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- #121
Only saw about 30 minutes of the Hungary game. Hard to take too much from a game in those conditions and with the players presumably at half-throttle and trying to avoid injury. Walters gets into good positions and ruffles defenders but he lacks a finishing touch, I can see why Stoke fans find him frustrating. Does the hold-up / contesting aerial balls thing well and probably carries more of a goal threat than Doyle at the moment but I think I prefer Long as a player overall.
Defence had a worrying number of holes, O'Shea looking very rusty, Ward never really inspires confidence although he has a knack for last ditch tackles, and St Ledger lost his footing badly a couple of times. Going to be an awful lot of these 3 matches watched through the fingers, you'd have to think.
Trap making noises about a last minute switch to playing 5 midfielders, which (assuming he's not just trying to mess with Slaven Bilic) is something I wish he'd explored more six months or a year ago. There was that brief experiment in one of the friendlies with Keane playing a deeper role, which I think he'll end up doing anyway seeing as he'll be seeing so little of the ball otherwise. We seem to be trying to play the ball to feet a bit more and hit fewer aimless long balls in recent games, which is slightly encouraging, but the midfield pairing are being bypassed as much as ever, Whelan and Andrews barely seemed to be involved last night.
I definitely prefer Long overall, but Walters over Doyle. I think the 4-5-1 was mind games only. When we did try that against Czech it didn't work - Keane was more anonymous than ever. Maybe it was just a bad day, but it wouldn't inspire me to try it now.