Chippy_boy
Well-Known Member
Yesterday was yet another day where for most of the game, we dominated possession and they parked the bus. Teams fear us, especially at home and we will see this pattern countless times, just as we did against Juve.
Against well organised defences, clear-cut chances in games like these will be few. For the most part, they will be all behind the ball and we will have little or no space to get in behind, reliant on the odd long range shot, or possibly trying to thread it through the middle with intricate passing - neither of which usually results in a goal.
This is going to be a pattern for the whole season, so we had better get used to it and find a way to deal with it.
But there are a few times during the game where we have a golden opportunity to score, and it does my head in when we fail to capitalise on these precious opportunities. That is when the opponents have been attacking us, and then their attack breaks down in our half. They are strung out all over the pitch, not in nice organised banks of four. We have to break with pace, with runners, many runners. We need to move the ball quickly from one end to the other and not allow them time to regroup. But time and time again, we see our players jogging forward, or worse, stopping and playing the ball backwards. Even if we get high up the pitch, there's usually no-one (except perhaps 5 foot 8 Sergio) to cross to.
In these tight games, I really think we have got to work on this. We need to be much more direct and really bust a gut to get forward in numbers, not revert to our usual ponderous possession game that simply gets us back to attacking a parked bus again for another 10 minutes. Ironically, it is this very tactic that our opponents use to great effect against us!
Whilst I am at it, we have also got to do more with set pieces. We should be running at our opponents, committing them outside their box and deliberately drawing in fouls. Yaya can bang them in for fun from there, but how many such free kicks did we have yesterday? I can't remember any?
Against well organised defences, clear-cut chances in games like these will be few. For the most part, they will be all behind the ball and we will have little or no space to get in behind, reliant on the odd long range shot, or possibly trying to thread it through the middle with intricate passing - neither of which usually results in a goal.
This is going to be a pattern for the whole season, so we had better get used to it and find a way to deal with it.
But there are a few times during the game where we have a golden opportunity to score, and it does my head in when we fail to capitalise on these precious opportunities. That is when the opponents have been attacking us, and then their attack breaks down in our half. They are strung out all over the pitch, not in nice organised banks of four. We have to break with pace, with runners, many runners. We need to move the ball quickly from one end to the other and not allow them time to regroup. But time and time again, we see our players jogging forward, or worse, stopping and playing the ball backwards. Even if we get high up the pitch, there's usually no-one (except perhaps 5 foot 8 Sergio) to cross to.
In these tight games, I really think we have got to work on this. We need to be much more direct and really bust a gut to get forward in numbers, not revert to our usual ponderous possession game that simply gets us back to attacking a parked bus again for another 10 minutes. Ironically, it is this very tactic that our opponents use to great effect against us!
Whilst I am at it, we have also got to do more with set pieces. We should be running at our opponents, committing them outside their box and deliberately drawing in fouls. Yaya can bang them in for fun from there, but how many such free kicks did we have yesterday? I can't remember any?