When players wont press under Jose and stopped pressing under Poch for a good while at the end of his reign is it the manager's fault or the players'?
Poch dropped our high-press, and this receeded in each of his last 2 years. There were multiple reasons that we can speculate on why:
1) Almost the entire 1st team were playing in the semi-finals and beyond in the World Cup, which meant they had about 2weeks break before the new season began, all of them didn't have a full pre-season
2) We had lost our brilliant midfield to injury, mainly in Dembele & Wanyanna + Dier once returning from World cup
3) The commitment required to be able to press as we had done has to be 100%, anything less and the wholes begging to show, it only takes one player to drop their levels and others will follow, without injecting new personnel it's hard to turn this around, just ask Pep & Klopp. Everyone has to be on it.
4) Associated with point 3 is the manager specifically, this can get wearing for players to listen to the same stuff at delivered in the same intensity, again just ask Pep & Klopp (maybe even Ralph at Southampton is going through a flattening phase???).
Under Jose we press like a school team. There is zero co-ordination, everything is individual. There is no system or trigger, players do not press at specific angles to provoke the oppo to go long down a certain flank for example. Do we press the 'keeper? Sometimes (we didn't under Poch for example). Do we try to win the ball back within 5 seconds? Is the plan to win the ball back or have the oppo rushed into an error? Are we set up to win the 2nd ball if this happens? We press like a school team, where the Maths teacher who used to play it bit in the 80's is telling his players to press, that's it. There's no plan, no co-ordination, no coaching on how or even why/what the plan of doing so.
It's very hard physically under Poch to press but the players were trained specifically for them to be able to do it (not following World Cup as explained above) but it's even harder physically to press if you aren't backed up with a system to do it. It's simply a complete waste of time and energy, better off sitting in a low-block.