Explain what counter-pressing intends to do?
I'm well aware of counter-pressing and it is not the same as the counter attacking I am referring to.
Counter pressing is a method of winning the ball shortly after you lose it. High possession teams often employ counter-pressing, but not always as a method of generating chances, sometimes it's just a way of winning back possession quickly.
Teams like Liverpool and Newcastle use it as a method of generating chances high up the pitch. City use it to suffocate the opponent and win back possession quickly; they then look to circulate the ball, they don't generally attack immediately as the game becomes chaotic and as I've already explained, Pep prefers control to chaos.
Conversely, counter
-attacking teams are teams who like to sit deep and hit teams on the counter as their main method of chance generation. Spurs under Mourinho would be the archetype here. Also Conte, Wolves under O'Neill, Moyes' West Ham, Forest, Brentford etc.
Yes teams like City and Liverpool employ counter pressing. But that's not the same as Brentford style counter-attacking. That much should be fucking obvious.
Now onto Brennan Johnson.
To me, he is a good player for a counter
attacking team like Forest. Jose would probably have made good use of him. Brentford were after him for good reason.
What he is not useful for a high possession team that also employs counter-pressing.
For one, he's not a particularly good presser. He's not very strong in the challenge, his timing of pressing runs seems a bit off from his teammates, and frankly he often looks like he lacks effort defensively. Out of Son, Kulu, Richy and Brennan, Brennan is quite clearly the worst at high pressing.
Then you have the problem that he's not good at ball retention. You can't fire the ball into him and expect him to keep it and relieve pressure, like you can with Kulu, the only one of our forwards adept at ball retention.
Indeed, this is a huge part of our problems right now - our games are far too transitional because every time the ball gets into our front three it generally comes straight back, because other than Kulu they can't hold onto it and slow the game down.
Finally, the majority of our games are not transitional; they are against teams sitting deep in a low block. And what use is Brennan in those? How many games have we had against deep defences where Brennan looks useless, shunted out wide, denied any space, and not particularly good at passing or taking on his man, or crossing or shooting for that matter?
Upload all the stats you want, I watch the games with my eyes. Brennan will not be at the club in 2 years time unless we've reverted to another pragmatist like Jose.
