A different way of playing

I think what we saw last night at Craven Cottage was a team trying to play the type of football we have all season without having the players to do it. Shola and Andy both have immense strength, can hold up the ball well and feed others into the game, and in Carroll's case teams even went to double mark him on occasions, but what they don't have is pace.

Ranger, Lovenkrands and Best all have pace and are arguably our 3 quickest first team players (probably except for Jose) and we saw last night that when we kept the ball on the ground we showed glimpses of being able to open up defences. Note I said glimpses, not that we actually did! Jonas's through ball for Best which Schwarzer just reached first springs to mind. Too many times both last night and in the last few games has our mentality been to launch it from deep in our own half. If you have 2 good hold up men up top then yeah that's understandable... but last night we didn't.

I think all it will take is our midfield to start realising this and for the team in general to start using this new weapon we have and we can cause most teams a lot of trouble. We all know Barton has the passing ability to hit someone in full stride 9/10 times and I reckon the rest of the midfield would be able to as well. One thing we don't lack is midfield ability. With a bit more movement up front we'd be able to open teams up on the ground and I reckon this will come with time on the pitch and the training ground so the players are used to working with each other.

Basically all is not lost, no need to panic Captain!! We just need to learn and play to our strengths again as they're different to the strengths we had a few weeks ago.

 

here here!

 

You actually have a point, on the odd occasion we did look threatening it was from a through ball. Hopefully Pardew realises this!

 

Think it comes from being 5'8 and a right winger, I used to hate seeing the ball lumped in the air!

 

When we have Ben Arfa and Ireland we will have two players that are excellent with the ball at their feet and they can both play a good through ball, as long as the tactics are right I think we will be fine this season

 

Exactly That's the main reason I was glad we did get Ireland in the end! Our team as a whole is very solid but just cries out for some creativity on occasions

 

I completely agree, last night I was screaming at the TV in the pub (I got some funny old looks mind) for us to keep the ball on the deck. Especially last night for the facts that you raised but also because they have a tall defender who is going to win most headers in Hangeland!

I don't think you can blame the strikers for this, it just seemed to be that we got our tactics wrong...it wasn't brain surgery but somehow we still did. Also if you noticed knowone was running down the channels when they should have been, when we did play balls into all of our strikers feet the Fulham defence always managed to get there first, go to the ball for ****s sake!

Anyways, rant over. Its not all doom and gloom, we have played that like this season twice (atleast) already. Every teams plays poorly 2 times a year minimum!

 

It wasnt all down to us in particular, if you didnt notice Fulham were exceptionally good at staying very close to us and pressing us back into our half the pitch, sometimes the long ball was the only option, I do agree with everything said in the article but it would have been very hard for our midfielders to pass around a team that were last night very disciplined, it seemed that Barton was having an off night, Nolan isnt the best passer of the ball at the best of times, Guthrie is extremely average and Gutierrez just runs into a blind alley everytime.

 

Yep I agree with you, both teams were looking to close each other down really quickly and it didn't leave a whole lot of room or time on the ball so the long ball was sometimes the only option. I think that from now on it would be good to see that our first instinct is to keep it on the ground when we have the option to. Having said that though against Arsenal maybe we would be better trying to get amongst their centre backs more directly as their midfield is insanely good!

 

You forgot to add that their CB's are really bad

 

And their centre backs are really bad!!

 

Their center backs aren't the best when there bullied around, Where's shola when you need him?

Hate it when we play hoof ball, wanna see the team mixing it up..