Smirking_Saint

So you’d rather a quicker possession game, leading to ultimately less possession and possibly less efforts on goal ? Considering we currently lead the xG table ?

And yet in recent history the most dominant sides have been coached by Pep Guardiola… an advocate of possession based football And currently, Brighton.. a team rightly lauded for punching well above their weight… play possession based football Burnley won this division playing.. you guessed it.. possession based football Ive not seen the figures this week yet but last week we had the best xG in the division, so from an attacking perspective we looked the best side in the Champ.. the issue isn’t about possession based football.. the issue is team structure

In fairness, the Sara (whatever his name was) and the Colback efforts.. even the Sunderland 3rd were all pretty special efforts and Im not really overly critical of what happened there, Im much more annoyed about the fact that we were all at sea for basically every other goal Sunderland scored Overall Im happy with what RM is building, its a system that will work I think, Im sick and tired of hearing we need to pass it with ‘pace’ and ‘urgency’… no.. we don’t, overall our ability on the ball and his possession tactics are fine The two glaring issues are based around how we react, or more pertinently, how we’re set up to react when we lose possession, we don’t press particularly well for a start, but more importantly we need to do two things; 1. Better organisation IN possession.. in the ball we’re incredibly fluid positionally.. thats fine, it creates plenty of options, but when the ball is turned over our structure is tragic, we simply need a bit more rigidity in atleast the CBs and No.6 to help curb counter attacks, we’re far too open in that regard 2. Players need to work harder in defence.. we’re lazy and it seems they just pass on responsibility to others… possession football isn’t hugely taxing when done right, so RM is right, when the ball is turned over they need to put the running in to get back behind the ball Again you can argue we defend our flanks really fucking badly… and I honestly don’t see that changing so we need to get better at defending crosses one way or another but ultimately actually marking players might help….

Ill bet you £50 he doesn’t

I agree with the lineup, I think it’s probably our strongest unless Sully fancies giving it a go any time soon Pace isn’t really an issue for me though, as we don’t really utilise it

1. A combination of things really, we don’t ‘counter attack’ to any real degree, so we need to be slow and methodic and attempt to pull the backline apart to create space, its why we’ll end up seeing so many touches in the final third but with no penetration. We need a mix of good distance shooters and technical dribblers, I assume thats why we were happy to release Tella and pushed for Roberts as the former isn’t a good dribbler 2. You just need more organisation really, players need to be drilled in that they have to track back immediately, we’re lazy at that. But equally you need your CBs and No.6 to be behind the ball if it breaks.. we weren’t on Saturday, both Downes and Smallbone were in and around the opposition 18 yrd box. Those three need to be good 1 v 1 defenders too, to slow down the attack, we probably aren’t really Lastly.. the wingbacks are, like you say supposed to aid in stopping an attack, the issue is when you invert them you give up the wings, and thats why we see SO much come down our flanks and it unfortunately exaggerates the fact that we’re piss poor at defending crosses

This is exactly it for me, I think its a good system in theory and is/will be conducive to a good season but so far what I have seen is a team that over commits too much People have talked about how he is trying to emulate pep, and to an extent he is, but Peps sides, although agreed are brimming with talent, tend to be a bit more patient and will have enough bodies behind the ball if and when turnovers occur Far too often the only men back for us are our CBs, and even then one of them eventually progresses with the ball… I think I said as early as the reading game that I was worried we over commit at times… and here we are He needs to add more resilience and fast

We’ll have a goal difference of -50

Pretty much… I was going to sit and do a bit of an analysis of our conceded goals today for my own sanity, really cause I’m sad enough to like the tactical side of things. But to be honest after today, I just absolutely cannot be bothered. I think my main takeaway from today, and I’d actually noticed in previous matches, but we got away with it, is that we play far too fluidly with the ball. Now that means from attacking point of view, and also a possession based point of view, that we have plenty of options all over the pitch. Unfortunately, though is that does mean that there is just absolutely no structure when we get turned over and we do get turned over too much. For instance, if Flynn was supposed to be our effective number six today, then far too often I see him popping up on the right wing or left wing and he just wasn’t in a position to stifle any transitions when it did break, now I’m not sure if that is a tactical thing or just the way he likes to play, but I didn’t see it so much from Charles in previous weeks. I think if we can get better from a structural point of view and slightly less fluid in our possession based play, then okay, we may see a little less of the ball, but ultimately we should be in a better position if and inevitably, when the opposition turns us over. To put it frankly, I really like Russell Martin, but unless he gets the team in a better defensive structure and more importantly, the players need to be aware of the defensive positions, we won’t be getting promoted

Money will always be the issue, we aren’t going to carry 3 keeper on 30k+ wages

Yeah probably, unfortunately however decided to sign McCarthy up (Semmens) on increased wages messed up any flexibility we had there Bazunu needed to be the backup really… but nobody wanted McCarthy who is somehow worse

I agree he isn’t good enough, and he doesn’t have competition which doesn’t help But I feel he does get overly slated at times, and that third goal IMHO wasn’t a ‘huge’ error

It wasn’t

Fair point 😂

At fault for the third but its not a horrendous error, the critique of that is just overly biased He’s been largely ok this season, if you’re going to blame him for that you have to look at the four (?) players around Ekwe (sp) that failed to cut or block the shot

Im not going to write the guy off but this was dreadful Im not going to lie I watched the training footage mid week where Sully had him on toast and did worry

How are they just running through us so fucking easily

Holgate has to come off here This is frankly on of the worst 50 mins of defending Ive ever seen

Wait for some pricks on here jump on Baz for his first mistake this season

That ones on Baz

A big Shea Charles shaped hole in our midfield

Problem is they’re all left sided though really, with only SAA showing any natural aptitude for the right side So its a toss up really, maybe we see Fraser/Edozie swap ?

This would be my lineup today, Downes x Charles might be a little more defensive but Id like to see us start to bed in a more defensively solid approach Hopefully Adams has enough about him to channel whatever dissatisfaction he has into a good performance and I back him to bag another today if he starts, Arma coming from deep allows him to carry on what he has been doing and on current form I don’t think Alcaraz deserves a start Excited to hopefully see what THB has about him and I also think, despite my early dissapointment that Fraser is going to be a hugely important asset to us this year Lets start strong… Saints 2-0 win for me

He’s a very good player thats why, above Championship level to be honest and I actually think he is a better player than Tella but we’ll see His commitment does have to be questioned, he wanted out from the end of last year and even refused to train at one point, so realistically any gametime we get out of him at this point can only be counted as a bonus

I mean… he did at one point tbf