Well for Dorothy her home in Kansas was the only place she wanted to be, but after today the Addickted cannot think of anywhere they would rather be away from. This time last week, we were glowing in the warmth of our fourth win on the spin, four clean sheets and the prospect of 4 home games in 6, a firming up of an automatic promotion place seemed a mere formality. Then we hit the rails against a better Sheffield United and today fell to a resurgent, but hardly scary Burnley.
One home defeat is bad enough, two is depressing but four out of five home games ending in defeat is beyond description and the Valley faithful are beginning to show their impatience, although it is fair to say they are still showing remarkable forbearance. The message boards are beginning to have calls for Billy Davies to replace Pardews and whilst it is premature to call for Pards head, the performances at home are placing more and more pressure on the club. This is relegation form not even mid table obscurity.
Its difficult to understand what has gone wrong, although the loss of Todorov leaves the forward line short of quality as well as number. Referees seem to be totally inept at this level, although neither today's or Tuesdays defeats are down totally to the referees decisions. I do wonder whether we have the opposite effect in the Championship, where profile clubs seem always to get the referees decisions, here it seems like a badge of honour to ignore fouls against the profile club. Today Iwelumo was constantly fouled and used as a human ladder, but the merest nudge and he would be penalised. Having said this, we need to accommodate these officials because they won't change, just for us.
Pards stated that we would get out of this division playing football the way he liked to see it played, maybe this is naive, or maybe we just don't have the personnel for that philosophy, although it seems we do not have the personnel to win dirty. Our Premiership stars are not doing the business. Reid has done ok, but I don't think he has pulled up too many trees, Ambrose continues to frustrate like Rommedahl before him he is a player who has the talent to make an impact, certainly at this level, but maybe its an attitude problem, JT who by the account of a Journo I spoke pre match has a heavily bruised leg, has performed on the odd occaision but never for a whole game, ZZ who has come to us as Chinas leading player has done ok, but is begining to drift and has missed some game turning opportunities.
The new players with the exception of Iwelumo, who seems to be playing with a multitude onjuries - broken nose and hand - have yet to take the division by storm. Moutakil has lost his place due to injury and maybe after Mills's disaster yesterday there is time for a change, Semedo has earned himself a positive reputation as a Makelele, but too often in gathering the ball he slows the momentum of the game.
As for Sam and Holland, Sam looked exciting till his ban and has not come back with the same verve and Holland, is not he player of old.
This is a strange division, everyone really does seem to be able to beat everyone else but if we are to get promotion, or even be in the play off places, we need to sort our home form, even if its a series of ugly 1-0's and maintain our away position.
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