I don't know if it was a Cooper / Nuno change, but we probably played more balls to Wood's feet today than we have his entire time here. I've heard countless times "Wood can't do the things that Taiwo does so we have to play differently with him in the side", but that looked like a pretty good Taiwo impression to me.
He's obviously not perfect...but for me there's a lot more confidence about the defensive unit, than with the alternative. Claiming crosses, punching well...he made the magpies have to try to make a shinier jewel of a cross, or he'd nick it.
So what you are saying is no difference in tactics...just a different performance, against a different opponent, on a different day?
Can I suggest that you have a go at working out what you think, rather than getting wrong what I, or another third party that you appear to have no insight into, think?
Of course it was different, Cooper would have gone for damage limitation. We had more possession and a lot more shots on target than almost all Coopers games in the premier. Also there was fight, spirit and desire all missing under Cooper.
Now in the unusual position of wanting a Sheff U win - would maintain the 5 point gap between us and the relegation spots, and secure WTIH status for another year. Wilder isn't as unpleasant as Yorkshirebottom so I can live with it.
For me a very large part of that was the lethargic and poorly connected shit high line that Newcastle played. I mean it's delightful to be able to have that sort of space to hit a ball into the feel of a big slow man and still spring him yards past the defence. It's certainly not likely to see that much success at this level every week.
I thought they were really poor. They looked like a team doing plan A...because they wanted to work back towards some confidence...not because they thought it was going to happen to them. They didn't play well, they weren't connected in defence..they couldn't decide where to hold a line....there was no trigger press....just really lethargic and miles off their best.
Good.
It slightly makes up for meeting fulham when they were in unbeatable form.
I think part of it as well was that Elanga's pace had their entire back line terrified - they were trying to push up to keep the pressure on us in our half, but the centre halves had to keep shading towards Elanga to give Burn some help, and that created extra space for Wood and MGW.
Funny moment in the post match interviews with Wood and Morgan, the interviewer said something like "Chris, that second goal in particular was not a typical Chris Wood goal" and the two of them gave each other a confused/amused look before he gave a typical footballese answer. I think it was Dyche who said that Wood is continually pigeonholed as some kind of battering ram striker whose primary threat is in the air, when that's not what he is at all.
MGW was superb and I don’t know if it’s a NES vs SSC thing, but where he’s struggled to be effective this season, today he was clearly designed to be in the thick of it, harrying his man constantly. As he did a good job of that, he was winning the ball in good areas where his touch, flicks, and close control were assets which they are not, so much, when he’s out wide or receiving the ball in space. So we had our most talented attacking player able to do creative things, with three players ahead of him.. perhaps a big reason why we looked a more constant and coherent attacking threat than we generally have done.
It was Dyche, yes. He can score goals with his head (qv Blunts game earlier this season), but because of his build people assume he must be some sort of Antipodean Niall Quinn… which he certainly isn’t.
Too early to tell and not enough sample size yet, but it can be interesting what a different pair of eyes and a slight change of emphasis can do - I was listening rather than watching, and at one point the Beeb guy said something along the lines of “Forest have a clear plan snd are executing it perfectly”. In recent times that wasn’t always the case under SSC. I think he knew how he wanted to play, but sadly his ability to get the players to do it consistently across 90 minutes seemed to desert him towards the end. By the sound of it, our players had clear heads today, and played like it.
Only time will tell whether this was a rare example of it clicking, or a season-turning performance.