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2021/22 Rafael Benitez

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Saint Domingo said:
Heard it all now. You don’t need tall players to defend set pieces…

Even Pep called out that limitation in his own team when buying Rodri.

Ridiculous.

Comparing City’s set piece defence to ours is just a waste of time as the numbers they occur are massively different. That’s before you even get into the fact they’ve had 4 years with Guardiola v a few months with Benitez, and Pep had the best defenders in the world to choose from vs Benitez using Keane and Holgate with his three best headers of the ball missing.

Honestly what are you even banging on about?
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Dave's initial post, A.K.A. absolutely nothing to do with you, insinuated we missed those players at CB I'd assume for their height and because they can stick their head in front of a ball.

I gave up City as an example of a team without that height/heading ability in most areas of the pitch but also have a very good defensive record.

This suggests maybe coaching is also required?

You come back at me offering up players like Mahrez and Zinchenko are the reason they're good at defending set pieces lol

For reference here are the height of City's normal outfield starters vs ours:

LB: Zinchenko 5'9" / Mykolenko 5'11"
CB: Dias 6'1" / Keane 6'3"
CB: Stones 6'2" / Godfrey 6'0"
RB: Cancelo 6'0" / Coleman 5'10"
CM: Rodri 6'3" / Doucoure 6'0"
CM: Silva 5'8" / Allan 5'8"
LM: Sterling 5'7" / Gordon 6'0"
CAM: De Bruyne 5'11" / Gray 5'11"
RM: Mahrez 5'10" / Townsend 5'11"
ST: Jesus 5'10" / Rondon 6'1"

Let's not pretend they're some giants and our side is all 5'4" and frankly the part in bold is just an embarassing. Benitez may have only had 6 months here but this exact same squad, who for last season also missed DCL, Richy & Mina at times, was much better at defending set pieces than it is now. Face it - your man just can't coach sides anymore.
 
davek said:
The problem is the same as all season: we have not had our strikeforce together for any period of time.

No midtable club like Everton can endure that without sliding down the table.
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Our problems are at the back rather than up top imo. Maybe you're right Dave, I'm not venomously against Benitez I'm just worried because to me it looks like it's not working at all and new/ returning players dont look like they'll solve that. It seems a system issue, especially persisting with 2 in MF. Given our upcoming games and the run after til the end of the season I just don't feel we have the luxury to find out if you're theory is right or not. We could find out that it's nothing to do with what you mentioned too late in the season. Hope you're right mate.

One thing I will say, in the 09/10 season we had the same amount of points at this point of the season and went on to finish on 61 pts but also in that same season Burnley also had the same amount of points after 18 games and went down. It can really go either way. I just hope the way we go is upwards
 

jinkyali said:
If it was as simple as missing our strong centre forwards defending corners then surely Rondon would have assisted with stopping the rot from set pieces?
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Did you watch him wandering into the Box like a bemused John Travolta meme for Hull's first goal the other day?

Even if he did have a clue where the ball was heading, the bloke he was marking had it in the back of the next before Rondon had started to "jump".
 
windymiller said:
I think Dave is suggesting that if Rondon was back defending set pieces he would be too slow to get back up the pitch to do what he does best. Stand 30 yards from goal shuffling about aimlessly, not holding up the ball or scoring any goals.
Click to expand...

Ah I must have missed the bit where we left him up top when defending such times.
 


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