The coach ultimately takes responsibility for it as he selects them but these players have been making mistakes under numerous managers for years.
I’ve seen signs of us improving defensively (again this will be laughed at) but apart from the first set piece against Liverpool when we completely lost our heads for the first ten minutes, I didn’t feel we’d concede from a set piece. I didn’t feel that against Brentford or Spurs either.
There’s a lot to man about, obviously, but there’s some green shoots of improvement as well. If we can reduce the individual errors and be more clinical upfront the bits in between aren’t actually looking so bad. We executed attacking passing moves against one of the best sides in the world numerous times. That’s surely coaching. Once Townsend and Gray get in behind then mis hit it, or Doucoure doesn’t put his laces through it, the chance is gone but the attacking moves as a team are there. Same as they were against Brentford, yes Rondon missed the opportunities but I don’t see a team like we had under Koeman that had absolutely no clue what it was doing in either box. I see a team being coached but everything being undermined currently by extreme sloppiness.
Benitez needs to stamp this out or he will get fired, but if he can there’s something to build on in my view. I’m not seeing a completely broken team here like the end days of Koeman. This for me feels similar to Silva, the coaching principles are there for performances to be good but the players at the moment are not executing it.
Now we have the choice of changing the players, keeping the coaching principles and moving forward, or we go back to Allardyce and even what Ancelotti reverted to of accepting the players are rubbish and playing park the bus football every game. I’d rather do the first one but it’s a riskier road. The players definitely don’t want to do the first one as they know they’ll be out. They want a pragmatist to come in and rescue the season with some results and have Keane and Coleman sat deep, three in midfield just defending, and then long balls to DCL and Richarlison. That gets points, we’ve seen it before but we’re going nowhere with that.
This is absolute nonsense but is certainly something Benitez would 100% parrot.
The tactical set up was, in a word dumb. Perhaps it would charitable too describe it as amateurish or maybe even touchingly optimistic.
You and Benitez both highlight player mistakes as being critical but that is exactly the point of the high pressing approach that teams like Liverpool employ. They seek to create situations where opposition mistakes lead to goals. Benitez set us up to play right into their hands and we did (players being human and all).
Also Benitez must be fully aware the players are at low confidence and were facing an emotional match with a impatient and disgruntled supporters. Why set them up to almost certainly fail (which we did with complete predictability).
As to getting in behind them so what? Liverpool and other high pressing sides normally concede a few decent attacks every game on account of their high pressing style. Managing to get a few of those attacks is no achievement. What counts is the end result and that was a comprehensive (near historical) drubbing.
All the punditry and a significant number of the supporters at the game felt it was poor, many voted with their feet, not just because they are angry with the board, plenty were disgusted with the performance.
The situation called for entirely different (and yes ugly tactics) because as a club we are desperate for points, desperate for a positive result.
Instead Benitez seems only interested in stubbornly proving some academic point about his own tactical ideas, because as it always is with this manager no matter where he goes
it is always all about him.
I honestly think he enjoys the stick he is getting in regards to his RS heritage because its just more confirmation of the above and that everything at the club must orbit around him.
He would rather see us relegated playing his way than adapt and have us improve upon last year's position.