Weakened Team - Weaker Performance

When the team sheet was announced I was already preying for a miracle against the best team in the Country at the moment. How can Daryl Murphy, David Meyler and Jordan Henderson expect to line up and compete with Lampard, Ballack, Malouda and Joe Cole?

Even Steed Malbranque looked completely out of his league in this sorry performance as he never tracked back and when any tackle was made it was half hearted and lazy. This is a massive wake up call to everybody connected to our club. We need new signings and we need our big players back from injury immediately or we face more woe on our travels this season.

Lee Cattermole was rated as 50/50 last weekend for the Bolton game that was stopped due to the 'Big Freeze', so with a training schedule in Portugal and no news about him being injured was he not played for tactical reasons? He is the most important midfielder we have got and he was not on the bench. Our goal difference took a complete pasting yesterday and we are starting to find ourselves closer and closer to the dreaded 'R' word.

Steve Bruce said: 'It's disappointing when I'm here and have to face the music - we simply weren't good enough.

'I don't want to make excuses, but we can't cope with the number of players we've got missing.

'You could see we were sadly lacking defensively and we've come up against a very good Chelsea team.

'The manner of the defeat is disappointing and we hope we can get a few back on the pitch to give us a kick-start next week.

'We weren't good enough to compete. From the first five or ten minutes we were all over the place defensively, we weren't settled.

'It's important we respond to it. We've had our backsides kicked and no-one enjoys it, so we'll go back to the training ground, work hard and try and get over it as best we can.

'Making excuses is not my nature, but we need players back on the pitch.'

Looking back at where we went wrong it is hard to see any positives as our defending at times was absolutely non existant. Cana is not a centre back and Marton Fulop will be having nightmares over at least five of the goals he saw fly past him.

The sooner we get back Gordon, Turner, Reid, Richardson, and Cattermole the better as we looked dreadful at Stamford Bridge and we cannot keep expecting to go to these places and just wave the white flag.

The next game is away to Portsmouth in the FA Cup and this is the perfect time to start removing the dead wood and adding quality experienced players to our recovering players on the sidelines at the moment.

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