We were heavily linked with Liam Bridcutt a few years back, who followed Gus Poyet from Brighton to Sunderland and has ended up on loan at Leeds. At least he plays in that role, so a round peg in a round hole, whereas forcing / expecting Dorrans and or Howson to adapt to the defensive mid role during an important game is, in my mind, just bloody stupid. So there - BAH!!
So, it seems our striker situation is to become further "decimated" See #2229 on here BBCEssexSport @BBCEssexSport 2m2 minutes ago .@SUFCRootsHall have signed Jamar Loza on loan from @NorwichCityFC until the end of the season with a view to a permanent transfer.
In truth Cromer, I've as much chance of making the starting line-up as Jamar has - good move for the lad. Does this mean that Bamford is on his way ?
I think I must be missing the point here. Yet again after a really poor defensive performance there seems to be a tendency to try and deflect the blame to our midfield. Whilst I accept our midfield is far from perfect I don't think any of our midfielders had a significant role in us conceding against Liverpool. Weren't all of our goals due to significant errors by our defenders. We did manage to score 5 goals and as we were playing with a lone striker the midfield must have done at least a half decent job going forward. Yes I guess we could overload our midfield with defensively mind players, but that certainly isn't going to help us going forward. As I understand it Tettey wasn't fit when he turned up for the game (I assume he would have played) which meant Howson & Dorrans were asked to play a more defensive role than is natural to them. Indeed it seems a theme running through our team at the moment where we keep expecting players to play a role other than their best position. As I've said before their seems to be a tendency to pick 11 individuals first and then try and fit them into a team. The truth is we scored enough goals to win the game at the weekend. We didn't win because our defense as a whole was poor and some defensive players made individual mistakes. Surely we need to spend money sorting out our most significant problem, the defence first rather than try and upgrade our midfield to compensate for our poor defence. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record we need another CB & if AN doesn't think Olsson is good enough (which seems to be the case) another LB, which will release Brady to play in midfield.
I'm beginning to wonder if we'll see any of our promising youngsters 'cut the mustard' at Carrow Road!!!! Good for him though and wouldn't be surprised to see PB on loan before Monday's deadline. Agreed CC!!! <aplause>
I'm afraid I have to completely disagree. Midfielders aren't just there to create chances and concentrate on going forward, a massive part of the central midfielders role nowadays (especially at this level) is giving protection to the defence, which is something Tettey does so well and in his absence was something that just didn't happen anywhere near anough on Saturday and that, rather than individual errors was the main reason why we conceded five goals. I thought going forward both Howson and Dorrans played well, they showed good movement and moved the ball well, but they just didn't protect our defence anywhere near enough. The number of times they hit us on the counter and just ran through our midfield with virtually no challenge was frightening, we cannot make the mistake of not playing a centre-midfielder with a bit of bite and steel again, I thought Mulumbu would be perfect for that role but it appears the manager doesn't fancy him for some reason. Anyone think it was interesting the way Bassong ignored everyone else and ran straight to him after his equaliser by the way?
Surprised we are loaning out Loza with a few to a perm. He seemed a decent little player. We can't keep selling all these strikers without buying a single one again. One has to be coming in!
Three of the goals were errors by our defenders, two of them were also due to midfielders not doing enough too. But you sort of contradict yourself here Canario, because you then go on to say "We didn't win because our defence as a whole was poor..." which is exactly right (as well as the individual errors part). But that's the point - you defend as a team. Naismith himself said it afterwards. We certainly need to improve our defence, we know that, and we also know there were some serious individual errors by defenders. But we could have won the game even with those defender errors, but we didn't defend well as a whole either. And that's where the midfield comes in. They have to help out the defence. Modern football is not like table football where the only thing stopping the strikers are your three defenders - everyone has to chip in and the fact is (as even you have said) we didn't do it as a whole and that is shortcoming in the midfield set up. None of that is meant as an excuse to take away the blame from the defence FAOD, we all know they were very poor.
I think you are to an extent. The defensive 5 players are not exclusively responsible for defending. The classic example on the weekend was where Dorrans failed to track the midfield runner as he went past him to sweep the ball home unmarked. This was very much his defensive error and one of a catologe of instances where the midfield allowed Liverpool to put more pressure on the back 4 than is reasonable for any team to be defensively solid. I'm also fairly sure that the fingers of blame from others have been pointed firmly towards the defenders who had all made mistakes, Brady - for his lack of knowledge of where his defensive buddies are and that header Pinto - for getting repeatedly caught out of position leaving a huge space for Liverpool to exploit Bassong - for getting pulled hopelessly out of position more than once, but mostly in having to cover for the mystical disappearing fullbacks Martin - for everything but especially his backpass! Rudd - Maybe no bonefide errors, but a suspicion he could have done better with each goal However if AN intends to continue to play with the fullbacks bombing on then that requires midfield players to fill in and plug holes they have left. The midfield was not doing that, hense that they are also partially culpable for the poor goals against column. It is no coincidence that when AN picked and played a much more defensive team vs; citeh, Chelsea and the Gooners we could keep the scoreline tight and the defenders looked much better. This however lead to the attckers looking neutered and we looked alot less capable of scoring. It's the age old balance dilema. You could argue that we were close against liverpoo as at 3-1 we looked practically world beaters, but this is where a good midfield will hold on to the ball, give good defensive cover and this we failed horribly at! Bah!
No the point I was making was if the midfielders concentrate more on defence, as a consequence they will concentrate less on attack. So we might stop some goals, but equally score less. I guess its a question of priorities. I fully accept that you defend as a team and midfielders need to support the defence, but what's weaker our defence or our midfield. I don't doubt it's our defence, so this is what we should strengthen firsts. I don't see the point, bearing how bad our defence generally is, to spend money on better quality midfielders to protect our poor defense, surely it makes sense to sort out the defense first. It's a bit like a pilot crashing a plane and then blaming the co-pilot for not preventing it. It just doesn't make sense. If you look at our midfield players in the Liverpool game we played 6 only 2 (Naismith & Redmond) were playing in their best natural position, the other 4 (Hoolahan, Brady, Dorrans & Howson) weren't.
Equally we could have won the game with the midfield errors and if we were keeping score less goals were conceded due to midfield error than defensive ones.
With all due respect, and as The General has already said, I think you were right when you suggested that you might be "missing the point" here
What I think we're all trying to say though (Sorry if others ain't!) is that perhaps the defenders would not have made any of their individual errors if the midfield had done their job of screening them better. I.e. if they hadn't given the ball away when Pinto was upfield, Dorrans had tracked his man, someone, anyone! in the middle had tackled the breaking hords of Liverpoo as they surged forward. Someone had blocked the initial cross for the 5th, Someone had called or made themselves available for a pass from Martin instead of his blind BP? Bah!
In some of us talking about a priority being signing a defensive midfielder to help or replace Tettey, I thought we were talking about improving our defense? I do agree that sometimes we have a problem with square pegs in round holes, but again allot of that was forced on us by Tettey's illness and Mulumbu's form (At a guess!) which again brings us to the lack of depth we have in a critical defensive midfield position. Bah!
Not that I agree with that, but on that bases you could excuse the errors that Ruddy & Rudd have made and put the blame on the defence i.e perhaps the goalkeepers would not have made any of their individual errors if the defence had done their job of screening them better. I was trying to avoid mentioning Martin in particular, but as you have, irrespective of whether anyone was available for a pass the error Martin made was all of his own making. He still had options, even to kick it out for a throw would have been better than a blind back pass.
The point isn't to excuse errors, it is to prevent the possibility of them occuring in the first place! If you will, it is a risk pyramid, the more times the keeper is exposed the more you will likely concede, the defense is the screen to the keeper so if they reduce his exposure to the opposition then the less you will concede. But if the defense are exposed then they will likely not be able to screen the keeper effectively, so you need the midfielders to do there bit, the same goes for the strikers. Both sides have 10 outfield players and if 2-5 of them are not defending when we don't have the ball it means they can out number the defense and are more likely to concede. You can either organise better to stop the concessions or buy better players. I believe a pairing of Klose and RB /SB could with the right screening keep clean sheets. A defense of RB and SB kept some so with the possible improvement that Klose might bring, a defensive midfielder that AN feels he can pick when Tettey is absent looks like a wise old move! Bah!
Good responses from Munky, Rob and Generalissimo But this is exactly the point. When we are in possession, the midfield is expected to gallop forwards and get into advanced attacking positions. However, when we lose possession, the midfield is supposed to become a part of the defensive framework protecting the keeper. So, it's not a question of which is weaker, they both dovetail neatly (in an ideal world ) into one and the same thing.
I think we all agree with that and I am fairly sure that no one would really like to see Martin picked again at CB or even perhaps RB. There was clearly no worse option than that that he picked. But had he had a clear option in front of him calling for the ball, might he not have panicked? I know it was a pretty darned indefensible decision, but all decisions on a football pitched are shaped by your team mates and the oppo. Bah!
