Didsbury Dave
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 1 Feb 2007
- Messages
- 39,167
IT looks to me like the evolution of this wonderful team of ours is being incubated directly on the training ground. You can see the progression in so many areas as the season progresses.
1) Corners - We are an enormous threat from corners. We are looking for the short one less, and putting it into the same front post area every time. There are big players are winning headers and the others make clever runs to the back post. Then, even if the header isn't "middled", we have lads arriving to convert at the far post. Ya Ya did this against United. Negredo at Blackburn, loads of others. Not hugely compilcated, but devastatingly effective this season.
2) Free kicks - Ya Ya has his technique perfect for those on the left side of the box, Kolorov from the right. Even Silva has taken one or two dangerous ones.
3) Penalties - I keep reading on the training reports how we practice penalties every session, and we have had three takers and havent come close to missing one yet.
4) High tempo passing - the bedrock of our game. Every single player looks to keep the ball moving and to bang it into feet. The continual movement which accompanies this is what keeps posession and leads to chances.
5) Off the ball movement and running - Look how many times our forwards make clever, diverting runs when we drive down on goal. Again, simple stuff but we are doing it really effectively
6) Breaking down stubborn teams - Last night was the culmination of a progressive improvement in our ability to break down defensive teams. What we do is play our little triangle passes a little deeper, draw a player or two out, then ruthlessly exploit the space that has created. And we vary things all the time - occasional ball from deep, occasional overlap, etc. This drags the opposition all over.
7) Using the width of the park - Our fullbacks and Navas and to a lesser degree Milner are adept at overlapping and running at the full back. This is creating us a lot of corners, from which we are a threat, and a lot of goals as well
8) Effective defending. Whilst we stuttered at the beginning of the season, we have learnt to play the high line when necessary. We don't look vulnerable to corners/setpieces either, and the individual errors which blighted the early games have all been ironed out. Whilst we will always conceed goals due to our killer instinct, last night again was another rock solid display from the back line.
All of this progression is clearly down to technical training ground work and you have got to give enormous respect to the manager and his coaching staff for this. It's been a joy to see this evolve over the course of the last few months, and a joy to see how our player are responding to this.
1) Corners - We are an enormous threat from corners. We are looking for the short one less, and putting it into the same front post area every time. There are big players are winning headers and the others make clever runs to the back post. Then, even if the header isn't "middled", we have lads arriving to convert at the far post. Ya Ya did this against United. Negredo at Blackburn, loads of others. Not hugely compilcated, but devastatingly effective this season.
2) Free kicks - Ya Ya has his technique perfect for those on the left side of the box, Kolorov from the right. Even Silva has taken one or two dangerous ones.
3) Penalties - I keep reading on the training reports how we practice penalties every session, and we have had three takers and havent come close to missing one yet.
4) High tempo passing - the bedrock of our game. Every single player looks to keep the ball moving and to bang it into feet. The continual movement which accompanies this is what keeps posession and leads to chances.
5) Off the ball movement and running - Look how many times our forwards make clever, diverting runs when we drive down on goal. Again, simple stuff but we are doing it really effectively
6) Breaking down stubborn teams - Last night was the culmination of a progressive improvement in our ability to break down defensive teams. What we do is play our little triangle passes a little deeper, draw a player or two out, then ruthlessly exploit the space that has created. And we vary things all the time - occasional ball from deep, occasional overlap, etc. This drags the opposition all over.
7) Using the width of the park - Our fullbacks and Navas and to a lesser degree Milner are adept at overlapping and running at the full back. This is creating us a lot of corners, from which we are a threat, and a lot of goals as well
8) Effective defending. Whilst we stuttered at the beginning of the season, we have learnt to play the high line when necessary. We don't look vulnerable to corners/setpieces either, and the individual errors which blighted the early games have all been ironed out. Whilst we will always conceed goals due to our killer instinct, last night again was another rock solid display from the back line.
All of this progression is clearly down to technical training ground work and you have got to give enormous respect to the manager and his coaching staff for this. It's been a joy to see this evolve over the course of the last few months, and a joy to see how our player are responding to this.