This. It’s become cheat mode for sides that can’t compete playing football against us (which is most teams to be fair). To me It’s a combination of less meaningful possession in dangerous areas around their box and not winning the ball back quick enough when we lose it.
The last two seasons we suffocated sides in and around their box. Lose the ball and we win it back before they even gathered their thoughts let alone control of the ball and certainly gave them no time to look up and ping a ball forward over our back line.
Bottom line is we aren’t making teams panic defensively around the box or when they have the ball. Pep sides revolve around this kind of panic and suffocation and the defensive elements revolve around reading situations and snuffing them out quickly. Laporte is excellent at reading the game and being ultra aggressive when teams do beat the press. The problem is 1) he’s not playing and 2) even if he was this situation is happening twice as much as it should per game as the midfielders and forwards aren’t playing with anywhere near the same intensity as the last two years.. we simply just aren’t creating as much space in the opponents box as the system requires.
This is most obvious with the amount of useless floated crosses to our band of midgets which inevitably gets dealt with and gives them control and time to look up and hurt us.