ahah oops. I was wondering why I couldn't think of players to fill the positions The idea of the change in formation was more to highlight whether we need to play with 2 CDMs? Yes, we are far more solid, but I wonder if tweaking the formation might help us with our creative play. Could we not play for example 4-1-3-2 Wanyama/Schneiderlin/Cork to sit just in front of the back 4. And then vary the midfield depending on opposition.
Although having said that. I'm not calling out for any changes just yet. Get Morgan and Wanyama fit and playing well again. And most importantly get our first choice full backs back into the team (fitness permitting) and we should see far more fruitful games then we've seen thus far.
Clyne and Shaw will start the next game I have no doubt. Chambers has had a good start to the pl but offers little width going forward which our style of play requires. Need to play our better players again now they are back to full fitness.
I just wanna throw this one in there, make of it what you will. In our first 3 Premiership games this season, in 270 minutes of football, we have failed to score a single goal from open play.
Can't understand why he keeps taking Lallana off, these last two games have been the best he's played in about 6/7 months.
I think he is trying to juggle the attacking options and I don't think he knows how maximise it at the minute One thing for me is clear with the way we play the full backs are critical they provide the overload and options that open up space for the lallana's gastons etc but neither shaw or clyne played and it really showed today
For most of the game, we are slowly attacking an organized and heavily numbered defence. This will never bring in many goals. In all 3 games this has been the case, and this is the only game in which the opposition has made a mistake which leads to a goal. In possession it seems as if our attackers and midfielders are reading from a different book, and for the possession football that we play (not many goals are scored from it anyway, it's mostly about a strong and organized midfield and defence) this won't help at all. Playing Gaston in between the attack and holding midfield with 2 natural wingers either side and any of our strikers would help this, in my opinion. Lallana could be one of these wingers, but the other options aren't good enough in that position. Mayuka would need to improve his positioning and movement a lot, J-rod looks uncomfortable out there and JWP isn't a winger, in my opinion.
You can vary the formation as much as you like when you're in possession. But when we lose the ball, in other words when we're defending, everyone has to know their position. Cork and Spiderman understood intuitively just what was expected of them in that regard last season. With that pairing broken up, the midfield has looked a little unbalanced at times, but they'll gel eventually.
Just got back from living it up in the Directors Box, got a great view of the tactical line up and MoPo's tactical changes. We switched to a diamond after about 20mins which generally worked well. Can't explain why neither Shaw nor Clyne played really have no idea. Had a great chat with Southgate at half time who's been very impressed by JWP and can't wait to finally have Shaw available. In terms of today, disagree with MoPo'a analysis, I actually thought we were poor and struggled to stamp our authority on the game. Osvaldo was quite frustrating, Lambert genuinely poor and Ramirez over hit nearly all of his passes when he came on. We really missed Rodriguez's direct approach. Have to say, very rarely disagreed with MoPo since he took over but today was tactically odd.
Osvaldo is settling in and should get better. Lambert may be in a slump or more likely trying to get used to playing with Osvaldo. Ramirez swapped for Lallana may not have worked out, but putting on fresh legs was a reasonable decision that many managers may have made. Shaw has tweeted that he is fine, but not 100%. The same may be true of Clyne, but more likely Chambers has played himself into the role. I hope Clyne gets to play for u21s and does well and then may be back into the side. Really reserving judgment...very early into the season. Mauricio has done well in many ways (some good results, generally shoring up our defence and signing good players) and hopefully will sort things out. It is entirely possible that this is just a blip...would have settled for such a blip (4 points from 3 games) in previous seasons.
Clyne is 8 months too old for the U21s now but it probably works in our favour, gives him time to properly recover from whatever niggle he has.
Interesting to compare our results this season with those from last season (not from the first 3 as we had an abnormally hard start, but the respective games). Last Season: West Brom Away 0-2 defeat (1-0 win this) Sunderland Home 0-1 defeat (1-1 this) Norwich Away 0-0 draw (0-1 defeat this) Therefore this season we have scored 2 more goals compared to last and conceded 1 less, gaining 3 more points, so it's a positive start even if we had hoped for more from today's game. Can Wanyama and Schneiderlin play in the same team together? Are we sure Schneiderlin is not fully fit, as we have seen with other players (Shaw, Clyne) that MP is willing to leave players out that aren't fully fit, and we have capable replacements in Cork and Davis. He just doesn't seem as effective as he did last season.
I think the first part of this is bang on. At the moment they can't play together. Not because they are incompatible but where Cork and Schneiderlin worked well as a pair and jointly covered the midfield area zonally, we now have Schneiderlin not getting on the ball as much because Wanyama is like a terrior chasing balls over the whole central third of the pitch from left to right. Somehow they need to get that sorted so that they aren't tripping over each other all the time and stepping on each other's toes. I don't agree with a lot of comments over Lambert being out of form. He isn't scoring, He isn't having as good a game but that doesn't mean he is out of form. He hasn't been the same goalscoring machine since Poch came in so maybe the system isn't suiting his game, or he is being asked to do things differently however subtle that we may not be noticing. Today as with last week (and I admit I am not a Gaston fan) I could not see what Poch was thinking. Last week Lallana had just started to pull the strings and give us some penetration when he was subbed. This week he was arguably our best player and was all over the place and again subbed off. TBH I think we have bought some great players (and yes I do include Ramirez in there) but maybe more marquee than actually being suitable for the game plan(s) that we are trying to play to? Its too early in the season to go overboard and say Poch has no Plan B or player X, Y, Z aren't good enough but I would bet many are starting to think it. 10 games in and we haven't started scoring and we may well be in that scenario of having to concede that our attacking options aren't working or that the manager is not working. I don't expect us to be anywhere near the relegation come the end of the season even with the above scenario but for the players we have and have bought in we need to be pushing on. I expect a winger or possible a full back cover to come in this weekend otherwise we are going to be improvising till January and still fitting square pegs in round holes.
My main observations from the game are, as others have said, we missed the width and cutting edge that Clyne and Shaw provide when they are playing, The team is much more balanced and we get behind teams more when they get forward. Where has the pressing game gone?, we no longer seem to be winning possession higher up the pitch and I would love to see the tackling and interception stats, also we missed JayRod's energy as he his constantly on the move and getting into great positions. On the subject of Rickie, I can't remember him getting on the back post today, pulling on the last defender with people hitting him early on the diagonal, which has been a massive part of our attacking strategy over the last few seasons and has led to countless goals. Really, if we are not going to exploit his strengths and use him as the focal point of the attack then there isn't much point in him playing here. IMO he is a massive asset and almost unique in the way that he can win so many balls in the air that we really should be hitting him in the air more. JWP should be playing more centrally with Adam or another on the right.
