I’m still just irritated about the way we play. The points were important but Saints didn’t even turtle, they pressed us and were willing to play and we had our hands full. They’re not bad but we have had to tell ourselves that these lesser teams were hanging with us because of their bunkers and if they played we’d rip them to shreds. Well Soton came to play and absolutely could have taken a point or more.
There are times I’ve started to wonder if Pep truly understands why our centurions worked. Really wherever he has been, he’s had pace wide and has always used his system to get those players into 1 v 1 situations. The strikers, bar Lewandowski, have always suffered a bit but the wingers are supposed to be the stars. Our best team had Sane punishing teams who played like Saints did today. All those counters in the second half where KDB played Sterling into space were goals a few years ago with Sane punishing their commitment forward. Now Sterling slows and invites the fullback in so he can try to do him inside and the entire chance is wasted. We just always had an answer — if you pressed and committed KDB and Silva would hit one behind you. If you sat Silva would orchestrate and pull the possession strings while KDB occasionally played the killer ball. It was so balanced and had answers for different approaches. Everyone is so one paced now and there’s no threat behind or in the channels. Really just “my turn” “your turn” feeble attempts at beating a man and cutting inside as if curlers are worth more than other goal types. I do t care how many clean sheets we keep, we aren’t winning the league fluffing a half dozen to a dozen chances every week with this feeble attack. We will eventually run into enough teams like Spurs who can defend and we could play 600 minutes without scoring.
