Parking the bus

[John Oliver]

Getting past teams who park el autobus can be tricky, as we’ve often found.

But against Spurs we seemed to do our own version of this, when we bought on Otto to protect our lead. To me this was very welcome, showing Pep is not as rigid in his approach as I had thought.

This does perhaps change the debate about who we need to buy in the Summer. Previously I would have said that a defensive midfielder is an absolute necessity, but with the autobus available I would maybe downgrade absolute necessity to highly desirable.

Any thoughts?

 

[The Riot Club]

We've generally done ok, as our points tally and goals show! We won't beat everyone by three or more goals, sometimes we just need to be patient and break through the opposition. We certainly have the right players to do it.

Having said that, Fernandinho is 33 and we play so many games we definitely need another world class defensive midfielder and in my opinion possibly a striker or winger that offers something a bit different just for those times we need them, like against Liverpool for example. We did well against Spurs, but for some reason we seem to need something different to beat the scousers - I wonder how their Gegenpress would work against us if we surprised them next season and just booted it long when they were all pressing in our half?

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Why do people give Liverpool’s way of playing against us a German name. Wolves did the same, should their way of playing be given a Portuguese name for their manager?

High press counter attacking football is probably over 100 years old, it wasn’t scented by Klopp

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

Defensive midfielder and another Striker is what we need. That’s it.

 

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

Parking the bus never seems to go well for us, and I'm not just talking about this season. Mancini did it a time or two very successfully, but our strength is going forward. I suppose he needs to address the CL shortcomings. Most successful teams in the CL have built the football equivalent of brick walls to conserve a lead. I remember getting a goal against CFC the season they were initially unbeatable. I think it might have been an Anelka pen and when it went in I thought 'Jeez, it's a long time to hang on!'

 

[Mr. Wednesday]

I imagine Pep's plan will be just to keep improving the players enough so that they can play through any high press, Liverpool's included.

 

[Eds]

I don't think we parked the bus - we changed the set up when Nico came on and went three at the back which is hardly parking the bus

 

[fatbloke]

Three at the back just gives us the chance to pack the midfield to retain possession and attack from different positions using different patterns.

It’s not a defensive/park the bus tactic, just a more stable attacking formation which stops teams using the easy “smash it into the channels and run after it” bullshit tactic we see in desperation against us.