I was thinking this just before we got the penalty. You should never rely on football to bring you joy but I'd given myself a Sat 5.30pm deadline to finish some work after not drinking all week, working and I was really looking forward to some entertainment. Then some time after half time I was thinking fuck me this is fucking dire, this is not entertainment. It' boring as fuck. Is this us or them? A bit of both I think.
There was a time when teams would defne like this against us with all their life because they didn't want to get dicked 6-0. Fair enough. But we'd absolutely bombard them, pelter their goal, run rings around their defence, pass, attack, cross it in, attack - we'd pass them into a frenzy but it was always attack.
By the 70th min or so they'd be worn out. Physically and mentally fatigued. They'd have fucking football pep passing PTSD and they'd give up. You can't cope with that sort of intent for 90 mins. The mind of a defender can't deal with that sort of relentless pressure to be 100 percent accurate for so long. Then we'd score, and probably score a few more.
But now and again we wouldn't. And now and again they'd sucker punch us. We seem wary of this now so we control with passing in a slightly different way. We have the same possession without the intent. We're safer but they aren't as mentally scared by it. It's much easier to cope with psychologically. They aren't as worn down. They can cope with us for 90 mins now and get the draw. Also, they're not as disheartened so they still have a bit of fire to go for that sucker punch in the last few mins.
I feel like we should go back to the relentless attack even in keeping with the obsession with possession. But keep a solid Mid Def and maybe rely on attack to attack rather than Def to help out. I think that's exactly what Haaland could give us this season which has been lacking and making us unable to attack without defence.