In that position, a right back takes the lead in the defensive move because he can see the whole play in front of him.
The first thing Lewis should do is communicate to Stones and Dias about where Cunha is, while he gets round to take the striker.
The next and most important thing is that he busts a gut to get goal side of the striker, which he doesn’t do. But not only did he not do it, he simply jogged back.
Stones and Dias actually are in a good position because they are fairly close together and they’re in a straight line so they can communicate to each other and they maintain that position making Cunha a difficult ball for the wide man or can either run with him or play him offside if the ball is slipped into the channel, depending on what they chose as best.
Gvardiol is in the hardest position because most of the transition is going on behind him. If he gets sucked into the wide man, he can be done for a bit of trickery and pace so he righty runs parallel to the touchline.
Lewis is the only one doing anything wrong (apart from Doku who gave the ball away initially).
That’s the third time now we’ve conceded a goal from Lewis not understanding his right back role.
Sorry, completely disagree with this assessment and I am fairly sure Pep would, as well.
You are applying the basic positioning whilst defending normal possession to defending a counter situation, which is not fully applicable in this case. Stones doesn’t need to stay near Dias to “communicate” as they are sprinting back to their own goal when Dias has position on the middle runner, which he did. “Communication” is not going to achieve anything in a discrete counter event like this. The priority is cover
all runners, as you keep a good line, which they were (though, Dias was going to be playing every Wolves player onside based on his positioning, but that was necessary to ensure the ball could not reach the middle runner, which he was expertly covering).
With a far post runner, and the RB out of position (which is almost always the case with Lewis due to how Pep asks him to play), Stones should be staying in line with Dias, but running toward the far runner to close him down and cut out any ball that may make it’s way across the box. We didn’t need two CBs covering the single middle runner, when Dias already had him adequately handled. That is a complete waste of limited resources, as we eventually saw.
Both Gvardiol and Stones made mistakes in the way they approached defending the counter. Gvardiol effectively took himself out of play by not closing either the line of the cross or Semedo down directly via hestitation (he initially ran away from Semedo, then trying to correct himself as the Wolves player launched the cross after realising Gvardiol and Stones had left an opening for it).
Stones’ mistake was the worst, though, as he completely took himself out of having any impact whatsoever on play, which is exceedingly obvious when you watch back the full video of the goal (he is in no man’s land, covering neither a player nor relevant space to prevent danger as the ball comes in). I am fairly confident he would be the first to admit he should have done much better.
We can say Lewis should have gotten back faster, which could be a reasonable criticism (though, as I have pointed out several times, he was unlikely to have ever been in a position to properly cover the far post runner due to his starting position; Stones was the defender who could have).
But to act as if neither Gvardiol nor Stones did anything wrong in that defensive situation, and thus did not significantly contribute to conceding the goal, is just not credible when applying even basic tactical analysis.
It’s strange to even have to argue this, as this is pretty standard stuff you are taught as defenders coming up through youth football.
