Dominating games/wide open defence

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ayrshire_blue

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Bit strange posting this on the back of a 6-1 victory at the weekend but that's been a good few games now where teams have been given the opportunity to take goals off us (Spurs did). On Saturday we could very very easily have been down 3-0 before we scored.

In Monchengladbach we had Joe Hart to thank for keeping us in the game at times. Spurs thumped us and before that West ham went up 1-0 after Moses was allowed to run at our defence and shoot.

What I'm getting is that against better quality opposition we can't be so reliant on them missing chances or Joe Hart being outstanding each time.

Looking at our first few fixtures of the season; I can barely remember either WBA, Chelsea, Everton, Watford or Palace having a single chance against us. We dominated possession and looked a difficult side to break down.

So what's changed? We look sometimes as if we're diving in all over the place. It's schoolboy stuff. All composure in defending from the midfield and back has gone awol.

We've got the derby in a few weeks and while the rags are absolute turd, they will take advantage going forward. It's the only reason they're so high in the league table this far is that they've been pretty clinical in making the most of their chances.

We can't allow it to be an end to end sort of game. It's not what we do best. Of course, Hart will need to make some saves throughout the season and we can't limit every team to not having a single chance against us but we can't keep giving away so many or we'll get punished again.

How many times recently have the opposition been able to run through or midfield and attack us in numbers, at times outnumbering our defensive line? What's causing it? It's almost like the Keegan era at times.
 
Ayrshire Blue.....I understand what you are saying. Clearly we can be absolutely brilliant for periods of the game but it has been worrying over the last few games to see supposedly average teams creating so many chances against us. Newcastle in the first half, West Ham, Tottenham and Borussia M. have all made us look very open and it definitely needs addressing. It seems amazing to say this after the 6-1 defeat of Newcastle but I must confess that after 40 mins of that game I was very worried and concerned about our performance.
 
I agree. I'd say one contributing factor is missing the tactical discipline and work rate that Milner provided. In general, we don't protect our fullbacks enough either.
 
I agree with your point in general, perhaps it's a case of us not being cynical enough when we lose possession.

But, I have to take issue with you using the Spurs game as an example, they barely registered a shot against us until the lino forgot how to do his job. It wasn't until we went 3-1 down ( from two set pieces ) and threw caution to the wind that we started to look exposed at the back.
 
ayrshire_blue said:
Bit strange posting this on the back of a 6-1 victory at the weekend but that's been a good few games now where teams have been given the opportunity to take goals off us (Spurs did). On Saturday we could very very easily have been down 3-0 before we scored.

In Monchengladbach we had Joe Hart to thank for keeping us in the game at times. Spurs thumped us and before that West ham went up 1-0 after Moses was allowed to run at our defence and shoot.

What I'm getting is that against better quality opposition we can't be so reliant on them missing chances or Joe Hart being outstanding each time.

Looking at our first few fixtures of the season; I can barely remember either WBA, Chelsea, Everton, Watford or Palace having a single chance against us. We dominated possession and looked a difficult side to break down.

So what's changed? We look sometimes as if we're diving in all over the place. It's schoolboy stuff. All composure in defending from the midfield and back has gone awol.

We've got the derby in a few weeks and while the rags are absolute turd, they will take advantage going forward. It's the only reason they're so high in the league table this far is that they've been pretty clinical in making the most of their chances.

We can't allow it to be an end to end sort of game. It's not what we do best. Of course, Hart will need to make some saves throughout the season and we can't limit every team to not having a single chance against us but we can't keep giving away so many or we'll get punished again.

How many times recently have the opposition been able to run through or midfield and attack us in numbers, at times outnumbering our defensive line? What's causing it? It's almost like the Keegan era at times.
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Why do people insist on stating this we missed chances before Newcastle scored just because Shearer Nicholas and Warnock say so it doesn't make it right
 
In quite a few of the more recent games we've tinkered with the system or deployed new personnel, and it just takes time to adjust and adapt. Save for in the CL, in those games where we've looked wobbly, I'd argue that we could have been out of sight in those had we already taken our early chances.
 
It's been happening since Otamendi came into the team.

He's looked impressive 1 on 1, making some nice hollywood tackles, but is clearly not quite working so well as a unit with the rest of the back 4. We've seen time and again Pellegrini's defensive system takes some getting used to, injuries forced him into the team earlier than we would want and I'm sure given a few more weeks/months we will see a solid backline with him in it.

Also I think Kolarov loses focus when VK isn't there barking orders at him. Every game Vinny has missed, Kolarov has made some sort of big error, leading to a chance of conceding, or conceding.
 
grim up north said:
Why do people insist on stating this we missed chances before Newcastle scored just because Shearer Nicholas and Warnock say so it doesn't make it right
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The chances we made before Newcastle scored were nowhere near as clear cut as the opportunities they had to strengthen their lead.

Regardless, the post wasn't about chances which we create. It's about opponents creating chances against us with such ease. Something which didn't happen in the first few games of the season, something which didn't happen towards the end of last season. I'm wondering what's changed? Why did the bottom club who haven't yet won a great have opportunities to go 2 or 3 up against us? Regardless of anything we created, why do we seem - at times - easy to carve open? That's all, and I don't think it's an unfair question.
 
ayrshire_blue said:
The chances we made before Newcastle scored were nowhere near as clear cut as the opportunities they had to strengthen their lead.

Regardless, the post wasn't about chances which we create. It's about opponents creating chances against us with such ease. Something which didn't happen in the first few games of the season, something which didn't happen towards the end of last season. I'm wondering what's changed? Why did the bottom club who haven't yet won a great have opportunities to go 2 or 3 up against us? Regardless of anything we created, why do we seem - at times - easy to carve open? That's all, and I don't think it's an unfair question.
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Injuries to our first choice centre back pairing plus the integration of a new centre half might well answer all those questions and even some you haven't asked yet!
 
BillyShears said:
Injuries to our first choice centre back pairing plus the integration of a new centre half might well answer all those questions and even some you haven't asked yet!
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Certainly no coincidence that we've suddenly looked much more suspect defensively without Kompany and Mangala.

Questions of tactics and formations have been done to death, but for me, it is, above all, a confidence/mentality thing. At the start of the season, we were defending aggressively, high up the pitch (think back to how often Costa and Hazard were tackled around the halfway line in the Chelsea game), and so there was little space between defence and midfield. Without Kompany and Mangala, we've dropped off further, been much less aggressive in our defending, and so that gap between defence and midfield has reappeared. Even with Fernandinho and Fernando in the centre of midfield, it makes little difference - if we continue to defend like that, essentially every team in the league has the potential to cause us problems, as we saw countless times last season, and as we saw again on Saturday. Hopefully, the return of Kompany and the ongoing integration of Otamendi will see us get back to how we were in the first few weeks.
 
sh249 said:
Certainly no coincidence that we've suddenly looked much more suspect defensively without Kompany and Mangala.

Questions of tactics and formations have been done to death, but for me, it is, above all, a confidence/mentality thing. At the start of the season, we were defending aggressively, high up the pitch (think back to how often Costa and Hazard were tackled around the halfway line in the Chelsea game), and so there was little space between defence and midfield. Without Kompany and Mangala, we've dropped off further, been much less aggressive in our defending, and so that gap between defence and midfield has reappeared. Even with Fernandinho and Fernando in the centre of midfield, it makes little difference - if we continue to defend like that, essentially every team in the league has the potential to cause us problems, as we saw countless times last season, and as we saw again on Saturday. Hopefully, the return of Kompany and the ongoing integration of Otamendi will see us get back to how we were in the first few weeks.
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I think the compactness of our early season performances were as much down to the balance which Navas and Sterling provided defensively. We will have to figure out how to accommodate KDB and Silva and where to accommodate them when they play together. Seemed to work much better with KDB left and Navas right than with Sterling left and KDB right on Saturday. I agree about the gap between midfield and the defence but I expected that to happen as soon as we started bedding Otamendi in. It was the same when Demichelis first started playing for us. It takes a few weeks to get up to speed with the way the manager wants his defenders to line up, that's a few weeks of playing in the system rather than just training in it.

For me we should be as close to ready as possible by derby day and I expect us to turn them over in convincing fashion.
 
ayrshire_blue said:
Bit strange posting this on the back of a 6-1 victory at the weekend but that's been a good few games now where teams have been given the opportunity to take goals off us (Spurs did). On Saturday we could very very easily have been down 3-0 before we scored.

In Monchengladbach we had Joe Hart to thank for keeping us in the game at times. Spurs thumped us and before that West ham went up 1-0 after Moses was allowed to run at our defence and shoot.

What I'm getting is that against better quality opposition we can't be so reliant on them missing chances or Joe Hart being outstanding each time.

Looking at our first few fixtures of the season; I can barely remember either WBA, Chelsea, Everton, Watford or Palace having a single chance against us. We dominated possession and looked a difficult side to break down.

So what's changed? We look sometimes as if we're diving in all over the place. It's schoolboy stuff. All composure in defending from the midfield and back has gone awol.

We've got the derby in a few weeks and while the rags are absolute turd, they will take advantage going forward. It's the only reason they're so high in the league table this far is that they've been pretty clinical in making the most of their chances.

We can't allow it to be an end to end sort of game. It's not what we do best. Of course, Hart will need to make some saves throughout the season and we can't limit every team to not having a single chance against us but we can't keep giving away so many or we'll get punished again.

How many times recently have the opposition been able to run through or midfield and attack us in numbers, at times outnumbering our defensive line? What's causing it? It's almost like the Keegan era at times.
Click to expand...




After the first 5 games teams havd adapted a different approach! Instead of sitting back and taking it lying down they have started to have a go early on! Only downside for the opposing team is that they are shagged after 60mins newcastle gladbach west ham spurs were the exception they played it the other way and got away with it! We have to be faster and sharper out of the box to make sure we are not chasing games!
 
It's purely down to a lack of width when we have possession. Both Navas and Sterling were hugging the touchlines in the first few games so we always had options left and right if we couldn't play through Silva in the middle.

Now we have De Bruyne who likes to drift inside at every opportunity and suddenly Sterling who for some fucking reason has started to play more centrally which means we're crowding ourselves out and getting caught in possession more.

Ps... Before anyone shouts at me, I think De Bruyne and Sterling are both top class players and I wouldn't change them. We just need them to maintain a bit more tactical discipline to provide more width, that's all. Sterling especially because De Bruyne is that good I don't think you can or should even attempt to restrict him.
 
I'd like to see us returning to a pressing game when we haven't got the ball. We seem to be sitting back and letting teams have the ball too long. Just get into them and get the ball back asap within a few seconds then we can keep hold of it with our slick quick passing.
 
I dont know what the problem is but I do think until it is fixed we should go 532 and even things out in the team, just for a few games then build from that. It is exciting and I dont know if I am going to go home crying or smiling, but I would rather we garuanteed the wins against the likes of Newcastle and West Ham
 
Simple answer is Vincent Kompany. The start of this season saw him return to the form of the worlds best CB and with that comes his world class defensive game and also him organising the defense and you could see that with our offside trap being executed to perfection. We lose him and suddenly we have Mangala who is a good player but not a leader and Otamendi who is new to the team and the league and will take some time to gel in. We rely on Kompany so much and when he's out injured it really does show.
 
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