Axel Freed
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 25 Jan 2023
- Messages
- 3,408
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- City
The proof of the pudding’s in the eating …. top scorers, Big Erl top individual scorerLol. Do you seriously think we play attacking football? Do we use the pace of our wingers or Haaland? Do we look to fully utilise the best striker in the world in general? Do we have lots of shots from outside the area? Do we work on, and score lots from, set pieces? Do we look for lots of through balls? Do we generally make lots of offensive minded forward passes?
I'd say we do virtually none of the above.
If you think that is attacking football then we'll have to disagree.
I don't call having our fullbacks camped on the edge of the opposition box, making endless sideways or backwards passes before losing possession, then being caught out of position attacking football.
I agree with your set pieces point but the rest of your opening paragraph seems a bit naive and outdated in some respects. It’s not as easy as giving it to pacy wingers to get to the byline and pull it back for our towering centre forward … it’s not 1956 mate, the game’s moved on. Defenders and tactics are so advanced now that you need subtlety and nuance beyond any normal fan’s comprehension to break teams down with the regularity that we do. Through balls and long shots are fine when they pay off but they invariably don’t and so we lose possession. Pep’s paid £20m a year or whatever cos he’s a fucking genius and creates an incredibly complex possession based system that’s more effective than gung ho all guns blazing attacking football.
“Endless sideways or backward passes” to use a boxing analogy are crucial in dismantling our opponents …. jab, feint, move in, move out, jab etc etc etc all helps to walk your opponent on to a shot. Walking in in a straight line throwing haymakers won’t get you far against a sophisticated defence.