bad spells can happen but what's worrying is Pellegrini doesn't seem to recognise the problems. He keeps coming out post match and saying we were unlucky or we created enough chances to win etc etc. Of course, this may just be a front for the media and i certainly hope so but each week he seems to stick with the same plan that so clearly isn't working for us.
4-4-2 just isn't working whatsoever. it's plain for everybody to see. The few games we've played alright this season we've played 4-5-1. 4-4-2 relies too heavily on wide players getting in good crosses, and having players in the box to get on the end of them. We rarely have more than 1 player in the box and we don't put in many crosses at all. The formation is far too rigid and it feels like we're cramming players into un-natural positions i.e Silva which causes further problems defensively.
opposition players can telegraph our play 2-3 passes ahead and can comfortably defend against it. Our play at the moment consists of the ball going out to the fullback, who squeezes it to the winger ahead of him. Then that winger is stuck with little space and no options so he goes back, yaya will usually pick the ball up, stand still for 4-5 seconds then spray it to the other side where we do exactly the same thing again. This is repeated continuously until we can either inch forward enough to get a corner or we get pressured into launching the ball forward and inevitably lose it.
We need to revert back to 4-5-1, it allows Silva to play his natural game which is critical to all our play and it allows some of the other midfielders a bit more freedom to interchange and actually move into space. It obviously offers a bit more protection for our shambles of a defence and we seem to play with a quicker tempo too which is severely lacking at the moment.
I've ranted on enough now so i won't even get on to our defending, i will just say however that we're never going to get it right defensively as a unit if we continuously rotate 3/4 of our defenders every single game. We need a sustained period with a first choice back 4 to allow them to develop a proper understanding.
