So what? No idea if that's normal or suicidal. What did it look like last season when we beat Wolves away, or Spurs at home? What was West Ham's in the game just gone? Is that when in possession or over the course of the game? A graphic on its own means nothing.
Great answer and research Squibba! Though.. I'm thinking more outside the box. Thinking about how clubs history can be swayed by one big occasion. Leeds in the 70's for instance never seemed to recover from their European cup defeat in 75.. and indeed took a while to recover from losing the play off game to us. Did Villa's cup final loss lead to them breaking the side up perhaps? Either way i was more staring into a crystal ball than trying to get to the bottom of our current form.
Hey happy No idea sweetheart. I clearly write our average position. Meaning over the course of 90 mins thats how our shape and system looked. As you can see, with our FB’s pushed high up, that space behind our back line was there to be played all the time. A graphic on its own does mean nothing. That’s why it wasn’t a graphic on its own. Maybe you missed it. Anyway cheer up sunshine and try not to act so big and tough on forum, it doesn’t suit you.
Shows how incredibly narrow we are, and how the full backs are almost inverted wingers. Suicidal football.
Not really strange when you went on a tangent. You could have just asked nicely and I would have responded nicer.
This is true with regard to penalties. As long as the onus is too much on backing the ref's original decision then the 'levelling up' process will be held back. However, with regards to offside decisions, 'levelling up' is already working perfectly.
The Leeds example is perhaps not the best to illustrate your point. They had kept pretty much exactly the same team for the previous six seasons or so (that’s the same eleven, not squad) and it was accepted at the time that the European Cup Final would be their last hurrah. It was inevitable that they would fall away after that because they were all coming to the end of their careers at the same time, even if they had won it.
Just to be clear - what I posted wasn't a portrait by our resident maestro @CarlosKickaballs . It was a c&p from the beeb.
SLB’s post doesn’t exactly read like it was rude. The questions seem fair. And hardly a tangent. The image alone doesn’t tell us much and it’s difficult to tell if it’s damning as you say. What’s the source? I’d have thought most teams full backs would always have a higher position compared to the centre backs against all but the most dangerous opponents.
It's come to my attention that our resident avant garde artiste has been coming in for a bit of stick on here recently. No idea why. He's a f.cking hero as far as I'm concerned.
Hadn't read your second paragraph when I watched that, but that was exactly my view. Even worse than I remembered. Demoralising to watch the farce of our defence, running around like headless chickens, leaving unmarked men in acres of space in our box.
I agree with part of your point but disagree with another. I think that it's good that the refs aren't being overruled for % calls, but that, I believe, will help us. Big clubs have triumphed with massive, big calls in the past. Penalties that were a dive, offside goals and clear cut errors for red cards. The worry would be someone in front of the screen with an "I've seen them given/hes got a right to go down there" sort of attitude. Refs will still favour the big teams, because that is the route of least resistance, but hopefully their massively wrong calls will be corrected.
So, by forum etiquette, should we use only PMs for the punishment aspect of communicating? This bye law seems little understood on here.
They do: https://m.imgur.com/a/prRj5ba Our shape isn’t dissimilar to other teams. The most notable stat is that we have the highest expected conceded goals in the league by far. We should have conceded a goal more against than Bournemouth should against City. City could put 8 past us at this rate.
Excellent post. Just watch out for the excoriating PM I’m about to send. I would be surprised if any of my lot were on here. Beyond cheese, I think they’d struggle.
Well fancy that. In modern football, full backs are barely defenders, they're regularly relied upon to provide the width going forwards in all back fours. So the graphic showing ours are advanced proves exactly nothing about Gracia's tactics. We're crap defensively but it's not because we're playing some crazy suicidal formation with the full backs high up the pitch.
Whilst the moaning about our horrendously exposed defence goes on our poorly set up midfield slopes off quietly into the background... Our defence needs to be better, but any defence that has a midfield like ours in front of it is going to concede goals. The build up to the third goal on Saturday started with GD bottling a tackle, WH bottling the next tackle, our defenders unable to block a slide pass and a midfielder who let his man get goal side to tap in. Midfield needs changing dramatically and soon. Benching Doucoure and GD would be a good start.
GD is not there to put in crunching tackles. I can't see how benching our best player will improve matters.
He's not there to let players walk past him unchallenged, either. We lack a bit of steel at the moment. GD is a luxury player and great when he's on form, but on Saturday he was wasteful and weak.
