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Glasgow_Saint
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Our stats dont tell the full story. Despite some people insisting that we were having loads of shots at goal, in truth a lot of them dont really trouble the keeper. According to the stats on sunday we had 9 shots at goal yet we didnt create a single chance or trouble their keeper. Same goes for Man United, people pointed to us having more shots at goal as them as evidence of a fantastic performance, the truth be told De Geye had little to do, all his saves expect one from Clyne were routines ones with shots from distance and we scored from one of our few real chances, Whereas Man United had less shots at goal but hit the woodwork twice and forced Boruc into two or three class saves, it was a great performance at Man United but not for the reasons some claim of because we created loads more than them.

 

So those that laud our performances based on shots on goal and stats need to have a rethink, if we are having so many attempts at target and scoring so few times it tells us one of two things. Either our strikers are missing a hatful of chances every game and arent up to it or teams are happy to sit back and let us pass it around them and then shoot from distance restricting the threat to the oppositions goal.

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Mopo record at Espanyol was very poor, we know that and have discussed it to death. One stat that i highlighted at the time was Espanyols scoring record. Even with the attacking elite which included verdu, osvaldo, garcia, alonso, Callejón his side average less than a goal a game under his leadership.

 

Perhaps he has not yet found the balance between defence and attack? We have the talent, we just dont score many

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Mopo record at Espanyol was very poor, we know that and have discussed it to death. One stat that i highlighted at the time was Espanyols scoring record. Even with the attacking elite which included verdu, osvaldo, garcia, alonso, Callejón his side average less than a goal a game under his leadership.

 

Perhaps he has not yet found the balance between defence and attack? We have the talent, we just dont score many

 

You'll find it was more than that :rolleyes:

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Mopo record at Espanyol was very poor, we know that and have discussed it to death. One stat that i highlighted at the time was Espanyols scoring record. Even with the attacking elite which included verdu, osvaldo, garcia, alonso, Callejón his side average less than a goal a game under his leadership.

 

Perhaps he has not yet found the balance between defence and attack? We have the talent, we just dont score many

 

Not true as you can see on this link. http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/en/mauricio-pochettino/leistung-saison/trainer_9044.html

163 goals in 146 la liga games.

 

 

And that his record was very poor at Espanyol is a blatant lie.

He was rather succesful if you know under what premisses he worked at Espanyol. The situation there was like a Wigan of the spanish league that as soon as a player had a good season that player would leave but when Wigan at least could get some experienced pro´s in during transfer windows he basically had to settle with players from the academy, an academy that had to fight with FC Barcelona to get talents in and everyone understands what that is like....

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Lambert, jrod, ramirez, lallana, osvaldo, wanyama, JWP are some of the best attacking players in the prem....

 

Why just single out osvaldo and ramirez??

 

No, they're not. Wanyama is defensive not an attacking player. JRod is good, but still young and not yet one of the best in the Prem. JWP is young and learning, he will be hit-and-miss. Ramirez hasn't featured much and when he has, hasn't done anything to suggest he's one of OUR best attacking players, let alone the best in the Prem. Osvaldo is still adapting to the EPL and needs consistent games, but is clearly an excellent player. Lallana and Lambert would walk into any team outside of the top six, Lallana maybe more than that.

 

I also think there is a tactical issue at play. We seem to be trained out of directly attacking the oppositions defence when one player breaks forward, preferring instead to hold the ball and wait for more players to arrive and try to pass it through defences. Too often (IMHO) we get to the edge of their penalty area and go sideways, giving the opposition time to regroup.

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He is now, thats been mopos choice. He played more advanced for Celtic and scored for fun last season.

 

Not sure he's managed a shot on target for us?

 

So then Gary Hooper must be one of the top 5 strikers in the league I presume from the amount of goals he scored in Scotland??

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So then Gary Hooper must be one of the top 5 strikers in the league I presume from the amount of goals he scored in Scotland??

 

The Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, Conference, FA Cup, League Cup, Scottish Premiership, Scottish Cup, Scottish League Cup, Europa League and Champions League... which striker has scored in ALL of these competitions?

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Still convinced Gaston is the solution.

 

Rickie's been out of sorts this season - not scored a single goal from open play.

 

Osvaldo is IMO not a playmaker/no. 10 type...should stay in the box, just needs quality service and I'm sure he'll start banging them in.

 

Jayrod goes AWOL too often IMO, was anonymous for much of the game yesterday and has not developed a great footballing brain as of yet.

 

Lallana badly needs to work on his finishing - gets into great positions with tricks/turns/twists but final product severely lacking.

 

Davis does not get forward nearly enough to really threaten, always seems to prefer to stay somewhere in the middle of the pitch when we have the ball.

 

What we could really do with is a player we had in home games against Villa and Newcastle last season, in which we created clear cut chances by the truck load based on his intelligent off the ball running, link up play, and eye of the needle threaded passes that split defences apart.

 

Cometh the hour, cometh the man... this is Gaston's time to shine imho.

 

article-2350841-1635506D000005DC-811_634x434.jpg

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The Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, Conference, FA Cup, League Cup, Scottish Premiership, Scottish Cup, Scottish League Cup, Europa League and Champions League... which striker has scored in ALL of these competitions?

 

Is that an answer to my question?

 

Sounds like a very average striker to me if he´s played in all those competition, the best ones usually plays in less competitions and only on the top level.

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I also think there is a tactical issue at play. We seem to be trained out of directly attacking the oppositions defence when one player breaks forward, preferring instead to hold the ball and wait for more players to arrive and try to pass it through defences. Too often (IMHO) we get to the edge of their penalty area and go sideways, giving the opposition time to regroup.

 

Nail on head.

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Sunderland boss Paolo di Canio has hailed the attack of Mauricio Pochettino's Southampton.

 

The Black Cats left St Mary's on Saturday with a point.

 

“The defence have done an amazing job because playing Lambert, Rodriguez, Lallana and then Ramirez and Osvaldo – I tell you, this is one of the best sides up front in the league," said Di Canio.

 

“Their frontline gives them a chance for them to finish in the top ten, play good football, a physical presence, energy and quality.

 

This

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I just read those stats on Robbie savages BBC article on how Chelsea broke us down. Think it sounds worse than it is because it includes the last 5 games of last season where we scored once or twice.

 

I feel it is the cost of our defensive tactics, we don't concede because we defend as a team. We also don't look threatening when our defence knocks the ball around as we allow the opposition to get organised. I feel we look more likely to score on the counter as we get so many forward. What we need to train on is making the most of situations where we are 4 on 4 or 4 on 3 as we make awful decisions like against Chelsea with Lallana and Ossie.

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The most reliable way to create chances (other than the largely discredited pacey-winger-slinging-it-into-the-box method) is by engineering numerical advantage in key areas of the pitch. You can either achieve that by the opposition being tactically inept, or because your players have sufficient pace or technique to go round an opponent, taking them out of the game. However, to do that you have to be prepared to risk possession of the ball, which is something I don't see us doing much at the moment. We pass very well, but we generally choose very high percentage passes, and in midfield you very rarely see anyone try to commit an opponent before offloading the ball.

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You expect us to win at the emirattes and Stamford Bridge then ?

 

I think it's a valid point, take Arsenal and Chelsea out of the equation and we haven't scored more than 1 away from home. I think the tactical strategy away is to control the ball and defend from the from the front, hoping to nick a goal. At home we are definitely more fluid going forwards, particularly Shaw and Clyne who seem to have more of an attacking intent.

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I think it's a valid point, take Arsenal and Chelsea out of the equation and we haven't scored more than 1 away from home. I think the tactical strategy away is to control the ball and defend from the from the front, hoping to nick a goal. At home we are definitely more fluid going forwards, particularly Shaw and Clyne who seem to have more of an attacking intent.

 

I agree we score more at home but at the same time our strategy has only really been highlighted by probably our two most difficult games this season. That said I have always thought since our emergence from league 1 that we do not ever seem to capitalise on our domination in matches.

 

Ive sort of accepted the fact we are not prolific due to our defensive dominance in games but at some point yes we need to be a bit more direct and take some chances when we win the ball higher up. Lambert was never going to be the man for this system and unfortunately Osvaldo has not really hit the ground running at all.

 

Yesterday we were unlocked by quick balls wide avoiding our powerhouse in the middle of the park, we never got to grips at all with Chelsea second half.

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Our stats dont tell the full story. Despite some people insisting that we were having loads of shots at goal, in truth a lot of them dont really trouble the keeper. According to the stats on sunday we had 9 shots at goal yet we didnt create a single chance or trouble their keeper. Same goes for Man United, people pointed to us having more shots at goal as them as evidence of a fantastic performance, the truth be told De Geye had little to do, all his saves expect one from Clyne were routines ones with shots from distance and we scored from one of our few real chances, Whereas Man United had less shots at goal but hit the woodwork twice and forced Boruc into two or three class saves, it was a great performance at Man United but not for the reasons some claim of because we created loads more than them.

 

So those that laud our performances based on shots on goal and stats need to have a rethink, if we are having so many attempts at target and scoring so few times it tells us one of two things. Either our strikers are missing a hatful of chances every game and arent up to it or teams are happy to sit back and let us pass it around them and then shoot from distance restricting the threat to the oppositions goal.

 

 

good assessment, Turkish.

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I agree we score more at home but at the same time our strategy has only really been highlighted by probably our two most difficult games this season. That said I have always thought since our emergence from league 1 that we do not ever seem to capitalise on our domination in matches.

 

Ive sort of accepted the fact we are not prolific due to our defensive dominance in games but at some point yes we need to be a bit more direct and take some chances when we win the ball higher up. Lambert was never going to be the man for this system and unfortunately Osvaldo has not really hit the ground running at all.

 

Yesterday we were unlocked by quick balls wide avoiding our powerhouse in the middle of the park, we never got to grips at all with Chelsea second half.

Rickie's about as direct a no.9 as you can get, always looking forward, getting the ball forward and shooting whenever he gets the slightest sniff of goal.

 

Don't see where your coming from with that point at all. We could really do with an in-form Rickie at the moment and a big reason of our impotence upfront is his uncharacteristically poor start to the season imho.

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The most reliable way to create chances (other than the largely discredited pacey-winger-slinging-it-into-the-box method) is by engineering numerical advantage in key areas of the pitch. You can either achieve that by the opposition being tactically inept, or because your players have sufficient pace or technique to go round an opponent, taking them out of the game. However, to do that you have to be prepared to risk possession of the ball, which is something I don't see us doing much at the moment. We pass very well, but we generally choose very high percentage passes, and in midfield you very rarely see anyone try to commit an opponent before offloading the ball.

 

Best post of this thread

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Rickie's about as direct a no.9 as you can get, always looking forward, getting the ball forward and shooting whenever he gets the slightest sniff of goal.

 

Don't see where your coming from with that point at all. We could really do with an in-form Rickie at the moment and a big reason of our impotence upfront is his uncharacteristically poor start to the season imho.

 

I meant that we are not currently direct enough and hence Rickie is not the man for the system we currently play.

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The most reliable way to create chances (other than the largely discredited pacey-winger-slinging-it-into-the-box method) is by engineering numerical advantage in key areas of the pitch. You can either achieve that by the opposition being tactically inept, or because your players have sufficient pace or technique to go round an opponent, taking them out of the game. However, to do that you have to be prepared to risk possession of the ball, which is something I don't see us doing much at the moment. We pass very well, but we generally choose very high percentage passes, and in midfield you very rarely see anyone try to commit an opponent before offloading the ball.

 

Yes! This is the role I hope Schneiderlin can fill more this season.

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The Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, Conference, FA Cup, League Cup, Scottish Premiership, Scottish Cup, Scottish League Cup, Europa League and Champions League... which striker has scored in ALL of these competitions?

 

That will be Hooper I reckon!

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The most reliable way to create chances (other than the largely discredited pacey-winger-slinging-it-into-the-box method) is by engineering numerical advantage in key areas of the pitch. You can either achieve that by the opposition being tactically inept, or because your players have sufficient pace or technique to go round an opponent, taking them out of the game. However, to do that you have to be prepared to risk possession of the ball, which is something I don't see us doing much at the moment. We pass very well, but we generally choose very high percentage passes, and in midfield you very rarely see anyone try to commit an opponent before offloading the ball.

Primary Suspect:

 

Victor+Wanyama+Southampton+FC+v+UE+Llagostera+eUdYOfKV1E-l.jpg

 

Every time, without fail, we start to build attacking momentum and someone (usually Morgan, Clyne or Shaw) passes to Wanyama I just KNOW the move will die down soon and nothing will come of it. As much as he is a monster in the middle of the park, great tackler, ball winner, chaser of the opposition, he is HORRENDOUS when it comes to passing the ball. Every time, without fail, there is a great opening for him to thread the ball to Lallana, Jayrod, etc. he chooses to turn back and pass to Lovren instead. Makes my blood boil every time. There should be a rule in our tactics: when looking to attack/score goals, NEVER, under any circumstances, pass the ball to Wanyama.

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We have scored 18 in our last 18 games....... So no not just Arsenal & Chelsea

 

18 games? A number as meaningful as the number of mongboard friends you have.

 

We've scored 1.34 games since MP has been in charge - not great but significantly more than your cherrypicking antics suggest.

 

Keep em' coming.

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you mean. We have not created much away at arsenal and Chelsea?

 

We don't create much at all away from home. 5 goals in 7 games, one a debatable penalty, two from corners and one from a mistake in the first minute meaning the only goal we've created away from home this season was at Stoke.

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Still convinced Gaston is the solution.

 

Rickie's been out of sorts this season - not scored a single goal from open play.

 

Osvaldo is IMO not a playmaker/no. 10 type...should stay in the box, just needs quality service and I'm sure he'll start banging them in.

 

Jayrod goes AWOL too often IMO, was anonymous for much of the game yesterday and has not developed a great footballing brain as of yet.

 

Lallana badly needs to work on his finishing - gets into great positions with tricks/turns/twists but final product severely lacking.

 

Davis does not get forward nearly enough to really threaten, always seems to prefer to stay somewhere in the middle of the pitch when we have the ball.

 

What we could really do with is a player we had in home games against Villa and Newcastle last season, in which we created clear cut chances by the truck load based on his intelligent off the ball running, link up play, and eye of the needle threaded passes that split defences apart.

 

Cometh the hour, cometh the man... this is Gaston's time to shine imho.

 

 

 

 

article-2350841-1635506D000005DC-811_634x434.jpg

 

Absolutely right in my opinion - especially away from home. Gaston has the ability to do the job why he cant do this consistently is surely in some ways down to MP's system. I watched 15 minutes of Banega running the show for Valencia on Sunday and that performance was exactly what was missing at Chelsea - great vision, defence splitting passes, vision, and a confident, quick thinking approach to the game.

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Interesting thread and I think our good start has somewhat glossed over what was a concern at the back end of last season. I also think you have to factor in the standard of defending in the PL which is generally pretty good, chances are hard to create (for most teams) and scoring in general is running a little below where it has been for the last few seasons; change of formations? safety first tactics? video analysis/media saturation- every team knows every other team inside out? . I watched an entertaining game last night (Lazio losing 2-4 at home), it had some great goals (great finishes) but the defending looked a lot weaker than we see in the PL, three really good finishes in the second half but I don’t think any of those three goals would have gone past a PL defence (maybe Fulham or Palace LOL).

 

The teams that are scoring goals are generally the teams with the best players, or at least the players that are on form (no shi7 Shurlock!) – Aguero, Suarez, Ramsey, Rooney etc. last time I looked we didn’t have any of these guys playing for us and unfortunately our two big money marquee signings, for whatever reason, haven’t really come off in the way we hoped. We are where we are, we have a very strong/balanced back 7 (subject to Boruc missing some games now), going fd we can be pretty pedestrian and pretty predictable, we don’t have (enough) pace or power to unsettle the opposition, instead we aim to play through them and use our superior thought/technique to create chances. Our FBs do give us good options going forward but that’s obviously more limited away from home and against better opposition.

 

Poch has obviously set out his stall to play a certain way and the defensive side is certainly paying off, in theory one or two goals a game would see us to a very healthy points return and I’m sure he would say he is using the resources at his disposal the best way he can. It just seems weird how we (he?) can’t accommodate two internationals into our system? Rather begs the question where we go from here? Should we buy more/better foreign fancy Dans, the jury’s out on that one for me.

 

Top and bottom is that we create relatively few chances, our attacking play is ‘constructive’ rather than ‘instinctive’, we are severely constrained by a lack of pace which means we mainly play in front of the opposition defence. Perhaps in the final analysis our attacking talent isn’t quite as strong as some on here like to believe?

 

We would be a hell of a team if we had a Rooney or a Suarez!

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Alongside what has been said in this thread, there are three more reasons why we don't score many goals:

 

- We ask a lot of our attackers in terms of pressing so they may not have as much energy (mental or physical) when they do get the ball

- Lallana and Rodrigues both have pretty powder-puff shooting a lot of the time

- We lack pace to drive through defences

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Alongside what has been said in this thread, there are three more reasons why we don't score many goals:1 We ask a lot of our attackers in terms of pressing so they may not have as much energy (mental or physical) when they do get the ball- Lallana and Rodrigues both have pretty powder-puff shooting a lot of the time- We lack pace to drive through defences
Three good points, number 1 is particularly valid and may well go a long way to explaining the relative under performance of Ramirez/Osvaldo ... looks like we need to buy athletes over footballers (it won't be pretty but it might be successful!)
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The thing I´m missing is those early crosses into the box when there is space between defenders and the goalkeeper. We dont do that at all almost and instead when fullback is coming down to the line there are so many defenders that it´s very hard to find space for our attacking players.

Our crosses from Clyne and Shaw is also a bit too high and not enough pace on the ball imo, makes it a lot harder for defenders if the ball is whipped into the box with a bit of pace on the ball.

 

Another difference to the top teams is that we really haven´t made that push for a goal in the last 10-15 minutes when you commit a lot of players forward and into the box. We made it against Sunderland but more due to some set pieces rather than from open play. Against West Ham, Norwich, Stoke you would like to see that real push for a winner/equaliser but we still dont have that in our team imo.

The big teams have that push to win games in the last 10 minutes.

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Alongside what has been said in this thread, there are three more reasons why we don't score many goals:

 

- We ask a lot of our attackers in terms of pressing so they may not have as much energy (mental or physical) when they do get the ball

- Lallana and Rodrigues both have pretty powder-puff shooting a lot of the time

- We lack pace to drive through defences

 

All of the above.. and I do worry when MP says we made good chances against Chelsea, when we clearly did not cause any real problems for their defence all afternoon.

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The thing I´m missing is those early crosses into the box when there is space between defenders and the goalkeeper. We dont do that at all almost and instead when fullback is coming down to the line there are so many defenders that it´s very hard to find space for our attacking players.

 

One player who has tried this way more than everyone else is JWP - he has that eye for a pass in behind the defence, plus the ability to whip the ball around defenders backs. Sadly he is the only person who seems to want to do it.

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