Why Chris Davies has to change things - quickly ! (5 replies)
Although we've assembled an incredible squad of players, we are we're not going to "smash" this division playing the way we do at the moment
The good news :
Chris Davies is an infinitely better football manager than myself, so if i've spotted it and can analyse it - then he will have too
Easy to contain
Against Fulham we played some incredible quality stuff .. composed, intelligent and more than competent. However once Fulham had gone ahead they were fairly happy for us to play out the game in front of them knowing that they could deal with our style fairly easily. All the intricate build-up play counts for nothing if there is no end product due to it being easy to cancel out our main threats.
The other night, Laird had an obscene amount of the ball and we are working those diagonal passes from defence out to the wing really well now (similarly on the left) - but at the same time Fulham weren't pressurising Laird before he received the pass - because they were contect that they had covered what was going to happen next.
If (and it's a big IF) Laird was to get past his man on the outside then Fulham had a defender in front of May, and one actually on May. We aren't effective in the air so any resultant crosses were easily dealt with. Midfielders running into the box are easily tracked by a team playing a low block.
A lot of teams are going to find us quite easy to contain by being tall, strong and organised in the centre of defence and by having deep lying midfielders tracking our own runs from midfield.
Let's be honest, without being arrogant - most teams will be happy with a draw against us this season.
The second problem with these long diagonals out of defence to the wide positions is that, if they are intercepted, there is a gaping gap behind our wide player - the defence isn't shifting over to make a central three when one of our full backs goes forward to receive the planned diagonal.
So we have three problems - easy to contain, vulnerability to the passes out wide being intercepted (or the receiver losing the ball in a tackle) and a failure to cover effectively - hence the MASSIVE gap for Stansfield to run into to score his goal against us.
4-4-3 (or 4-4-1-2 perhaps, away)
We need to drop this idea that we can play intrically to get the ball out wide, to then beat the full back and get a cross in, or to pull the ball back for an incoming midfielder. For all the reasons above - it's easy to contain.
4-3-3 ... for example ..
Peacock-Farrell
Laird Klarer Bielik Cochrane
Leonard Gardner-Hickman Paik
Stansfield Dykes May
allows us to not only flood the midfield, press from the centre and up front, but also allows us to not be reliant on beating the full-back (and nothing resulting from it)
If we push Laird forward to join an attack we then get the other 3 defenders to shift over centrally
or, for exaample
Peacock-Farrell
Laird Klarer Bielik Cochrane
Leonard Gardner-Hickman Paik
Willumsson
Stansfield May
can allow the two strikers to push the opponents defence back allowing space for Willumsson, for example, to play behind them
Anyways - as i said, we need to get away from the notion of the diagonals out wide, to beat the full-back and expecting to get successful crosses in
... and as i said at the start ... thankfully in Chris Davies we have a manager who will have spotted this