I was just going to say about direct not meaning hoof ball, it just means getting forward faster, fast counter attacking (which personally I love to watch), and not hanging on to the ball at the back every time to let everyone get forwards. I'd love to play like Barca but we just don't have the players to do it, not only are our players incapable of those pin point accurate perfectly weighted 10 yard chips over the defence, but most of spain/barcas game is off the ball IMO, closing down rapidly to great effect, it's not the fact that no one can get the ball off barca, it's the fact that no one can KEEP the ball v barca. That's why it didn't work for us last season. Give me 9 men behind the ball then 4 breaking at lightning speed when we win the ball any day over last seasons frustration.
Scoring more goals than last season is a priority and as long as we do I think we stand a very good chance of a decent season! How we score them is irrelevant
i thought bruce was going to play two up front but there's been bugger all evidence of it in the psfs so far from what i've read.
the style we were playing under barmby was fine. possession football, tippy tappy.. whatever you call it... we created enough chances in most games to win comfortably.. we just never had a decent striker to finish it off..
Agree completely. If playing direct football is the only way we'll bag chances, then fair enough. But we were creating chances throughout games last Season, with no end product. Pearson was much worse for playing the ball across the defence, whereas we kept the ball in midfield more under Barmby, being patient and waiting for a chance to nip someone through on goal. The only problem under Barmby was the lack of crosses. Brady would rather shoot than cross, and Stewart would much rather attempt to do a million step overs or shoot at the near post. I would much prefer we can stick to an attractive style of play and win games than win via hoof-ball. But if punting it up the pitch wins us games so be it.
I reckon Bruce will play how we did last season, where we keep possession, just have off the ball runs etc and go forward rather than sideways etc. then we might score.
Precisely. People misunderstand 'direct', when Man Utd had Ronaldo there was no more direct team in the league.
Has to be the best goal I ever saw - on the box I'm afraid - classic Liverpool - keeper (can't remember which) to Heighway standing on left touchline on half-way line - he hardly moved but volleyed to Toshack in opposing penalty area who met it sweet on the run and powered into the net - ball never touched the floor - couldn't be more direct - didn't that team play some good passing football too!
il bet direct will mean taking a few more chances with passes into the channels and gambling a bit more, instead of the safe 4 yard passes we see alot of, that and getting it to the likes of ALuko and Stewart who can Run directly at their fullbacks.
play to your strengths. All the promoted teams last season played long ball. But they had strikers who could win the ball in the air or hold it up. We didn't, so we passed it around.
Direct & long ball are totally different! Direct is just quicker getting the ball forward, yes sometimes it's over the top for players to run onto, but with the likes of Fryatt, Stewart & Aluko, their pace should be good for it, as for Pros...(German guy) he should be able to knock balls down for Fryatt etc!
What I've seen of SB's teams they are hard ton beat, good defensive, but play football when they have the chance.
We struggled to break defences down big time, seemed the opposition defences held a line on the edge of the 18 and we were restricted to long range shots (koren) or we put crosses into the box when only Fryatt was in there, At least the Proswitz (spelling) signing will mean a bigger percentage of those crosses will bear fruit either in the form of knocks downs for Fryatt, Koren etc or headed goals. Im just worried if Proswitz does come up against an aerially dominant centre back pairing, what our plan b to break down defences will be?? Stewart and Aluko can both beat a man and should provide some ammunition from wide, but i think the final thing were really missing is somebody who can unlock a defence, a few mentioned a barry bannan type last season, who can dink a ball through or unlock defences camped on the edge of 18 yard boxes. Just hope Bruce is looking for it, sounds to me though he's relying heavily on Crosses into the box from Aluko/stewart as the main source of goals question is will it work???
So long as Stewart actually crosses this Season, and more of our players get into the box when they have the chance, it will work. So many times last Season, Stewart chose to shoot, take someone on or pass to edge of the area when he could have drilled a dangerous cross across the 6 yard area when on the by-line. Aluko looks to have a lot in his locker, he seems intelligent and - fingers crossed - will know what would be best to do in that situation. Proschwitz seems rather dominant in the air anyway, and Fryatt loves having a target man alongside him so hopefully that pairing will be a success this Season. Also, if Fryatt goes through another patch of not scoring, or gets injured etc... McLean is better with a target man, rather than being on the wing or acting as the target man himself as shown when he was at Posh banging in 30 odd goals alongside Mackail - Smith.
I think both Koren and Cairney have that vision and craft to unlock a defence. When we're heavy in posession and the opposition holds that trench on the 18 yard box, these two will have to drop back to play the ball, exactly how Pirlo was doing for the Azzurri in the euros. But the difference is with Proschwitz, the defence won't be able to do that so comfortabley as we have a big man to cross to and get his head on things, I said all last season this was a big disadvantage for us as it lets defences build a barrier around their box. Also these 'aerially dominant center back pairings' tend to be very vulnerable to the more mobile players in this league; (if they were great all round they'd be in the premiership) which we have in abundance now, so no problems there. We have a much more rounded attack this season which gives us more option to pull defences around mixing it up. Try play through, they drop back, we lump balls to Proschwitz, forces them to push out again.
Totally. I'd say Jose's teams are 'direct', they're not long ball, and Real Madrid has just broken the record for the highest goals per game ratio from a European title winning side IN HISTORY. I actually dont think enough was made of that to be honest, it's a stunning stat and seems to have been lost in the Barca ****athon.
Agree with this and the sentiments of the OP. This is true. Many of us said last season that all we needed under Barmby was a big target man (although the lack of quality out wide was a problem too). That doesn't necessarily mean we needed to change styles completely, but when we played 50 passes and got it out wide to Brady, he never had anyone to aim at because Fryatt's threat is non-existant in the air. We coud have played the same way but with someone in the middle to score the crosses that came in. Thing is, the reason we couldn't do that under Barmby was money, now Bruce has the money so it should be simple to address shouldn't it? Agree with this as well. We played like that under Brown; no one could say it was long ball buit we didn't **** about when we had the ball either, we got forward, used the front four and scored some goals. Another good comment. Some people are generalising Barmby's reign and remembering the most frustrating part when Chester and Koren got injured and we fell apart. There were a lot of gaes before that of course and until March time we were ripping teams open but missing all the chances.
Not true. We really need to explode this myth that our season trailed off when Koren got injured, it was already trailing before he got injured. In the 8 games before he got injured we had 1 win and collected 9 points from 24 available. That is relegation dogfight form.
