Surely that's down to the manager as if he has the right players on the pitch (in midfield) then we have outlets and the natural way would be to press up and try and keep the ball,. Not really buying into this that its a long standing club problem, as its all down to the manager we have in charge at the time and yes previous managers before, but this is AVB's tactics so if he wants the players to push up and keep the ball in the closing stages then surely he can enforce this.
Boss we have been losing games or drawing games in the final part of the match for a very long time. How long have been fans saying it is very rare that we can relax until the final whistle goes. The only period I can remember in recent times is the winning run last season before the England job scenario reared it's head. That was the period when we had a settled manager who had a couple of seasons of reasonable success. That tends to support the theory of continuity being the key.
Got home late and only now finished reading comments. I particularly like the positive ones as they help me get over my guttedness (is that a real word?) and depression. Full credit to you who say you are over it by 7 o'clock. It will take me a few days. As for the reasons why it happens, everyone is correct.
Well I guess continuity is important to a team progressing, won't dispute this, yet I do believe AVB has to take certain blame, as he makes odd substitutions, and having the wrong players on the pitch, at a time when we're under most pressure, is mostly going to end in a negative result.
I only saw the lowlights on MOTD last night. Yes, some of the substitutions made, and have been made in previous games, seem a bit bizarre. But again, this problem is not something new, it's been a problem for us for a long time. That tells me that it's something more than just the wrong substitutions. Maybe it's our long held reputation for folding under pressure that encourages opposition teams to really pile it on towards the end of games - I don't think anybody can be sure. But, one thing is sure, it's a problem that we must overcome if we are ever to be taken seriously as title challengers.
A couple of seasons back, "as stats have shown", Spurs got more points from a losing position than any other team. How did that happen? What were the reasons for that? The point is that sometimes there is no reason, but people are very reluctant to accept that patterns build up sometimes that cannot necessarily be explained. Football is completely unpredictable and yet time between matches are spent overanalysing thing that often can't be properly analysed. Quite often a series of unlikely things that keep on occurring are presented because of that as not unlikely, and various explanations are offered. Unfortunately several people may all have different explanations, but that doesn't matter. If X had happened then Y wouldn't goes the logic. Unfortunately that isn't logic at all, and just because something has happened a few times doesn't mean it always will. Of course sometimes there are reasons and these need to be explored, but sometimes the "reasons" are not explanations at all. For example there's often "bad defending" that doesn't lead to a goal, but when it does it is highlighted. A team could do a lot of bad defending, not concede and win a game. That's the beauty of football. It can't be predicted, and yet there's a whole industry of pundits who "know the answer" - but they don't. [Mr Spain - just using your quote to add to the debate, nothing personal!]
Totally agrre NSIS. Managers will tell their players to keep it tight till the final minutes and then have a go at our weak spot. Every manager will attack the weak spot of the opponent ,whether it be the wings, central defence goalie or whatever, ours is the final minutes of the game. We managed to hold off Utd- maybe the players saw it as a bigger challenge as we hadn't won there for so many years whereas against other teams we just decide we done enough. Mental strength- do we have it? Do our managers instill it? Do we as fans have our part to play? Towards the end of games we show our nervousness, maybe we need to look at ourselves and take some of the blame.
Better defenders make fewer mistakes, especially when they are tired. If we had had Parker, Kaboul and BAE on the pitch in the last ten minutes yesterday we would have had a lot more chance of holding on. the teams with 'character' who hold on to leads better than us have mostly just got better players.
Power that doesn't change the fact AVB didn't do the best with what he had available to him, which is why its fair for fans to question him and some of his decisions.
The point is that if you invite pressure, which we seem to do in those situations, you will get pressure. If you get enough of it sooner or later, something will give. It's bad enough throwing away 2 points in injury time, to throw away all 3 is just stupid.
It's hardly a 'fact' unless you somehow have access to the parallel universe where he did something different......but I do agree that some of what AVB does looks odd - but even if you don't rate him, he knows a lot more about the situation than any of us on here.
Am not doubting his knowledge, but what good is the knowledge if it isn't used correctly? and yes some of what Villas-Boas does look odd, as it is, so maybe he is at times on another planet and the good results have been allowing him the benefit of the doubt.
I agree with this. what did he do wrong and how could we have done better? The only thing I would question was taking lennon off, as Baines and Osman had been booked. 1 more foul on Lennon at pace and they might have been sent off. - But lennon was getting nothing against them. every cross he tried to make was blocked and IMO, Baines had him in his pocket. Apart from that, bringing on Hudd was a good idea, as it gave us an extra man in midfield, which we'd been struggling with all game. - we then went on to score 4 mins later. Defoe got nothing all game, so bringing on Falque wasn't a bad Idea at all. Defoe's played non stop for weeks now. Although I didn't want to see Dembele go off as he's our catalyst, he wasn't having a good game and he's just come back from injury. AVB gets so much stick over subs and his decision making, but other than towards the start of the season when he was finding his feet, he's done pretty much all he can with who he's had. The reality is that we just don't have a strong enough bench that can change games, or give us what we need. We're really weak in certain positions, once the "first xi" man has been taken off or is injured or unavailable. Notice how AVB has barely used Livermore recently? My suspicion is that he's seen enough of him and has realised he's not dynamic/good enough to do the job that is required of him. past our first 11, we're really short of game changers or genuine like for like quality. - yes, some might say that the bench will never be quote as good as the first 11, but there's a real difference in quality, threat, stability, intelligence and experience, IMO.
I'm sure many people argue that we find it difficult to break down teams who defend deep at WHL. On this basis Everton should have found it hard to break us down. If we had pushed up more it is actually more likely we would have conceded isn't it? The first goal came from three or four individual errors and the second one had a huge dose of good fortune - that overhead kick could have gone anywhere.
Roo, I found the decision to keep Ade/Defoe on strange, as they don't link up well and the link between midfield was missing, so the natural and most effective change would have been to take off defoe or ade and shift dembele behind the striker, but we bought on falque far too late in the game. Instead we take off lennon, bring on hudd, which even you at the time on the match thread thought was odd, shifted dembele to the right (a position he has never played) then took off dembele for siggy when he realised it was pointless having a tired dembele on the wing. Do you remember the game agaisnt norwich in the cup? we was cruising to a win, until Villas-Boas decided to change the game by negative subs and try and close out the win, inviting pressure and we lost.
Yes, we do at times seem rather clueless as to how to break down stubborn defences. However, that's us, not everybody. In the real world, if you invite enough pressure onto yourself, eventually something will give. If you allow almost any team to keep continually peppering your box, sooner or later you will concede. It's not as if we've ever really been any good at that sort of thing anyway, so why do it?
The immediate effect after the subs was that we scored (Hudd played the ball through to Dempsey and then Sig hit the bar). They both looked like good decisions until the late goals....
Mate, the goal was a fluke! and overall we lost anyway so ill have to say the changes lost us the game.
Their first goal was down to a poor Caulker clearance amongst other individual mistakes and the second was pretty lucky - the overhead could have gone anywhere. The substitutions probably made no difference either way.
