Our Passing

[verlaine1979]

At the moment, everyone seems to spend an age on the ball having a good look around before moving it on. Is this a deliberate possession-retention tactic, or a loss of confidence?

 

We aren't a slow team, but we move the ball so slowly. Stoke played mostly on the counter yesterday, but in almost every phase of play they passed at a higher tempo and with greater accuracy, which is crazy - if you're going to take 20 seconds picking your pass rather than playing it first time, there's no excuse for the inaccuracy we saw yesterday from pretty much everyone apart from Clasie.

[Saint Charlie]

We only really have Mane and the full backs whose instinct is to move with the ball. Tadic to a lesser extent.

 

Yesterday the passing was poor. But the movement and amount of options for the man on the ball were also poor.

 

Cedric couldn't get forward because Long combines better with the other team than his teammates (Tadic by far the best we have at combining with his fullback) and we missed Mane finding pockets of space.

 

I do wonder if Wanyama and Clasie work well together though. Both are quite slow off the ball and neither really want to move with the ball although Clasie looked tidy the couple of times he did burst forward. Do we need two sitters like that, especially at home.

 

Effectively Stoke played a more attacking system than us, with Bojan, an attacker, playing where we have Davis, who is a genuine midfielder.

Edited 22 November, 2015 by Saint Charlie

[Webby]

Both spot on. Thought we were ponderous on the ball, killing any chance of a quick attack.

[ashnats]

I think we need to give Stoke a lot of credit. They worked hard, closed down the passing lanes, with the luxury of being away from home - which suits their style. I think we are a good passing side, and we just came up against a very good compact stoke side, and we ourselves had an off day. It's tough to find the passes when the opposition is set up that way. We'll continue to beat the bad teams, and we'll continue to lose to the top teams, and as to the rest, the stokes, southamptons, west hams, swanseas of this league, the games will be tight and rest on a knife edge - we'll win, lose and draw some of them. we lost one. I don't think one bad game is anything to worry about.

[verlaine1979]

I think we need to give Stoke a lot of credit. They worked hard, closed down the passing lanes, with the luxury of being away from home - which suits their style. I think we are a good passing side, and we just came up against a very good compact stoke side, and we ourselves had an off day. It's tough to find the passes when the opposition is set up that way. We'll continue to beat the bad teams, and we'll continue to lose to the top teams, and as to the rest, the stokes, southamptons, west hams, swanseas of this league, the games will be tight and rest on a knife edge - we'll win, lose and draw some of them. we lost one. I don't think one bad game is anything to worry about.

 

I think this is more than just a one-game issue. It might seem especially stark as Stoke played well and punished us, but we've had some rubbish spells of football in the past month or two, most of which have been characterized by ponderousness and a lack of conviction in attack, coupled with an inability to cope with being pressed by the likes of Leicester.

[Batman]

We have been blunt as an attacking force for the last two games. We lack a bit of zip in the passing area.

 

Clasie looks good mind