I agree. I do not think we will need 40... but of course we don’t know. Of course, no team ever goes out intentionally looking to draw a game. Nor do they target X number of games that they will win, and forget about the rest. It’s about a general mentality. I do not think a more attacking mentality to “go for wins” is going to help. We are averaging less than a goal a game, and it’s not because we are parking the bus. It’s because we stink. I look at the team, and to me our strength is at defensive-mid. I think our CB’s are okay, and Hoedt or Stephens can possibly step up. Our attack is quite poor, but if ther’s a positive there it is players like Davis, JWP, and Long who run hard, possess some intelligence, and are good at distribution. They just don’t single-handedly break down defenses. So the way I see it, we focus on being solid at the back, play a possession game, and be patient. Other teams will make mistakes or get tired or frustrated, and that might lead to a few more goals. We should hopefully get in an attacker or two, which could help. In the meantime, there are teams even worse than us in terms of talent. And teams that will fall apart and turn on each other in when the pressure mounts. So it’s not like a conservative, possession approach means you can’t win. We did pretty well with that under Puel last year, people complained but look at the results once we moved away. People say we want to win. That’s fine but then what is the most likely way we do it? To me we are far more likely to be successful grinding out some 1-0 games than winning 3-2.
The odds must be low on 3 teams starting with S going down. So I'll take Swansea and Stoke. Makes it much less likely that we will then.
How does this differ from we're doing now, though? We're already a very patient, possession-oriented team; we're 7th in the PL in average possession, only a whisker behind Manchester United and well above 8th. We're also 7th (again, behind the usual suspects) in both pass completion percentage and number of short passes played per match, so we aren't spraying the ball to the opposition in our zeal. We rarely if ever over-commit and get done on a quick counter; rather, our goals against tend to be of the "it was coming" variety, where a team strings together a few attacks, we offer no threat that would in turn put them on their heels, and they use that pressure to break down our increasingly fragile defense. We have a real problem with surrendering gilt-edged chances when we have a multitude of defenders behind the ball...I don't know how we decree that they be more solid by fiat. Having situations where any mistake will cost us points because we're unlikely to score on the other end is probably not helping, though.
I don't know how we are going to start scoring goals simply by you declaring so, either. It's just kind of a blah team. Nothing is easy. If it were, we'd already be doing it. But our attack is abysmal and our defense is at least semi-competent. Moreover, we have plenty of evidence that Tadic and Boufal just don't bring enough consistency, and that Davis, Long, Redmond and JWP aren't scorers or brilliant playmakers. I'm not trying to blast these players but seriously-- we've seen them under 2, 3, or 4 managers now. The attacking personnel we have do not work well as a unit. That's not going to change. Or at least not in a month. It's easier to coach defense than offense. Our defense is much more capable of improvement just looking at the players as well. Forster has been bad, maybe a few games off will help or maybe McCarthy is an improvement. Hoedt, Stephens, Lemina, Hojbjerg could improve from experience or the entire unit can step up just from playing together more. Forster has been bad, maybe McCarthy will be better. B Take the VVD money, buy some attacking players. That's how we will hopefully improve on our scoring and start to win games. We really don't even need that much. If Austin were healthy we would probably stay up. The goal now is simply to be less ****ty than three other teams from now until the end of the season. Our defense is average. Our attack is terrible. Bring in a good player or two to improve that, and just work to cut out mistakes on defense and keep the morale up. Average defense+merely bad instead of incredibly ****ty attack=survival.
