Our shape yesterday was awful. When you're playing well and getting results it's a positive thing to have players switching, wingers coming off the wing, strikers dropping off, etc but when you're playing poorly it doesn't help when we have all of our players seemingly drifting in and out of various areas of the pitch.
It's something we did better against Swansea and although we were also aided by Swansea playing much more open than QPR it is still worth persisting with. Whether it's Defoe, Ade or Saha we need someone to be consistently in the box not drifting out wide or deep so stay on the slowest centre back's shoulder as all of them can either outpace the defender with a ball over the top or the defensive line is forced back giving our midfield and VDV in particular more space to operate in.
Wingers provide an outball on the wing so do it so Ade doesn't feel the need to. If we're playing one winger then make ****ing doubly sure they stay on the wing and don't start pissing around running inside to be marked out of the game. Lennon was every bit as guilty of this yesterday. I like it and think he works well when he overloads a flank with Bale or plays behind the strikers in spells but that's one for next season, not whilst we're struggling so badly.
Holding mids and Modric, no interchanging. Don't let Modric go all the way back to the centre backs to pick up the ball and have the holding midfielders hold their position!! If we really need an extra body up there then let Sandro move up the pitch but don't let him drift around to the right wing and just generally get a bit lost, really Walker on the overlap should be the first "extra man" to be thrown forward anyway.
VDV should be the only player that has license to drift around but he needs to be much more attack orientated, even if it means ignoring when our midfield are struggling to create, help them with good runs into space in forward positions not running back and giving them an easy two yard pass.
Lastly no more passing it around the defence and the keeper. I don't mean we should be hoofing it, I mean when they get it they need to play it forward not backwards or sideways. The same goes for our midfielders, no passing it back to the defence unless you're under pressure. Too many times we were passing with little purpose on the halfway line yesterday because our defence always opted for the safe two yard pass and our midfielders were often too scared to turn to face the goal with the ball and actually look up to pick a pass unless they already had 10 players back and we had 4 or 5 players meandering around the 18 yard box. We should've been chasing the game yesterday yet at one point I saw Gallas and Walker deep in their own half making 5 passes between eachother as Walker was closed down and Gallas wanted **** all to do with the ball, creating an embarrassing game of pass the buck.
I know this is all very basic but we really do need to bring it back to basics and keep things simple if we're going to get our confidence back at the moment we've got too many players drifiting around the pitch out of postion and treading on other players toes and if all we're going to create is half chances then we need to create far more of them if we're going to win games.
It's something we did better against Swansea and although we were also aided by Swansea playing much more open than QPR it is still worth persisting with. Whether it's Defoe, Ade or Saha we need someone to be consistently in the box not drifting out wide or deep so stay on the slowest centre back's shoulder as all of them can either outpace the defender with a ball over the top or the defensive line is forced back giving our midfield and VDV in particular more space to operate in.
Wingers provide an outball on the wing so do it so Ade doesn't feel the need to. If we're playing one winger then make ****ing doubly sure they stay on the wing and don't start pissing around running inside to be marked out of the game. Lennon was every bit as guilty of this yesterday. I like it and think he works well when he overloads a flank with Bale or plays behind the strikers in spells but that's one for next season, not whilst we're struggling so badly.
Holding mids and Modric, no interchanging. Don't let Modric go all the way back to the centre backs to pick up the ball and have the holding midfielders hold their position!! If we really need an extra body up there then let Sandro move up the pitch but don't let him drift around to the right wing and just generally get a bit lost, really Walker on the overlap should be the first "extra man" to be thrown forward anyway.
VDV should be the only player that has license to drift around but he needs to be much more attack orientated, even if it means ignoring when our midfield are struggling to create, help them with good runs into space in forward positions not running back and giving them an easy two yard pass.
Lastly no more passing it around the defence and the keeper. I don't mean we should be hoofing it, I mean when they get it they need to play it forward not backwards or sideways. The same goes for our midfielders, no passing it back to the defence unless you're under pressure. Too many times we were passing with little purpose on the halfway line yesterday because our defence always opted for the safe two yard pass and our midfielders were often too scared to turn to face the goal with the ball and actually look up to pick a pass unless they already had 10 players back and we had 4 or 5 players meandering around the 18 yard box. We should've been chasing the game yesterday yet at one point I saw Gallas and Walker deep in their own half making 5 passes between eachother as Walker was closed down and Gallas wanted **** all to do with the ball, creating an embarrassing game of pass the buck.
I know this is all very basic but we really do need to bring it back to basics and keep things simple if we're going to get our confidence back at the moment we've got too many players drifiting around the pitch out of postion and treading on other players toes and if all we're going to create is half chances then we need to create far more of them if we're going to win games.
