It was obvious that Porro was going to be badly exposed the other night, particularly against Doku. We knew what would happen because time and time again, the same scenario has arisen with frightening regularity. This is why we saw the need for Spence to be played there. Ange’s solution appears to be, however, that he will continue to repeatedly operate in the same way until maybe one day something different may happen. Porro is no defender but doesn’t deserve to shoulder all the blame. The lack of coaching, or no coaching, that allows him to continually hover around the halfway line while his opponent occupies about five acres of space behind him is the major factor. Inevitably, when the opposition find their player in acres of space with a simple ball into that space, our midfield and defence pour back at chaotic Keystone Kop pace so that by the time the pass is made into our goal mouth no one knows quite where they are supposed to be.
At his press conferences or interviews, Ange is never really pressed on matters like this, thus allowing him to deflect on to subjects like injuries, players ages or how great he was in Japan or Australia.
I was surprised then after the City game when, for once, after seeing what has been so obvious to the majority of us all season, he was asked by Jonathan Pearce for MOTD, “Do you think you were a little too open on the right hand side of your defence where Doku was causing problems?”
I thought to myself — at last, Ange is going to finally explain this piece of tactical genius he adopts every game. I waited with bated breath for the pearl of wisdom to emerge. His answer was “Yeah that was coming because we were turning the ball over, I thought Pedro did a really good job but when you turn the ball over like we did in the first half you allow them to hit into those spaces and Doku is a very good winger and causes most teams problems but after that we handed it well.”
So now we have it. No more discussions are needed on why opposition forwards can operate in acres of space every week on our right hand side. As you were.