33 shots v 6

[Jerseybean]

1 hour ago, Davefevs said:

On the Forever Bristol pod last night I gave a crap analogy of some of our movement being like a rubber band, when I was poorly trying to describe cause and effect.

If we take one situation last night, a situation that happened quite a number if times, it probably sums up why we struggled to get the ball through the lines.  In effect picture in your heads Taylor Moore having just received a pass from Kalas and is 10 yards insides our half, right side of centre.

If you could lift up and place our players into positions relative to the positions of Millwall’s players, you would end up moving virtually every player who was ahead of the ball.  That can’t be right can it?  In effect, they were in the wrong places, nobody / not enough players were providing (good) angles for passes, nobody was moving to shift Millwall players out of their good positioning to block passing lanes or create space.  Credit to Millwall for their discipline and hard work, but poor by us.

We must learn to play against the halfway line press (it’s not a high press).  It reminded me of Boro at home, apart from we were better that night because we had better / fitter players on the pitch (Mawson, Weimann, Paterson).

I’m not picking on Nagy, just using him as an example.  In the situation we’ve pictured above, where would we normally expect him to be?  Within 10 yards of Moore with an angle to receive the ball.  Where was he?  Running forward in a straight line between Moore and Martin, 30 yards away from Moore, 10 yards away from Martin.  What problems does that cause?

• Moore cannot pass to Nagy because he’s running away from him
• Moore cannot pass to Martin because Nagy has blocked the passing lane.

One Millwall player can now pressure Moore because he can block the pass to either Nagy or Martin.  That player is also able to get close to an inside pass to an already marked Bakinson to create a two-man press or an outside pass to an already marked Hunt, and create a two-man press there also.

Not all Nagy’s fault though.  Other players positions aren’t right too.  Hunt is in a position where if he gets it, he can only go back or risk a dangerous pass infield to Kalas.

I don’t have the answers apart from we need to work harder off the ball to give options.

Even with all of that if we then mis-control it it’s possession over anyway.

So here is this armchair manager’s response to the excellent question ‘what do you suggest we do?’ None of what follows is rocket science, it’s just basic school-boy stuff. I am not aiming any of this at any player or member of staff, it’s about changing our style of play, which currently is not only unsuccessful but also terrible to watch and no doubt awful to play in.

A starter for ten: 

1) Look to introduce far more variation in our play. The default approach from the back is for DB to distribute it short and then we try (and usually fail) to build from the back. To be clear I’m not advocating reverting to the long ball game as the pay-off from that approach is generally poor. Just proposing more variety e.g. a long ball now and then, more forward balls from the back, greater midfield movement, players working much harder off the ball to create space and to be better placed to receive, etc.

2) Create options, too often there is no decent option for the player with the ball, so they are forced to go backwards or sideways or deliver a pass to somebody who is not well placed to receive it (for example this happened numerous times to JH last night, who when given a pass was penned in a wide position with nowhere to go, he managed to buy a foul once or twice but otherwise it was a dead-end pass). Again this requires much, much more movement off the ball and players being better placed to receive a pass sideways on rather than with their back to goal.

3) Stop giving the ball away cheaply - a basic requirement of a professional footballer is to look after the ball - this is related to the points above; we are super guilty of this, time after time conceding possession. Last night HNM was ‘done’ and they scored from it.

4) Dead ball situations; please, let’s develop a number of scenarios, we rarely trouble anyone from free kicks or corners. A hobby-horse of mine is our hopeless throw ins which take an age and invariably end up with us going backwards or losing the ball. 

5) Close the huge gaps between the defence, midfield and forwards, they tend to play as three separate units with nothing linking them! 

6) ‘Percentages’ this old adage is as true as it has ever been, get the ball in the box and things will happen. I do know about the appalling low number of attempts on goal we’ve had this season, but I don’t know (statistically) how much time we have had the ball in the opponents box, although based on watching every game I’d say it has been a very, very low percentage.  Last night and against Rotherham, for example, I can’t think of any real period of play in or even around the opponents box and last night we didn’t even win a corner! So let’s  look at ways of getting the ball in the box quicker and more often. 

7) Be quicker. This is so basic that I’m embarrassed to even suggest it, our play is so slow and pedestrian, almost as if that alone wins matches, let’s be quicker, sharper, more decisive all over the pitch!

8)Take a few more risks in the final third. I don’t mean be foolish, rather let’s be a bit more courageous and less predictable, we tend to be too cautious and over play when we get forward. Just sometimes we need to decide on the less obvious, more risky option to unlock things.

9) Be more direct. 

10) Work to create better parings and trios of understanding. Not sure how best to explain this but I mean the automatic understanding that develops between players, so they instinctively know where/what a team mate will do next. I don’t see much evidence of this between any of our players.

 

[Davefevs]

1 hour ago, Harry said:

Dave, I saw that very picture a number of times too, but I also saw on a good number of occasions where Nagy was coming toward Moore from a higher position, Moore played the ball in, and Nagy miscontrolled or had a really heavy touch, resulting in either a loss of possession or an immediate need to pass it straight back to the defender again. 
 

It seemed like it was our ONLY game plan. Moore to pass a 20 yard ball to Nagy. 
It was attempted numerous times with pretty much zero success and was also ‘intended’ many times but like you said Moore reneged on it as it wasn’t on. 
 

We had no other plan. It’s truly shocking football. 

Yes, looked to be our one way forward, either than or eye of a needle passes.

1 hour ago, Harry said:

Further to my earlier reply, I realise I didn’t answer the question directly. So here goes. 
 

What could he have done? 
Ok, since he’s set his stall out to play this 3-5-2, how the hell did he end up with a 4-2-4. 
 

On those last set of subs, he could’ve easily stuck with his favoured formation. He had 2 centre backs on the bench. He could’ve had :

Vyner-Moore-Towler at the back. 
Hunt & Rowe still as the wing backs. 
Bakinson holding the DM. 
HNM & COD as the 2 attacking CM’s. 
Fam & Wells/Sem up top. 
 

Quite why he had to bring Rowe in from LWB to CB, put Cod as a LB and have 4 strikers on, I’ll never know. 

that really disappointed me Harry.  Could’ve stayed 352 quite easily.

@Jerseybean 5 in particular is true.

Heres a map of average passing positions last night.

To simply summarise, too deep, too stretched.

Heres Sheff Wed (h)

Although both look similar, we see the difference in terms of Kalas (22) deeper, but how are midfield are sitting more on our defence than Weimann and Pato did....not a surprise...but also less support to Wells and Martin.  We also see possession in final third drop from 27% to 13%.

[spudski]

4 hours ago, Davefevs said:

On the Forever Bristol pod last night I gave a crap analogy of some of our movement being like a rubber band, when I was poorly trying to describe cause and effect.

If we take one situation last night, a situation that happened quite a number if times, it probably sums up why we struggled to get the ball through the lines.  In effect picture in your heads Taylor Moore having just received a pass from Kalas and is 10 yards insides our half, right side of centre.

If you could lift up and place our players into positions relative to the positions of Millwall’s players, you would end up moving virtually every player who was ahead of the ball.  That can’t be right can it?  In effect, they were in the wrong places, nobody / not enough players were providing (good) angles for passes, nobody was moving to shift Millwall players out of their good positioning to block passing lanes or create space.  Credit to Millwall for their discipline and hard work, but poor by us.

We must learn to play against the halfway line press (it’s not a high press).  It reminded me of Boro at home, apart from we were better that night because we had better / fitter players on the pitch (Mawson, Weimann, Paterson).

I’m not picking on Nagy, just using him as an example.  In the situation we’ve pictured above, where would we normally expect him to be?  Within 10 yards of Moore with an angle to receive the ball.  Where was he?  Running forward in a straight line between Moore and Martin, 30 yards away from Moore, 10 yards away from Martin.  What problems does that cause?

• Moore cannot pass to Nagy because he’s running away from him
• Moore cannot pass to Martin because Nagy has blocked the passing lane.

One Millwall player can now pressure Moore because he can block the pass to either Nagy or Martin.  That player is also able to get close to an inside pass to an already marked Bakinson to create a two-man press or an outside pass to an already marked Hunt, and create a two-man press there also.

Not all Nagy’s fault though.  Other players positions aren’t right too.  Hunt is in a position where if he gets it, he can only go back or risk a dangerous pass infield to Kalas.

I don’t have the answers apart from we need to work harder off the ball to give options.

Even with all of that if we then mis-control it it’s possession over anyway.

Exactly this.

It's something I've been harping on about for a couple seasons.

Our off the ball movement isn't natural.

It's a game of angles. We don't create natural angles to receive a pass, or draw players create space.

The last player we had that understood this and did it naturally...something instilled from youth, was Marty Taylor.

Watching our players...it's obvious they are being coached to retain shape and be in certain positions. Which is fine...but not if it goes against the natural shape that happens during movement in a game.

This coaching is causing players to have to think about it, and is stopping the players move into positions that naturally occur in a game.

Passing angles occur in a game, as does space...but we very rarely take advantage of them

 

[Davefevs]

13 minutes ago, spudski said:

Exactly this.

It's something I've been harping on about for a couple seasons.

Our off the ball movement isn't natural.

It's a game of angles. We don't create natural angles to receive a pass, or draw players create space.

The last player we had that understood this and did it naturally...something instilled from youth, was Marty Taylor.

Watching our players...it's obvious they are being coached to retain shape and be in certain positions. Which is fine...but not if it goes against the natural shape that happens during movement in a game.

This coaching is causing players to have to think about it, and is stopping the players move into positions that naturally occur in a game.

Passing angles occur in a game, as does space...but we very rarely take advantage of them

 

I know - we’ve written about it before.  I would say the early games of this season I saw much more natural flow, players using their intelligence to be fluid, whilst replicating the patterns they’d probably learned as youngsters.  For example, Hunt realising Weimann has spun his man, so he knows he can make an overlap, and when he gets in behind the full-back, Pato instinctively knows he can get into a position for a pull-back whereas Wells is trying to dart across his man.

They don’t do that because the ball is in position x, they do it because they’re good, intelligent footballers who recognise a situation, where their opponents are and react accordingly.

To some extent what we seeing is a team of less capable footballers not being good enough to do that, so you get sterile patterns of play.  They aren’t bad players just not as skilled as the ones who are injured.

If we had 3 or 4 out of Mawson, Williams, Weimann, Paterson and Dasilva in the eleven the footballing intelligence increases so much....and you get fluidity, creativity.

Its not guaranteed, but the chances of better football increase.

[spudski]

7 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I know - we’ve written about it before.  I would say the early games of this season I saw much more natural flow, players using their intelligence to be fluid, whilst replicating the patterns they’d probably learned as youngsters.  For example, Hunt realising Weimann has spun his man, so he knows he can make an overlap, and when he gets in behind the full-back, Pato instinctively knows he can get into a position for a pull-back whereas Wells is trying to dart across his man.

They don’t do that because the ball is in position x, they do it because they’re good, intelligent footballers who recognise a situation, where their opponents are and react accordingly.

To some extent what we seeing is a team of less capable footballers not being good enough to do that, so you get sterile patterns of play.  They aren’t bad players just not as skilled as the ones who are injured.

If we had 3 or 4 out of Mawson, Williams, Weimann, Paterson and Dasilva in the eleven the footballing intelligence increases so much....and you get fluidity, creativity.

Its not guaranteed, but the chances of better football increase.

I agree with a lot of that Dave...however I think all our players have that natural instinct. 

I can see what's happening during a game...the coaching is stifling the natural opportunities that arise.

I see players refuse to go into a space, even if it would allow an opening.

I see players with a game plan to attack down one side...even if they have drawn the opposition and created space on the other side, they will still percervere down one side even if it's congested. Game plan over ruling natural opportunities.

We have heard players talk about being allowed to play with more freedom without fear.

Right now I don't see that...they are playing percentage football to a defined game plan and no one is risking going outside of that.

We hear fans say we have coached natural ability out of players...true to an extent. HNM is a prime example. Bakinson seems to be going the same way too.

We are too focussed on not losing a game and keeping shape for the sake of it, rather than trying to win games using concentration and taking opportunities that arise naturally in a game.

Look at Leeds last season. They kept shape...but used natural angles and space and played expansively. No one scared to move.

It's like watching chess in defence and midfield the final third turns to pinball.

It's very poor tactically imo.

We'll do well to finish bottom third if this continues...regardless of who's injured.

[Davefevs]

1 minute ago, spudski said:

I agree with a lot of that Dave...however I think all our players have that natural instinct. 

I can see what's happening during a game...the coaching is stifling the natural opportunities that arise.

I see players refuse to go into a space, even if it would allow an opening.

I see players with a game plan to attack down one side...even if they have drawn the opposition and created space on the other side, they will still percervere down one side even if it's congested. Game plan over ruling natural opportunities.

We have heard players talk about being allowed to play with more freedom without fear.

Right now I don't see that...they are playing percentage football to a defined game plan and no one is risking going outside of that.

We hear fans say we have coached natural ability out of players...true to an extent. HNM is a prime example. Bakinson seems to be going the same way too.

We are too focussed on not losing a game and keeping shape for the sake of it, rather than trying to win games using concentration and taking opportunities that arise naturally in a game.

Look at Leeds last season. They kept shape...but used natural angles and space and played expansively. No one scared to move.

It's like watching chess in defence and midfield the final third turns to pinball.

It's very poor tactically imo.

We'll do well to finish bottom third if this continues...regardless of who's injured.

Yeah you might well be right in this current run of 6-9 games where we’ve definitely been different from the early weeks of the season.

[Harry]

6 minutes ago, spudski said:

I agree with a lot of that Dave...however I think all our players have that natural instinct. 

I can see what's happening during a game...the coaching is stifling the natural opportunities that arise.

I see players refuse to go into a space, even if it would allow an opening.

I see players with a game plan to attack down one side...even if they have drawn the opposition and created space on the other side, they will still percervere down one side even if it's congested. Game plan over ruling natural opportunities.

We have heard players talk about being allowed to play with more freedom without fear.

Right now I don't see that...they are playing percentage football to a defined game plan and no one is risking going outside of that.

We hear fans say we have coached natural ability out of players...true to an extent. HNM is a prime example. Bakinson seems to be going the same way too.

We are too focussed on not losing a game and keeping shape for the sake of it, rather than trying to win games using concentration and taking opportunities that arise naturally in a game.

Look at Leeds last season. They kept shape...but used natural angles and space and played expansively. No one scared to move.

It's like watching chess in defence and midfield the final third turns to pinball.

It's very poor tactically imo.

We'll do well to finish bottom third if this continues...regardless of who's injured.

Good points Spudski. 
I’m trying to recall how many ‘cross-field’ balls / switches of play we made last night and I can only recall Wells getting the ball on the left and hitting a switch to Hunt on the opposite touchline. 
One switch!!! 
That certainly screams ‘rigid’ to me. 

[spudski]

6 minutes ago, Harry said:

Good points Spudski. 
I’m trying to recall how many ‘cross-field’ balls / switches of play we made last night and I can only recall Wells getting the ball on the left and hitting a switch to Hunt on the opposite touchline. 
One switch!!! 
That certainly screams ‘rigid’ to me. 

Exactly Harry...we are playing way too rigid.

[Davefevs]

9 minutes ago, Harry said:

Good points Spudski. 
I’m trying to recall how many ‘cross-field’ balls / switches of play we made last night and I can only recall Wells getting the ball on the left and hitting a switch to Hunt on the opposite touchline. 
One switch!!! 
That certainly screams ‘rigid’ to me. 

Mawson used to ping it too....missed him.

[Kibs]

1 hour ago, spudski said:

Exactly this.

It's something I've been harping on about for a couple seasons.

Our off the ball movement isn't natural.

It's a game of angles. We don't create natural angles to receive a pass, or draw players create space.

The last player we had that understood this and did it naturally...something instilled from youth, was Marty Taylor.

Watching our players...it's obvious they are being coached to retain shape and be in certain positions. Which is fine...but not if it goes against the natural shape that happens during movement in a game.

This coaching is causing players to have to think about it, and is stopping the players move into positions that naturally occur in a game.

Passing angles occur in a game, as does space...but we very rarely take advantage of them

 

Which ironically, was probably my biggest gripe under LJ. No surprise to me that we are seeing the same issues.

[Atyeo's lift]

It seems to me that since we employed two England set-up coaches, we play like England, only without the talent.