two goals and an assist, despite being pretty anonymous in our first four games. We’ve seen this from Salah before however, periods of poor form so I’m not ready to point to a decline yet, at this early stage of the season. We’ve also still to add Isak to the mix, so we have to remember our first choice attack hasn’t been on the pitch together yet.

The games come thick and fast over the next couple of weeks and we now go from playing Burnley – the spoilers of the PL, to welcoming Atletico – the spoilers of Europe, to Anfield on Wednesday, in what could well be another very attritional game.

Will we see Isak get some minutes on Wednesday? Slot was coy about it and said he might, or may want until next weekend. Whether Alan can wait that long, remains to be seen, so if you read some reports of Slot receiving furious calls from an unknown Irishman, we’ll know who to blame.

At the moment, I don’t know if we should be concerned at not playing particularly well, while ‘getting away with it’ or if we should feel that this is what champions do – win when not playing well and it’s only a matter of time before things start to click, as the new players settle. At the moment I’m leaning towards the latter but I’d like to see a better performance from us, sooner rather than later. Still, top of the league is top of the league! Walk on!