Are we good enough defensively to win the Champions League

yeah we are good enough defensively, if we defend as a team and pick up the second ball, we usually break quickly. But like everyone been saying fern is a year older, we should have got a DM in the summer and that would of helped fern, its the middle of the park for me, that needs strengthening.
 
Pep has set us up to control and attack. When we control the ball, we don’t allow the opposition to attack and our mobile, creative and skillful midfield is able to do their thing. When we lose the ball, if we don’t win it back quickly, we always look like it is “all hands on deck” because we are never sure how their attack will end, because unlike other teams, our midfield is an all out attack midfield, with the sole exception of Fernandinho and whomever else makes a SERIOUS effort to defend.

While I think the all out attacking nature of our midfield is our defensive Achilles heel, it is something I feel is better now than it has been in the past. However, more worrying to me than that is the fact that we seem to look a bit stale and plodding at times. In the Hoffenheim game, the number of times we passed it back and forth amongst the back line, with zero impetus to make any forward movement (with or without the ball) was infuriating. Time ticking away and no penetration, no new ideas, no rhythm to our play. We looked stale and bereft of ideas (...and then Merlin popped up and finished the game for us!) However, lose the ball while we stroke the ball back and forth, and the best midfield in the world is stranded upfield with no hope of assisting defend.

Against the best teams, we need to have control of the ball and, when we lose it have a whole team defence to help the back four. At times, we are a man or two down against the quick break. As Pep has said, it is what it is and sometimes we will be exposed. The best teams will capitalize on that. So, will the tiger change his stripes? I doubt it! So, the defence has to be the absolute best it can be...in all 4 positions. That was lacking in Hoffenheim, because Laporte is an excellent defender, but not a CL left back.

Once you get out of the Group Stages, it is all about clinical finishing. Every team has the ability to hurt the others, but those that take the chances they are offered move on!
 
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FantasyIreland said:
Good point,I'm surprised we didn't try.
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Well we were in for Jorghino, and he changed his mind and followed Sarri to Chelsea, at that point we should of had a plan B and C. Now the January market is notoriously difficult but that's the situation we find ourselves in.
 
Gorton_Tubster said:
I thought Jorghino was plan b and Fred was plan a.
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I'm sure it came out that we looked at Fred and thought he was too small to compete in the air and with that being an important responsibility in the role he would have occupied we walked away.

I always saw the Fred links as a product of opportunity or circumstance ie: if we could have got him in January when we needed reinforcement then we would but he was never a prime target and the second it ran past January into summer we decided to go for someone more suitable
 
ChicagoBlue said:
Pep has set us up to control and attack. When we control the ball, we don’t allow the opposition to attack and our mobile, creative and skillful midfield is able to do their thing. When we lose the ball, if we don’t win it back quickly, we always look like it is “all hands on deck” because we are never sure how their attack will end, because unlike other teams, our midfield is an all out attack midfield, with the sole exception of Fernandinho and whomever else makes a SERIOUS effort to defend.

While I think the all out attacking nature of our midfield is our defensive Achilles heel, it is something I feel is better now than it has been in the past. However, more worrying to me than that is the fact that we seem to look a bit stale and plodding at times. In the Hoffenheim game, the number of times we passed it back and forth amongst the back line, with zero impetus to make any forward movement (with or without the ball) was infuriating. Time ticking away and no penetration, no new ideas, no rhythm to our play. We looked stale and bereft of ideas (...and then Merlin popped up and finished the game for us!) However, lose the ball while we stroke the ball back and forth, and the best midfield in the world is stranded upfield with no hope of assisting defend.

Against the best teams, we need to have control of the ball and, when we lose it have a whole team defence to help the back four. At times, we are a man or two down against the quick break. As Pep has said, it is what it is and sometimes we will be exposed. The best teams will capitalize on that. So, will the tiger change his stripes? I doubt it! So, the defence has to be the absolute best it can be...in all 4 positions. That was lacking in Hoffenheim, because Laporte is an excellent defender, but not a CL left back.

Once you get out of the Group Stages, it is all about clinical finishing. Every team has the ability to hurt the others, but those that take the chances they are offered move on!
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Not a lot of people realise just how exposed we leave our defence if we lose the ball cheap with how far up we play. In peps first season Ota was slated, like him or love him the best defender in the world one against three forwards will look bad.

We are very good at most attacking possession play with what we do. But.... its not so much a weak defence as slight tactical changes for CL and certain games. Napoli last night tactically almost perfect, they reduced Liverpool ( possibly the fastest attacking forward three ) to hardly any shots on goal or even surges forward, it isn't difficult to see how they did this. This is what gets you to the semis / final / or win in the CL.

But you also need clinical finishers, the forward that gets his chance and takes it. Doesn't everybody want that perfect striker but you will find the teams that have won the CL over the last 10 years have always had a striker that only needs two chances to score one goal.

We need to change our tactics for anfield, if we don't, if pep has no intention of changes to our tactics it is Russian roulette again. Liverpool are good from attacking midfield to striker, so do what Napoli did and get the ball out of defence and in to your attacking half quick as possible, this is where Liverpool are weak and give the ball away. If we keep the ball in our half Liverpool will be all over us and positionally make it impossible for us to get the ball in to their half. Keep possession, eyes in back of head.
 
cleavers said:
Gundogan was never brought here to play that role, which is why Pep doesn't use him there.
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aguerrrroooooooooooo said:
He played there against spurs at Wembley last season no?
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Marti Perarnau said on a 9320 podcast last season that Pep did buy Gundogan with a view to playing him in Fernandinho's position, but quickly realised that while it would work in Spain or Germany, it wasn't going to fly in the faster, more end-to-end Premier League.

I think that's why he's still Pep's first choice back up last season and this season. He's not physical or mobile enough to play there every week against Stoke/Middlesborough/Burnley, but against some of the less direct sides who play through and not over midfield - Arsenal/Swansea/Spurs, he's OK.
 
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