Football News: Blackburn Rovers v Nottingham Forest Review

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Blackburn Rovers v Nottingham Forest Review

Changes from the stoke game ( I think my report got lost in the ether somewhere ) saw Figuerido coming in probably for his heading ability and Ribiero being used on the left in a more attacking sense and right from the kick off Blackburn did their level best to gift us a goal but Lolley fluffed his lines which as others have already said pretty well set the tone for what was a very dour first half.

Both sides were guilty of poor passing and giving the ball away far too easily whilst both defences looked solid enough to deal with whatever came their respective ways.
Blackburn probably had the best of the half without seriously threatening our goal and they were guilty of a real lack of quality with the final ball into the box but they would probably counter argue with the fact that we had precious little in the way of balls into the box but the 0-0 scoreline at halftime was fair enough.

The second half got underway pretty well as the first had finished with both sides looking solid at the back and in truth a goal for either side was looking increasingly unlikely until a defensive error let Blackburn in for the opener with two defenders going to ground a little early and slightly lucky bounce giving the opportunity which was nevertheless well taken.

A sign of the current side/ squad has been the ability to bounce back and never was this more apparent then when a minute or so later Lolley turned the clock back to a last season for a trademark goal to level things up and from that point on the game became a far more keenly contested one with Forest possibly having their best 10 consistent minutes of the night .

Both sides had chances to take the points, particularly Adomah, and certainly for the last 15 minutes we were slightly under the pump and seemed to be sitting a little too deep and almost inviting Blackburn on but fortunately the final ball still lacked any real quality and barring a juggling save from Samba and some fine interceptions in the box never really created a clear cut good goalscoring opportunity.

All in all a good hard fought point away from home which at the risk of repeating myself may well not have been the case in seasons past to take us to nine unbeaten.
The defensive unit performed well under the guidance of Worrall who continues to impress with Figuerido winning most of his headers and Cash and Robinson looking fairly comfortable.

Samba continues to inspire confidence amongst both fans and team mates and looks a bigger bargain every game he plays.
Watson continues to defy the clock and marshalled things around himself last night and was arguably our best player on the night and seems to benefit from playing alongside Sow who is adept at doing the simple things consistently well and very rarely wastes the ball with Lolley showing at least two quality turns in the first half alongside his trademark goal hopefully being an indicator towards his recovering the full form of last season.

Ameobi looked to be suffering from the after effects from his monumental efforts at Stoke and for that he can be excused whilst Ribiero showed some good moments on the wing.
Grabban was for the most part isolated for the game last night but he continues to track back and look for the ball as he has been doing for most of this season and doers a lot of selfless running into and looking for space in an effort to create something.
Carvalho's introduction arguably had an impact on the game as two goals were scored within minutes of his coming on and a lovely through ball put Adomah in for a chance he should really have made better use of but he is a player that almost warrants a post on his own.

He is without a shadow of a doubt a player of great skill and vision who can create an opportunity ( as witnessed last night ) and has great dead ball skills but I have to come off the fence on this one and say that he needs to produce more than this to warrant a starting place with the squad we have.

He does to me seem to be anonymous for large parts of the game and is not a player who relishes the more physical side of the game which is fine in itself but a player of his ability should be able to find and hold the ball in space for longer than he seems to but I know that around 50% of posters on here would not agree with me on this which always makes for healthy debate.

We continue to look a very resilient side who are proving hard to beat with a solid back line and a number of strong midfield options but realistically have to improve somewhat on the opportunities we are providing to score and this is not meant by way of complaint at all but merely an observation of things at present and I for one did not expect us to be where we are at present under the guidance of a very astute manager.
So a very winnable game coming up on Saturday before another infernal international break could see us go top again so

As always

COYR.

Written by creepy1 October 02 2019 15:19:06