The mood on the way down was one of typical Mag caution. If we’d won here, we’d have created a new record of successive league wins against one club. Fans of a certain vintage know that sets off alarm bells.
News filtered through of the rotation of Gordon and Tonali, both of whom contributing wholly to a highly spiriting 3-3 draw on Wednesday night, but analysed as exhausted.
Early game progression was immediately undone when one cross field ball was easily brought under the control of Mbuemo, who easily beat powder-puff defending to fire in. Recently, it’s been a very typical goal to concede.
We immediately sprung back into life with the team moving the ball nicely up the pitch, culminating in Jabob Murphy’s cross-cum-shot being guided in by Isak. At this stage, we looked far the better side; balanced and ready to take a grip of the game.
Criminally the ball was given away by Barnes, deep in our half, and when it was seized upon by Wissa, his shot was unerring and beyond the grasp of Pope.
Barnes offers little outside the habit of scoring (which sounds mad, but isn’t helpful to the overall team effort), but he then overwrote his terrible error by getting us level. His finish was classy and true.
Level at the break, feeling was we’d been the better side and we could go on and win the game. However, the second half seemed a damning indictment on the current NUFC set up.
Too often we gave the ball away, offered toothless attacks and missed the small opportunities that came our way. It was no surprise to see us fall behind to a simple set piece after a disputable foul.
After that, we proved that inconsistent subs, poor tactical choices and on field mistakes are all combining to hamstring our progression. It was no surprise to see Brentford add a fourth and that was cue for a mass away end exodus.
There were so many disappointing performances out there today, notably Joelinton, who looked a shadow of his Wednesday night aggression and vigour.
Our away form is swirling in the direction of the plug hole at the minute and Eddie Howe is sadly reaching the beginning of the end rather the end of the beginning.
**Dave Smith @DaveSmith8882**