Pep's tactics

[Hungarian blue]

OP which Hungarian team do you support? I was working in Budapest last November and went to see Honved play Bekescsaba. It was a really exciting match with Honved being behind twice before taking the lead in the 90th minute. It was freezing but being able to have a beer (or five) whilst watching the match was great. Have had a soft spot for Honved since the Half Man Half Biscuit single in the 1980's piqued my interest and I saw they played in black and red stripes similar to City's classic away strip.

Haha. You must consider yourself lucky to catch a good Hungarian game nowadays. :) Honved are quite in the shit for decades now, I mean even by domestic terms. But the current club situation in Hungary is seriously flawed; the government and its sponsors are throwing insane money to football (not China money, but still some sick figures, given the not-so-good state of the country), yet the academy/youth systems are still worrying. It's more like a top-to-bottom approach: huge investments to build new stadiums, or to sign some more known domestic players that never really made it in bigger Europe teams, so they are happy to sit back and relax with their Hungarian teams for shitloads of money (latest examples can be found in Ferencvaros, where Lovrencsics, who could have easily made a step up from the Polish league, choose them and is now already out from the CL as they lost to the 2nd Albanian team...).

It's actually great that you could get in to the stadium because a year or two back, there was a stupid rule about a card system, with identification and all, but given that the Ultras have already sort of disappeared, it just kicked out even those fans who occasionally went to see game (you'd have to register your whole family if you just decided to bring them to a match and they were never before + it mattered to which club you attached your registration, so you might have been unable to sit with your friends in an otherwise empty stadium etc. etc.) I think by this day, its optional and most of the teams have already discarded this stupid rule.

Back to the question. :) I'm not a particular fan of any team. I was born on the other side of the border in Slovakia (in a city which 'normally' in the past always belonged to Hungarians so most of the people that live there are still Hungarian). So let's say I supported my local team, which means I went to 4-5 games per season, mostly with my father. But if I'm correct, since I was born (I'm 26), we were never even in the second tier. :) Now I've moved on to Bratislava to work there, so the best option to at least enjoy somehow a game is ice hockey, given that the stadium is a few metres away from me, and the local team (Slovan) plays in the Russian Superleague (KHL), which is one of the best in Europe, if not.

Sorry for the offtopic, mods. :)

 

[Deleted member 58678]

I would rather this wasn't posted here for all to look at, prefer if you did an analysis of Conte at Chelsea or Cunte at the rags!

You do know there are teams of people employed by all clubs to look at this sort of thing for each club they will play? We won't be giving away any secrets!

 

[Gorton_Tubster]

Surely that was just pictures with arrows on it? That first ppicture was a goal kick situation not actual play, jeez it's all very subjective, one day I will learn ewhat it all means.

What I did see though was a much more confident defense playing like defensive midfielders at times, comfortable on the ball and more likely to take it up the middle and distribute. I saw the two main midfielders working together more and covering each other. And I saw the attackers doing much more than just ambling around like last year. Bony included, he was played a lot more like Heskey used to be.

More commitment, more work, belief, confidence are the things I saw.

 

[Hungarian blue]

Surely that was just pictures with arrows on it? That first ppicture was a goal kick situation not actual play, jeez it's all very subjective, one day I will learn ewhat it all means.

You are right, these are just pictures and thus can be interpreted wrongly, videos are way more telling. But surely our defensive setup when for the oppo has a goalkick is actually an interesting scenario. :)

 

[teddykgb]

Teams have enough video analysis these days that we probably don't have to worry about some guy's twitter posts spoiling what we are doing.

I was trying to watch this intently the other day. The higher pressing and the willingness to play out from the back were obvious. I thought the midfield struggled to choke the opposition out of the space the way Pep's teams usually do and some of what this post says makes sense about them floating between man and zonal concepts. I imagine that's a hard thing to just pick up in a few weeks.

 

[Hungarian blue]

Again, pics can be enlargeened after clicking on it.

 

[Shaelumstash]

Again, pics can be enlargeened after clicking on it.

The only problem with this, is that's not the shape we actually played in the first half!

We had 3 centre backs.
Clichy and Navas as wing backs.
A central midfield 3 of Fernando, Fernandinho and Delph.
Zinchenko pushed right up alonside Kelechi.

It was pretty fluid so it's tricky to put a telephone number on it, but it certainly wasn't 343. It was more like 352 if you had to pick one.

 

[Mike D]

Yaya and Bony took no notice of any of Pep's tactics

because they are both still sulking about the Domino's coming in after the games

 

[Dicko69]

After watching yesterday, I was impressed with us without the ball, already good signs of us being able to press high up the pitch without leaving gaps that teams can cut through us with a couple of direct balls and it will only get better.
However with the ball I don't think we look anything like a pep team yet. His teams always have at least 2 or 3 pass options, always. I thought yesterday we mostly had just 1 option, sometimes 2 and we're very predictable with our build up play.
But it's still early doors and things will get a lot better and fast
We have some exciting times ahead

 

[mat]

*like*