It’s obvious we’re in deep do do. If we’re going to stay in this league, QSF, in my opinion, has to change our style of play and ethos if this team is to survive and here’s how he should do it Firstly, line up as a THREE-FIVE-ONE-ONE Build the team around three hard working central midfielders in Capoue, Cleverley and Quina. Doucoure needs dropping from the starting eleven. All I’ve seen this season is Capoue and Doucoure being five feet apart, Parallel to one another. They’re like a couple of council workers, two men for one job! Capoue hasn’t been his brilliant best but he gets the nod over Doucoure. The wide areas are our weak point in the squad, we really don’t have one decent defensive wide man but if I had to pick two it would be Janmaart and Masina We all know we’re not blessed with great central defenders either but I’d go with Cathcart, Dawson and Kabasele I’d like to see Hughes ( again a hardworking player ) play behind the solitary attacker which should be Sarr. The current team is woeful out of possession of the football but that’s largely down to the system we play. Teams like ( Brighton, West Ham, Everton, Wolves ) have picked us off on the counter. I hold my breathe every time we get awarded a corner or free kick because we over commit bodies in the oppositions box, lose possession and are instantly on the back foot, out of shape and at our most venerable. I think we need to become a team hard to break down, similar to Wolves, and start playing for the 1-0 wins, rather than this gung ho attitude we seem to have at the moment. Player like Gerry D and Bobby P are impact players and I’d only use them for the last twenty minutes, if at all. We’re not going to stay up playing open, attractive football with a defence and system we currently have. We need players willing to roll up their sleeves and putting a real shift in on a consistent basis. Lastly, I’d like to see both Foster and Gomes dropped and see Bachmann or Dahlberg given a chance but can’t see that happening anytime soon. So to conclude 1: Change the system to Become a team that sits deep and stays compact in both home and alway games 2: change the formation to a 3-5-1-1 3: Pick players who are willing to put a shift in 4: Don’t panic, it’s still only September
CB is our weakest position on the pitch - playing 3 at the back just means Dawson or Mariappa continuing to get minutes when they shouldn't be getting any. Newcastle away showed we can pack our own penalty box with as many players as possible, but when none of them are actually capable of defending it won't make a slightest bit of difference to our ability to keep goals out.
I disagree, our centre backs aren’t great but they are capable. I’d say it’s our full backs that are the weak links. A case in point yesterday Janmaat and his OG, an awful unforced error. Holebas and Kiko are only interested in going forward, it wouldn’t be so bad if they were good at that but they’re not. They get caught out of position time and time again which puts extra pressure on our centre backs making them look worse. My personal opinion is that centre back is the easiest position on the pitch, you need certain physical attributes and everything else you need should be a given for a professional footballer. In the modern game the full back position requires a much higher level of skill than it used to. Ours are absolutely shocking and the reason we are struggling so badly.
Cathcart went walkabout for Wolves' first goal - he was marking nobody a few yards up from our other 3 defenders and didn't even noticed Doherty arriving in the box. Dawson had lost Jimenez twice before that as well for chances they should have scored from. For Newcastle we'd packed our penalty box and still allowed Schar plenty of time and space in the middle of it. It's true that none of our full-backs want to defend, but to say our CBs are capable is a nonsense. Yeah being a CB requires certain physical attributes, but most of ours are crocks lacking in them.
The entire defensive back line needs replacing. CB's and wing backs are not up to it. We ball-watch, do not anticipate situations, do not track runs, do not win headers from crosses. Do not block shots. There is not one aspect of defending that we do well. We're always caught flat footed. It's all too easy for our opponent to pick us apart. A couple of accurate passes and we're done for. The Wolves first goal was just typical how we defend. A ball played in behind Janmaat to an unmarked player who has time to cross to another unmarked player who side foots home. It's just so ******* incompetent. There is not a worse group of defenders in the Premier League. We are the worst. The rest of our team is good enough for this league, but it's all undermined by the defence. We will not keep a clean sheet this season, unless we fluke one or our opponent has a really bad game against us. We have to score 3 in order to get something out of the game. Could have scored 7 at City and still would have got nothing. This is what we're up against every week.
Is that down to the player though or how he’s been coached? Cathcart has always been a fairly capable defender, Dawson I don’t really know enough about to say if he has or hasn’t. My point about the CB position being the easiest is that I personally feel you can coach relatively limited CBs to do a passable job. Look at Wolves and Brighton, they’ve largely got the centre backs they had in the championship, but they can still do a more than capable job. Has Cathcart suddenly forgotten everything he's learnt in his career? I highly doubt it. Kiko and Holebas in my eyes always been terrible defenders. Holebas has a bit of a purple patch last season, but that was mostly in an attacking sense, he got some goals and some assists but was still a ghastly defender. People go on about the one season Holebas kept Ashley coal out of the Roma side, how many years ago was that? I’m rambling a bit but my point is that I think you can coach Dawson and Cathcart to do a reasonable job together, but I think with the full backs we’ve got their job is made even harder.
The best form of defence is attack. I’d rather we play free flowing total football, score goals but may concede by being more open than playing pointless sideways football scoring no goals and still conceding. The team who scores the most wins the game remember
Just because Wolves and Brighton's CBs once played in the Champ doesn't automatically mean that they're incapable. Prodl and Britos played for us in the Champ and were probably our best CB pairing since we've been promoted. Unfortunately we've not adequately replaced them. Cathcart is alright, but he's the best of a bad bunch and even at his best is just adequate. Dawson is cack. Maybe he has been capable in the past, but he isn't any more. WBA fans weren't convinced by him last season either. Mariappa is sub-par in the PL as well. It has been shown time and again. Playing 3 CBs would mean at least one of the sub-par Dawson and Mariappa would continue stinking the place out. Holebas has been fine overall defensively for us, while sometimes excellent offensively. His dropping off a cliff now is more due to his age now than a lack of quality in the past.
Disagree entirely. We are letting in at least two goals per game and in most cases early goals. It doesn’t matter how good your attack is, bar maybe city and Liverpool there isn’t a team in the league that would survive by letting two goals in every game. If we continue to let two goals per game in we will he relegated, it’s as simple as that.
We started off vs Brighton on the front foot bombarding them with chances, but they scored with their very first attack, and basically each of the others they had after that. Whether we sit deep, or push forwards, teams get loads of easy chances against us.
Don't think Prodl and Britos played for us in the Championship.. We need some pace and organising at the back . Kiko has that pace but cannot defend whilst Kabasele could be the best but loses control too often .
A bit left-field, and definitely straw-clutching, but what about dropping Capoue into a back 3. Same for Chalobah once fit. Both are good positionally and would be a calming influence on the ball. Could maybe put one between Cathcart and Kabasele.
I like kabs, he is a good defender but hits the panic button so often. He actually sat down vs Bournemouth which allowed them to equalise. He has been rash and sent off a few times and given away a few pens However, he does try. He's a slightly better Cathcart on his best day, i'd rather him start over Dawson who has shown almost nothing to convince us otherwise. What he did yesterday was a joke also. Robert Page would be fumming.
Holebas had one good spell last season from an offensive point of view. Defensively he’s always been shambolic, he’s always let crosses in far too easily, he’s always given the ball away cheaply trying to do something he doesn’t have the ability to do, he’s always been caught out of position. Bar one spell last season he’s always been a weak link. Cathcart has generally been consistent and a capable defender.
He did lose his man. But again the cross came in far to easily. Darryl was pointing to Sarr to watch the runner, he just stood and watched leaving a 2 on 1. Simple slide pass and he's in.
What's really weird with us in recent times is that, when the opposition comes onto us and the ball is heading towards our box, we don't look like we're got a set of defenders in the way. We look like there happen to be four (if we're lucky) players in that general area. They don't seem to react or read the play any differently to if Deulofeu, Troy, Hughes and Gray had just managed to get back into the space in time. They don't look like they know what they're doing any more than anyone else in their specialist positions.
The spacing between the centre backs and full backs is atrocious. One ball into the space drags the whole defence across and leads to tap ins in the 6 yard box. I haven't seen it from another angle but Holebas must have let Doherty run past him to score their first yesterday. Bad positioning can be sorted with decent coaching. Not picking up runners and individual errors is down to the players. I don't see it getting any better, Holebas has been woeful defensively for years and the other full backs just can't seem to do the basics. If Britos was still here I'd honestly line up with a back four of Dawson, Cathcart, Kabasele and Britos just to get some sort of solidity. I'm not even kidding!
The fullback issue is one we have had for a number of years. Paredes and Nyom before Kiko and Janmaat. One of the many problems is that our superstar wingers refuse to track back efficiently to cover them when they are pulled out by overlaps. Both CMs stay too far up as well waiting for the breakdown that never happens.
I think the decline in performance of our defence owes a lot to their age; there comes a point, often quite suddenly, when the legs just won’t get them to where they know they need to be. So they get left for dead a couple of times & then start to hang back as a reaction to that & so afford Prem forwards acres of space, with predictable results. It’s no coincidence our starting 11 has the highest average age in the division. Too many have lost their legs 1 year earlier than bargained for. And we’ve loaned out Wilmot to get almost zero game time.
His contact expires in the summer. Massive, massive squad rebuild needed - luckily the ****s in charge did not splash 30 mil odd on a winger. (clap clap clap)
I think Holebas is actually, one of, if not our most passionate player Furthermore he is no where near as bad as many on here paint him, he is no doubt getting a little old, but he is still the best LB we have, and at least he gives 100% every game which is more than you can say for most of our team.
I don't understand how you can possibly say this when he spends decent portions of the game moaning and complaining at others whilst consistently failing to prevent crosses coming in to the box (something that's always been an issue noted on here and elsewhere) and repeatedly failing to do the most basic tenets of his job, losing his man, failing to track runners and granting them free access to our box and, by extension, the goal. Doherty at the weekend is a perfect example.
What has passion got to do with it? So he shouts, moans and waves his arms about a lot. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s not a very good defender and at age 35 he is progressively getting worse. Not many established premier league sides rely on 35 year old players anywhere on the pitch, irrespective of how passionate they are.
Well seeing as many people on here have been moaning vociferously about the lack of passion the team are currently showing and saying that they just don't care, I think PASSION has got a lot to do with it. That is why I am pointing out that Holebas is at least trying his heart out unlike most of the team
Ahh, the old throw your arms up and complain a lot. I didn’t think people still fell for that routine. I was wrong.
