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Manager Mauricio Pochettino
- Thread starter WHITE&BLUE
- Start date
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Always been terrible at subs and he said he wanted to introduce "new tactics to deal with Wembley". I presume the tactics there will improve over time or we'll simply go back to pressing hard.
We could be getting a little overrated. Sounness, Lineker, Rednapp, Henry have been predicting Spurs win and in general the country seems to rate us too highly. Poch have a feeling Poch knows we are short, not squad, but our starting eleven.
Our starting eleven is overrated. On paper, individually we are strong. But as a team, without Rose and Walker pace, we lack idea. Some, like Sounness, felt we have done enough to win probably due to our high possession. Very very misleading indeed.
We can see what Poch has all the while been trying to do. Work the ball horizontal, right to left, left to right across the middle 3rd, in search of openning, then play the short vertical thru ball or square to the edge of penalty box for someone to shoot. Its effectiveness increases greatly with speedy wing backs making runs. Seldom high pace counterattack, always attack an opponent with 11 behind the ball. Since no high pace counterattack, the tactic plays short passes, relying on Alli's occassional filcks to win that extra yard, Eriksen's final ball and Kane's shooting.At the same time we push our defence high up.
Against weaker teams we are good to go. But against strong, pacy teams we struggle. Without pace at wingbacks it was worst. When Chelsea counterattack, they looked dangerous. But our attack seems predictable. Eriksen, Alli runs to channel.Force a corner or free kick. When we break from their corner, we check back, and start the left-right-left possession passings again.
when it things got desperate(esp final 10-15 mins) , we saw Kane, Dembele taking responisibilty, taking Chelsea on individually. Its like those Bale days. It has been the case before Shelvey sending off. Alli and Eriksen can be marked out alot easier than we think. Moses and Willian impressed me. They were that extra yard quicker.
A wrote too much, a little lost. In summary. if we play 343 against top teams,we are a little overrated due to Alli-Eriksen and our wingbacks lack of pace,
Our starting eleven is overrated. On paper, individually we are strong. But as a team, without Rose and Walker pace, we lack idea. Some, like Sounness, felt we have done enough to win probably due to our high possession. Very very misleading indeed.
We can see what Poch has all the while been trying to do. Work the ball horizontal, right to left, left to right across the middle 3rd, in search of openning, then play the short vertical thru ball or square to the edge of penalty box for someone to shoot. Its effectiveness increases greatly with speedy wing backs making runs. Seldom high pace counterattack, always attack an opponent with 11 behind the ball. Since no high pace counterattack, the tactic plays short passes, relying on Alli's occassional filcks to win that extra yard, Eriksen's final ball and Kane's shooting.At the same time we push our defence high up.
Against weaker teams we are good to go. But against strong, pacy teams we struggle. Without pace at wingbacks it was worst. When Chelsea counterattack, they looked dangerous. But our attack seems predictable. Eriksen, Alli runs to channel.Force a corner or free kick. When we break from their corner, we check back, and start the left-right-left possession passings again.
when it things got desperate(esp final 10-15 mins) , we saw Kane, Dembele taking responisibilty, taking Chelsea on individually. Its like those Bale days. It has been the case before Shelvey sending off. Alli and Eriksen can be marked out alot easier than we think. Moses and Willian impressed me. They were that extra yard quicker.
A wrote too much, a little lost. In summary. if we play 343 against top teams,we are a little overrated due to Alli-Eriksen and our wingbacks lack of pace,
We need to build a new counter-attacking system that we can execute in some matches. But we need different kinds of players, who can either run the ball the full length of the pitch, or can bypass the initial press with quick penetrating forward passes to make the ball work for us. Most of what we do is very slow, and the stronger teams can read us and nullify our threat.
It wasn't just our possession. 18-9 in shots, 6-2 in shots on goal, 14-3 in corners. They had a freaky freekick and exploited a huge mistake by Wanyama. It's margins, they were the luckier side, we were the better one.
Are you suggesting we'd have won yesterday had we employed a counter-attacking system against a bus parking Chelsea? You do understand that for counter attacking to work, the opponents actually have to attack? They very rarely do against us.
Sissoko is the kind of player you're asking for. He's good at running with the ball in space. Unfortunately for him, we rarely ever get to counter attack because we are dominating games.
Imo we should just forget about the counter attack idea, and try to improve further our ability to break down teams when we're dominating.
I see your point. We did well against a side playing park bus. Despite that, we managed many shots , forced many corners. But I do feel against top teams we will struggle. If you give away little and they made full use of them, it isnt luck, it is quality. Last season semi final the same. Top teams do not need much. If we are talking about title, we need to be at this level.
You are taking a very simplistic view of how football works. Sure we had a lot of possession in that game and Chelsea sat back for large parts of it, but that wasn't the case for literally 100% of the game was it? That never ever happens. Chelsea had the upper hand for the first 25 minutes or so, and were pushing us back but we never looked able to get behind them. There were several counter opportunities throughout the match, just like there are in any match regardless of how defensive the opposition, but we often lack ability and/or composure to pull it off when it matters most. Difficult tight matches are decided on a few key moments, and those moments are usually on the transition when one team is out of shape, and we are unable to take advantage of such moments. We take a lot of time, a lot of touches, a lot of backwards safe passes, just to set ourselves and start slowly building from the back. Which means the opposition also have time to set themselves and block off all avenue, and happily watch us roll the ball around from side to side, occasionally have a shot from distance straight at the keeper or something.
Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern, etc, the great teams who keep the ball and face packed defences every week, you think they never score against those on the counter? You think there is a big winning team out there who don't have the capacity to spring a quick counter when the opportunity presents itself?
We need more ways to hurt the opposition. We need to expand our repertoire. ''Forget the counter attack'' is the last thing we need to do, quite the opposite we need to learn a fair few things that we aren't good at doing right now.
There is no way on earth Conte set up to concede 6 shots on his own goal against the side that scored the most goals last year and expect to win. There is also no way he thought to only have 2 shots is enough to beat the best defence in the league.
It always tends to be us on the end of that bad luck though..
When was the last time we were dominated, yet won a game? Teams, especially the top teams, seem happy for us to keep the ball.
Yeah. If we'd set out like Chelsea yesterday we end up with a draw at best - it also would have been the most boring game ever.....not great when we are trying to get a positive atmosphere at Wembley going.
It is true that we tend to struggle against the big sides, because we are a little naive and we have some key players tgat tend to be severely sub par in those games. We still played better, we had better scoring opportunities, but we didn't hit bullseye with our finishes, like Alonso, and they didn't hve anyone fuck up as badly as Wanyama.
We had the better team out there. They had the better fortune.
No. The ones saying "we need to counter attack" are. Of course we should counter when the chance to do so presents itself. I am one saying that the throw from Lloris to Wanyama was good, cause it set us up to counter attack.
But we shouldn't look for players to buy that would primarily improve our ability to counter attack, cause that's not what we set out to do. We are good enough on the counter, through Alli, Son and Eriksen, when we need to be.
But we're built and made for high press and for controlling games. We should focus on improving our ability to do what we set out to do.
At 0-1, against a bus parking Chelsea, we couldn't counter as they didn't attack.
At 0-0 we didn't want to counter because we wanted to control the game.
If we'd gotten the first goal, would you've wanted us to drop deep to play on the counter? I wouldn't.
Counter attacking is risky, as seen when Wanyama lost us the game. If you are countered trying to counter you can get fucked. Poch doesn't want that risk, unless an opportunity really presents itself.
So, why should we build the team to do something we'll only do in very rare situations, only when an opportunity really presents itself, when we already have players that can do it very well in our side, when such players and such a style often comes with a huge downside.
And why talk about it after yesterday's game, against a bus parking, cunt, anti-counter attack side that actually one the game from stopping an attempted counter attack (that was failed at initiation because of a simple mistake that had nothing to do with our ability to counter attack).
Well, naturally we're on the side that loses when dominating more often than winning when dominated as we dominate most of our games. We do not rely or set up to be lucky or efficient, but to dominate. I do think that last year's draw against City was one such game though.
But again, last season we were so good that I can hardly remember us not dominating a game.
You seem to have this strange idea that counter attacking is an identity that belongs to some teams but not us for some reason. It's not. It's just an aspect of football that you need to be good at if you are going to win things, just like being good at defending, or set pieces, or keeping the ball. And it's something that we are currently not very good at. And as a team who want to go places and achieve things, we need to get better at this, just as we need to get better at plenty of other things. Just because Lloris fucked up his distribution and one of our players lost the ball to opposition press, two things that happen a lot to us in big matches, doesn't mean that we should completely swear off a fundamental aspect of the game.
But by all means carry on with your 'anti-counterattacking' crusade for whatever reason.
Agree. What we desperately need is someone quick and skilful to take players on in and around the box.
When a team parks the bus like that it needs someone to run at them and cause a bit of panick. A Hazard, Willian, Mane type is what we lack.
When someone beats a man it drags another defender out of possition to cover and that in turn creates spaces and frees up our other attacking players.
That said we did deal with teams parking the bus a lot better last season than we ever have before. When u have last seasons champions resorting to it though it's a different proposition.
Rose being out injured really is compounding the fact that Walkers pace has also gone. We need to replace that. Sessengon hopefully is the answer there (covering Rose's absence). And if KWP isn't ready we do need a pacy option at RB too.
Interesting how you quote my post but don't seem to have read it. I am not saying we should never counter attack. I am saying we rarely do because we are usually dominating against deep opponents and we wish to control games by holding onto the ball.
Last season we scored three counter attacking goals. Chelsea had the most with 7, followed by City with 6 and United with 5. First and third are teams that often sit deep, set out to counter. A difference of four goals from us to the best team isn't really a fucklot, is it? I'd say it's more important to be good at defending, good at set pieces, and a hell of a lot more important to get better at ginding the way through deep-lying cunts.
I could direct the same accusation at you. I never said we should sit deep and only counter attack all the time.
What we 'wish' to do is score goals and win games. And there is no one way to do that. The reason we have the ball so much and rarely counter, is because we move the ball slowly and/or the opposition are often happy to let us have it.
Again you are looking at this in a very simple black and white way. When I talk about counter attacking I'm not necessarily talking about hoofing the ball over the top for some Jamie Vardy type to run onto against the run of play after 80 minutes of being camped in your own penalty box. You don't have to be a defensive team to counter attack effectively, you just need to have the nous to see the space when it presents itself and exploit it quickly before the opposition have time to find their defensive shape. It can come from winning the ball in any situation, like when the opposition take a weak corner or when you cut out a short pass around the half way line. The question is can you turn defence to attack very quickly and effectively, and currently we can't do it all that well against quality opposition.
The best teams in the world can struggle all day to break down 11 men sitting deep behind the ball. There is never a sure fire solution to grinding a way through a well organised defence, short of having a few Leo Messi's in your team. But learning to string a few quick forward passes together when you catch your opponents short at the back is a much more fruitful and replicable tactic for all kinds of match ups.
A couple of years ago, we did not have a plan B but now can play several systems. However Conte and no doubt other Managers know our style and can plan to defeat it. That is what happened and is why we can never say our first 11 cannot be bettered because to become better we need to be more flexible with different players and different styles. That is exactly what Poch has been doing, last year Wanyama and by adding Sanchez to the squad it will add a different dimension this season. We need more flexibility further up the field and Barkley would have provided that but is injured. Lamela is also injured and does that. Hopefully we will add someone other than a defender & 3rd GK as it is needed. With 3/4 players normally injured and 18 players named each matchday we need 22 players that are all considered good enough to play when called upon.
I don't think Chelsea's injuries helped us yesterday.
I'm sure we would have played like below until we realised they would only have one upfront.
[formation=343, Lloris, Dier, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Trippier, Wanyama, Dembele, Davies, Eriksen, Kane, Dele][/formation]