All of our centre backs are poor, and none of them performed well last year. Keane was no better, no worse than the rest of them. It's not his job, but at least he scored an important goal in a crucial match.
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All of our centre backs are poor, and none of them performed well last year. Keane was no better, no worse than the rest of them. It's not his job, but at least he scored an important goal in a crucial match.
Our defenders, posted pretty decent numbers while Carlo was here - certainly in his full season, its the same players, so they have it in them. They cant play zonal to my mind.
Weirdly enough more so away from home than at Goodison. Although that was the weird season of no crowds that I've pretty much accepted wasn't real football.
Our set plays at both ends were very good under Ancelotti but were pretty dire last year. We couldn't defend at all and carried no threat.
Fair points mate, we preform so much better, when there is a deep enough line and we go a version of man. There is an interesting piece in the echo this morning by Clement talking about set plays, he reckons offensively we did really well on them in the second half of the season.
The inability to transition from defence to midfield is a huge problem, when we loose it the turnover causes massive problems and i think our defenders get fed up with it and try and come out with ih a bit to much which can be dangerous especially against a pressing team. A couple of midfielders makes a huge difference to us, especially ball playing ones who can transition and turn on the ball. Sometimes the best defences have the best midfields in front of them.
Thinking back to last season, Holgate and Keane did contribute with some important goals on the back end offensively.
I like the look of JT though, looks a real defender and leader.
Looks a very balancing signing.
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The idea that Keane doesn't get criticised has to be one of the most baffling shouts i've ever heard on here. The lad gets absolutely slaughtered week in week out. I've been calling him out since pretty much day one and even I wince sometimes when I see people going in on him, it's relentless.
It's a mark of Ancelotti's management to not stick to a rigid philosophy and be fluid in approach to use what best suits the team.
Davide Ancelotti's set piece setup, especially defensively, mirrored that. We have a goalkeeper who is not commanding and a few tall but immobile defenders. So logic dictated we play a deep line and let the defenders be in position at the beginning so all they had to do was attack the ball.
Too many managers are set in their ways with the preferred style of playing football nowadays. See Benitez who came in and tore up the proven way for us to defend set pieces just because he could.
Hopefully Lampard finds a way with Clement to defend set pieces because the early signs aren't particularly great.
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £100m
Firmly TBD
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £100m
Carlo was zonal?
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £100m
So yes
Not for me mate, though id accept their is a degree of zonal in everything, we've had this out before. I think we ended up calling the whole pitch a zone.
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £100m
That's not how it works but ok lol
Didn't we ned up calling the whole pitch a zone the last time we disagreed on this. lol
MACCA75
Player Valuation: £70m
I think the lack of crowd in most matches helped Keane in particular.
Lobster Johnson
Player Valuation: £35m
In the 2 seasons before 21/22 he played 24 and 28 games. He was obviously rushed back into the squad when he wasn't ready a couple of times last season. I'm not saying he's not fragile, but he can't have it as bad as last year.
Lobster Johnson
Player Valuation: £35m
3 own goals in 218 premier league games. A ratio that's between 66 and 300% worse than comparable players, but hardly a "weekly basis"
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