Margins and Mentality in Both Boxes

[Onlymcfc]

Brilliant post, you've highlighted the difference between us and a champions league winning side. Fantastic but underlying work still needed. Next season could be even better.

 

[UUJblue]

I think the points mentioned in the OP are correct and can be simply summed up as more mental awareness for our defensive when 1-2 goals go in and look closer at the science of body position when shooting and creating spaces and angles for increased accuracy and more goals.

 

[The Batman]

The Defence i still have reservations about, I dont think Nico is good enough for 'big games' his decision making can cause big problems at times especially diving in to tackle skillfull players. Its been a miracle season considering how Delph has been our starting LB and Kompany and Stones have been injured for large parts of the season.
The front players have done great this season and their threat alone has forced teams to hide. Sane, Jesus, Sterling and Bernardo are all still very young and green around the edges. They will grow together and become even more frightning, easier said than done but we need to somehow match that talent at the back.

 

[Rebelblue]

Top top post as the top top analysis on tv would say, but they would never come near to knowing how to put this together. Pep has said this since day one. Lack of clinical in the box up top and propensity to error in our own box.

 

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

I think that too many are asking for the utmost perfection in our players. Defenders who magically deliver clean sheets, forwards who convert every half, quarter and eighths of chances. Every other team is like that. They all have their weaknesses, a good number of them that we have exploited this season! But we have to be realistic and see what we have got and ask, genuinely and honestly, just where and if the players we have could improve. Sterling could improve his finishing, yes, but I think he never will. He'll score us match winning goals but if you want him to convert another ten or twenty percent of the chances he has we shouldn't be holding our breath. Ferny has been tremendous this season. I didn't think we would see the performances we have from him but to expect that he could add even more to his rounded game is expecting too much.

 

[franksinatra]

With all football teams you have to compromise as rarely does the perfect footballer come along.

There has been a lot of simple analysis with the arguments raging like Aguero would have finished those Raheem chances etc but in reality Aguero would probably not have so easily gotten into those positions or dragged Uniteds defence around so much that on two occasions we had a player rampaging through the centre of the pitch.

Similarly again if you asked me who was the better finisher between Sane and Sterling without hesitation I would say Sane.However the stats show Sterling is way ahead of Sane in the scoring charts so its clear Sterling ‘arrives’ in the position to score with more frequency. So do we then have to accept he may miss them, but at least he is getting into those positions, or swap him for a player who is a better finisher, rarely misses, but rarely gets in the right position?. These are the compromises a manager and fans have to make.

It is a similar story with the centre halves. Otamendi and Stones defensively are not the greatest but actually help us defensively by being so effective on the ball, which allows us to dominate posession of the ball and so we do not come under significant pressure. We may find we could end up with better ‘defenders’ but who are not great in posession and so result in us being less effective going forward, controlling games and result in the team having to defend more which may result in the same number of goals being conceded.

The challenge for Pep is to determine if those shortcomings are so great he needs to bring in better defenders of goalscoring wingers, to strengthen the side, or stay with players he has and work on them to improve those aspects of the game and accept there failings on occasions. Because regardless of who he brings in they will also have failings as players and so as one problem closes another is likely to surface.

 

[AlgarveBlu]

As others have said 'excellent post' - I also think there is an element with the way that Pep manages that causes a problem in 'crunch' games against better opposition and more tactically aware managers that he is used to facing. First off not criticising Pep because it's due to his vision and the conviction of his beliefs that we are where we are and are witnessing the best football I have seen for a long time. There is however a slight floor to Pep's thinking whereby he seems to want to continue proving his unique managerial style when sometimes a bit of conventional wisdom would probably do the trick, his ventures with Bayern in the CL spring to mind. Its almost as if he is petrified of being labelled normal.

The other problem I think we face is that we have this season entered an anomaly in that we have faced an unprecedented amount of teams that have just sat back in their own box and we have gone into a default setting of trying to prise open the opposition with constant possession with little to no pressure on our players in the hope of a misplaced pass and a breakaway as their A plan. When we do come up against opposition that are confident in their own game I think it's natural that it takes our players some time to adjust their mentally to this and that's why we are found wanting sometimes or even worse just completely lost. I can only recall the Spurs and Napoli and to a lesser degree Shakter that I would class as very good teams whom belive in their own ability with good managers where we went on to win which shows that we need to develop a different mentality in these really big games against quality teams with confidence in their own ability and not fear of our ability.

 

[trevorriley]

good thread and also the replies from everybody actually can see what is going wrong ( although not a lot is wrong shall we say )

you cant play the pep pressing way and have a solid defence, pep likes a defender to be almost midfield in their skills and football way of thinking. So you end up with a team that can pass the ball about beautifully but the opposition only needs 4 chances to score three goals. Also if you get a team that doesn't give up at two or three down, any team has a good chance of coming back.

A lot of our goals against are still coming from bad passes or easily tackled players, sterling being the weakest of all. He loses the ball cheaply, Sane guilty of this to. This means more pressure on our defence that is more shaped for midfield.

So the answer is you have to be perfect at keeping the ball and perfect with finishing. You either get that far in front ( as in should have been 4 nil half time Saturday ) or you have 80% possession so teams cant score against you. We have done this 85% of the time this season, just slipped up in those big games.

Sterling has to be mentioned, had enough now, I hope the stalling over the contract is because he is being looked at with scrutiny for performance. I don't believe for one minute Real want him.

Summer will see a mini bail out of players nothing quite like last summer though. But pep has seen his weak areas in the last few games, he knows which players he wants its just getting them.

 

[ono]

I'm impressed by the responses to this thread. I was hesitant to create it, particularly with emotions running high but it's good to see that we can debate our issues. I think it's actually exciting and intriguing to talk about. We are clearly not the finished article and I do think we have created a false economy for ourselves this season by actually being so good ahead of schedule.

 

[PW]

Can't disagree with any of your analysis, excellent post backed up with cold hard facts. Really do think we need a Busquets type player to help batten down the hatches and see out games.