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Manager Ange Postecoglou

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Matt1882 said:
I'm bored.

I'm calling it. I was bored with Pochball when we had the lions share of possession and never got behind teams* and I'm bored with this.
Some injury time wins have hidden what has been some boring football.

I wasn't the only one in my block who was fucking bored shitless yesterday either. If it wasn't for all the late goals in games, I'd probably have gone before the 90 yesterday.


*this was more at the start and end if his reign
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Football is quite a boring sport though.

A game where 0-0 scores are a possibility and games with 1-3 goals in total are quite normal is going to have what are essentially boring patches with not much happening.

Be thankful you missed the 80s and the back pass rule being over exploited.

Who do you think are the most exciting teams today?

(There’s a lot of people on here who stated they would rather watch contes football ball over peps football)
 
Also I mentioned yesterday in the match thread, but those underlapping runs are done to fucking death and don't help our attacking play.

Ball goes out to the winger, the inside player often makes the underlapping run right across the front of him, dragging the opposition marker across with him, kills any space/opportunity that was available, and generally act as a better defender than anyone else has.

There's a time and place for the underlap but largely if the ball goes out to the winger and he is 1vs1, stay away from him. Give it a few seconds to see what develops, our guys - especially Udogie - just charge on that run every time and all it usually does is congest that part of the pitch, kill the move and mean we have to recycle and go back/inside.
 
The wingers are the problem. Son and Kulu do not suit the requirements for this system on the wing at all. Need one v one dribbling demons who can beat their man and release the ball quickly in 1-2s. Neto, Raphinha, Kvara etc. Keep Son and Richie for playing up front.
 
What I don’t get is when behind and it’s obvious the inverted fullback isn’t working like yesterday, why doesn’t he bring on a midfielder to play in that position? They’d be more attacking while also keeping the shape. We’d lose defensively but that didn’t seem to matter yesterday anyway because we seemed to only be defending with two men anyway.
 
Brian Fantana said:
What I don’t get is when behind and it’s obvious the inverted fullback isn’t working like yesterday, why doesn’t he bring on a midfielder to play in that position? They’d be more attacking while also keeping the shape. We’d lose defensively but that didn’t seem to matter yesterday anyway because we seemed to only be defending with two men anyway.
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Correct. Bentancur should have been brought on for royal and Lo Celso for Davies as they had no interest in apart from sitting in. Those two could easily defend well enough if they countered. We could have had better players on the pitch while chasing a goal and we keep them on and take off Maddison. I honestly didn’t get that.
 
I saw this coming all week like many of you perhaps did. The Premier League is brutal tactically and when you play the same way regardless others find you out. It is normal, they study you and look for ways to hurt you. For a couple of months (I think since the Newcastle game), all of our home games look the same and play themselves out in the same way. The reason for this is my first point earlier. The half space either side of our center backs have been targeted successfully by Bournemouth, Brentford, Brighton, even Dinosaur Dyche and now Wolves. Because it works and because only luck (and Vicario) prevented three of them not getting something out of the game. I really like Ange and what he is trying to do BUT he has to be pragmatic, surprise the opposition sometimes otherwise he will be gone sooner than we think because we are playing against the best club sides, coaches and, frankly, players in the world. Hell even a midtable team who finished 14th won a European trophy last season from this league. That is the positional equivalent of Salernitana (Serie A), Cadiz (La Liga) or Bochum (Bundesliga) or Stade Brest (Ligue Une) winning a European trophy. Some issues are as follows:

- Why is our best goal scorer, our most clinical finisher, spending game after game playing closer to the corner flag that the opposition's goal?
- If we didn't have Udogie and Porro playing, and teams (like Wolves yesterday) obviously prepared all week for Ange ball, why not play the two as conventional fullbacks and go for a 433 instead. Before the game, the only confidence I did have was if Ange deployed Royal and Davies in this way, blocking Wolves' one dimensional plan. Shockingly, when I saw Davies (especially) pushing up in a forward line of five, my heart sank.
- Have our players been told to only shoot from six yards? We have one of the best long distant shooters (Sonny) in the EPL and yet he never takes a shot anymore from distance, why? I saw Maddison score so many free kicks for Leicester, why is he always lofting an angle-less ball from free kicks now for us?
- Wolves, Brentford and Everton et. al. are crap at making the play, hence why they lose so many games against other mid table team. They cannot open up teams and there defenders are crap when they lose the ball high up the pitch, so why not sometimes play a transitional game against these teams?
- Our number 9 was awful again yesterday. Didn't understand the praise he was getting in pods during January. His second touch is a throw in and when he has more than a nanosecond on the ball he is gormless. This massively added to our disjointed performance.
- Our one touch stuff has descended into two/three touch football. Yesterday was confirmation. So painful. To beat a low block you need one or both of two things in approach play - dribbly wingers who can beat their man wide and/or one touch plays. We have nobody for the former and have abandoned the second. No chance of scoring.
- Finally, in relation to the previous point, the evidence is that against the low block of Brighton and Brentford we only scored to win the games with transitional plays not lock picking a low block.

thanx for enduring this long message.
 
Deuterz said:
He’s responsible for everything which includes a really fantastic start, genuinely changing us in to an offensive team, but also the fact that for a good while our performances have been pretty poor despite only being in one competition. Results catching up now.

I wish this could be as simple as praise when things are going well and criticism/reflection when not. Clearly at the start we were brilliant to watch and he deserved the praise. But then it got to cult like levels. Time to reverse, he isn’t god, he’s not beyond question, he’s just a charismatic bloke who likes to play offensive footie.
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Saviour's Syndrome. We were so mega shit for years under Poch (end of reign), Mou, Nuno & Conte that as soon as Ange came in and we had a few good games, that's it, some were always gonna lose their heads and see us as the rebirth of Barca from late 2000s/early 2010s. Knowing the big fella is also very, very good at selling his own brand (that's not me saying he's not genuine btw).

Early in the new project and deserves time? Of friggin course! But let's be realistic...we've had more bad months in this season's PL than good ones. As for the cups, well...Ange got nowhere near the stick he deserved for those shameful early exits. The Italo-portuguese triumvirate of evil would've had their balls served up to them for the same crime, whereas it got brushed under the carpet so quick in Ange's case I got a cold out of it.
 
Rocket said:
Assuming that's all correct (no reson to think it isn't) it's a very interesting post/set of stats. Only Pep @ City who were already about a decade into their current sportswashing project when he turmed up has done better than Ange in their first season.

I personally think he's already got credit in the bank. Yes today was disappointing, and no, we're not going to win the league this year. But last year was disastrous. We have demonstrably improved. We're on the right path. If he gets backing with players to suit his system I think we're going places.
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Said that about Poch.

Then when Jose was in the hot seat.

And the same again with Conte.

Now got the down under version.
 
harry7 said:
Quite simply, if Bissouma hadn't been lazy and actually tracked his man for the 2nd goal, we'd likely go on and won the game.

We are almost exclusively let down by individuals rather than tactics.

Bissouma doesn't have the workrate required for a high risk style game and he doesn't think quickly enough.

Any more performances like this and I can see the dressing you finger pointing picking up.
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If you gonna point the finger at Biss, you gonna do the same with our captain for the first goal? Need to watch it again, but seems to me he could've got closer to Gomes or you know...jump? But nope, instead he just let it happen then shouted at everyone for being lazy & clueless. Can't say his defensive effort the rest of the game got me impressed either.
 
yes said:
71% possession.

4 shots on target.

That's the problem. We are totally ineffective in the final third and defences find it all too easy to sit back against us, knowing that we're not going to create shit.

Edit:

Screenshot-2024-02-18-at-07-31-36.png


All that possession. 4 shots on target. Comprehensive overhaul of our attack needed in the summer if this is going to work, if not, no point even turning up next year because nothing will change.
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12 shots conceded, of which 7 on target. At home. To Wolves. Brighton was 6 (3), Brentford 9 (5), City 18 (5)...even conceded 10 (1) to mighty Burnley.

Our problem isn't just our lack of scoring. Football is a two-way street. You can't keep the backdoor shut to begin with, don't even bother trying to attack...lose the ball and you're in the shit instantly.

The only players we have who can hold their heads high week in week out as far as their defensive effort is concerned are Cuti, Micky, Sarr and Richy. Four players. Out of 10 (excl Vic). You can't carry that many passengers and hope to be a serious contender.
 
A few take aways:

Easier said then done, but need to move the ball quicker around the box,

What are these short corners where we don’t even end up getting a cross in? Just put the ball in the box

Also why do we never put whipped in crosses from out wide around the edge of the box?

I watch so many teams put diagonal crosses in from 25 yards out onto someone’s head with success. We never seem to use this tactic. If teams are going to park the bus, overload the 6 yard box and have madders put some balls in dangerous areas. It would create more than moving the ball slowly side to side for minutes at a time. One instance where this worked was Richie’s 1st goal away at Forest. Need more of that.

Big Ange got this but he needs to learn to adapt.
 
yes said:
My main concern is that Ange has said on multiple occasions that his teams play one way and one way only.

The issue is that everyone seems to have figured out how to blunt us and we’ve shown no semblance of a plan B.
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What I don’t get is why is our so called attacking style figured yet teams like brighton, city, goons, dippers, villa for example don’t have the same issues with their playing style. What makes ours far more easier to figure out? Is it bcos we don’t really pass and move, have no movement, don’t really to progress the ball quickly playing one-twos abdctriangles, use no width, no attempts to cross the ball, shoot and so on?
 
Murphy said:
Poch only had plan A too. Which, when clicking, was undefendable. But every so often we'd come up against a low block.

Sound familiar?

Only ever saw Poch change it once, against Dortmand away when we played on the counter. Like 30% possession or something. 🤣
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Tbf to poch we played with 3 at the back a few times as well. He also kept rose and walker wide to use their pace. Just imagine them two in their prime in this system? They’d wasted and lost. Their main attributes of pace and getting beyond our wide players would be nullified. Sometimes the game is made more complicated than it needs to be?
 
Knobs22 said:
A few take aways:

Easier said then done, but need to move the ball quicker around the box,

What are these short corners where we don’t even end up getting a cross in? Just put the ball in the box

Also why do we never put whipped in crosses from out wide around the edge of the box?

I watch so many teams put diagonal crosses in from 25 yards out onto someone’s head with success. We never seem to use this tactic. If teams are going to park the bus, overload the 6 yard box and have madders put some balls in dangerous areas. It would create more than moving the ball slowly side to side for minutes at a time. One instance where this worked was Richie’s 1st goal away at Forest. Need more of that.

Big Ange got this but he needs to learn to adapt.
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100%
Even city do it with kdb like the goal for foden recently his crossed the ball from the corner of the pen box early and with good accuracy. However helps when you get the ball up high enough to beat the first man.
 
Allejo10 said:
We have good depth, it's stupid to thing we should have players at the level of Udogie and Porro on the bench, no one has that! Today we missed just two player from the starting eleven and we played like shit, but we played badly last week too, so no excuses we lack depth.
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Some fans live in cuckoo land tbh. Every team has players missing. Yet some on here make out that soon as we miss players we have to play shite.
 
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