TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £90m
We could do with more attacks. More pressure. Maybe get some mistakes. Make it harder on teams in ways that aren't raw talent out wide.
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catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
I mean, our points tally currently would keep us safe, and safe quite comfortably. Had we have got a striker in, we may have even got a couple more points from the opening two games. You abstract them, and its form is that of a lower mid table team.
You are kind of wrong on the above too. Plus didnt go down with Stoke. Bruce kept Newcastle up. Allardyce has kept almost everyone up. They are very good, in their own terms at doing that job. The problem for Stoke came, when they eventually ran out of patience and got rid of Pulis.
That's the downside of the approach. You remove any chance of upside performance to narrow your horizons to 45-50 points. That's the point you dont get past, almost irrespective of time spent.
Look, pressing for 90minutes is not humanly possible.
Leicester and Liverpool didnt do it, without help.
catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Classic armchairing from me, but they just need to simplify it. Run fast down the wing, and kick it either at the goal, or 7 yards out for DCL to attack.
The issue is, Matthew Etherington, or Kilbane will happily do that. I'm not sure Gray or Gordon will want to.
Feel for him. Garbage wingers, striker that's always relied on service, a midfield stocked with decent battlers, and two full-backs that can't attack. Where are these goals meant to be coming from?
Get some white on your boots, as they used to say.
But yeah, its basic stuff, get ball out wide, get Onana and Dom in the middle and throw it into the mixer.
Proper easy this.
*applies for Liverpool job
catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Theres probably a really good reason why that doesnt work. But for different reasons, both should simplify things.
Saint Domingo
Player Valuation: £80m
Is that the Spurs game we could have been 2-0 up away at a top 6 team by half time?
9 out of 10 times Leeds get destroyed playing that way at a top 6 team. Indeed if Liverpool were at any level of form other than completely abysmal they would have swatted them away easily. They almost avoided defeat despite being utterly atrocious. They could play the same way and another day they beat Leeds 5-1 easily.
If you want the odd flukey win that the likes of Leeds or Bournemouth might get going gung ho at top teams then you also have to take the multiple poundings that come every time it doesn’t work. If those poundings were part of a longer transition to getting points more regularly then you’d see more of these sides winning more often at top grounds but you don’t because it doesn’t mean that, it means they got lucky once.
You just don’t seem to grasp that mentality without quality is just a one off Pyrrhic victory (and most of the time it’s not even a victory). Tony Mowbray could coach that here if that’s what you wanted but he wouldn’t win many games of football.
Quality allows you to play with intent. If you can get pace and power all over the park then you can press high and close spaces. When you have players who can all handle the ball then you can play around the opposition press. When you master both those things better than the opposition then they cede territory to you and you start dictating the game in their half on your terms. That’s why teams press City for about five minutes then seemingly give up and just cede territory and possession.
When you try and do those things without these qualities though, you can’t, and if you’re still stupid enough to do them it just becomes suicidal. Teams containing Siggurdson James Bernard Tosun Davies etc. aren’t pressing anyone anywhere on the pitch. They don’t have the pace to do it. Equally our back line before this season was one of the worst on the ball in the league so can’t play around opposition presses which means it emboldened them to keep coming onto us.
Frank’s sorted out the defence now so all those players who used to run at Michael Keane and Coleman knowing they’d force them into a mistake now don’t bother pressing Coady Patterson and Tarkowski because they’re worried they’ll get played around. Hence our possession is improving because we’re seeing more of the ball at the back.
We now need to improve the movement of the ball through the lines in midfield and also the work rate and conversion of the forward three. Then we’ll start seeing teams sitting even deeper because they won’t want to press our players for fear of being played around. At the moment it’s not happening because they know Gueye will cough up possession under pressure and Onana can’t pick a pass, whilst the two wide men can’t convert even if you let them in behind so the opposition back 4 can stay up a few yards higher.
A few more quality additions in midfield and attack and all of a sudden teams will be struggling tactically with all aspects of our team. That’s when you can go away from home and ‘be on the front foot’, because you’ve got the tools to do it. Just going gung ho because it’s more exciting for the fans more often than not just gets you an absolute caning from any competent side because you’ve still fundamentally got the exact same problems you have when sitting deep: you struggle to get the ball off better opponents, you struggle to use it effectively when you do have it, except now you’re also wide open at the back.
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £90m
They all went down eventually. Time runs out.
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £90m
See you're jumping again. I didn't say for 90, but maybe one time in the second half?
Anyway the issue for us is organization of a press and not fitness.
Saint Domingo
Player Valuation: £80m
That’s not exclusive to those managers, that includes every single top flight team outside of the top 6 aside from Everton. They’ve all gone down at some point, every single one, didn’t matter how they played, who their manager was, who their DOF was, what formation they played, how they recruited. All of them got relegated.
This is purely down to investment and nothing to do with tactics or philosophies. There’s 6 haves and 14 have nots. If one of the top 6 have a bad season they finish in the top 10. If anyone from the bottom 14 picks the wrong manager or has some injuries they’re in a relegation battle. Nothing to do with philosophy and everything to do with economic disparity.
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £90m
To me you should play to win at all times. You say 9 out of 10 times they'd get smashed but they didn't right? And we've not won away at someone as good as the RS since when? I think there is merit in playing to win personally even if you might lose.
Saint Domingo
Player Valuation: £80m
Well we beat Arsenal Spurs and Liverpool just the season before last playing Catenaccio.
There’s a difference between executing tactics to win a game and just ‘going for it’. If the first doesn’t come off it didn’t mean you didn’t try to win.
Saint Domingo
Player Valuation: £80m
To add to this what are other (far better) teams records like at some of these grounds? How many times have City won at Liverpool? How many times have a Liverpool won at City? In fact Liverpool’s record at Goodison isn’t great in terms of number of wins. How often have United won at Anfield recently? How often has anyone won at Anfield recently? Or the Etihad for that matter? Or even St James’ recently?
Are teams just not playing to win at these grounds?
Or do they find that there’s a tactical quality conundrum that isn’t just solved by ‘playing to win’ ‘going 433’ or just ‘trying a bit more’
Marius57
Player Valuation: £50m
It's 13 games into a new season with 6 new players trying to bed in. It's hardly forever. Lampard has spoken numerous times about wanting to be more expansive but we have to get the basics right first.
13 games in. Last season barely counts for him as he had to focus on keeping up with half a team who aren't good enough and he sacked off the first chance he got.
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