I was sat with a mate watching the Hull game, and within the first 15 minutes I said we were just ball watching whenever Hull has the ball around the 30 yard space allowing them to come at us with a gaping space to the edge of our penalty area - and subsequently they scored from an innocuous pass deep that should have just been played out. The whole match both sides were, in fact, guilty of ball watching a bit? Not enough man-marking on the edges of the penalty area and falling back waiting for something to happen rather than sticking to the man or going to cut out the ball. We were lucky we played Hull, because if that had been a fast paced top-4 club we would have been torn to pieces down the middle and diagonal. We held the wide corners alright, Yun and Furlong doing their bit, but the middle was a hole, and of course who made it bigger? Joey of course. But after Joey left, we actually played a better game. And guess why? Because we actually looked like a side playing 4-3-3, without the 3rd up front, of course. Playing 4-3-2 of sorts freed up the inside space of the wing lines and we moved the ball better without the presence of Joey clogging it up and breaking up our play. May be we need to do that more often! And hopefully we will. But we have got to stop the ball watching, regardless of whether it was an Away game or not. No excuse to just fall back and give them space. When Phillips started running at them, Hull did the same! They dropped back, and if our link up play and understanding could be better down the middle, we would get Charlie involved loads more and we could even use that as decoy and get goals from the others too. Why no Adel? We were begging for his trickery down the middle against Hull. Onwards.....
We've been guilty of dropping back, ball-watching and giving opponents space to move forwards all season. The first 2 games under Ramsey saw much more cohesion, hassling of opponents when they had the ball and better overall shape. Can only hope Hull was a blip and Joey going off exacerbated that..... and that the players are not going to slowly revert to previous displays under Redkrapp now 'new manager' syndrome is slowly wearing off. After all that, we were still the better team even with 10 players on the pitch so not too disheartened.
Depends who gets sent off from what position ... The defence has to push up quicker and you need fast players It's very possible It's often harder to play against 10 men
That's a fair post Yappy. Perhaps it's my tactical naivety but I never think a team is dropping back well. Presumably if you're not blessed with pacy defenders then you make sure the midfield are not too far from them? I'd always press as a team strarting from the front. I am intrigued by these wide corners though.... (sorry, couldn't resist)
The last thing we needed was a central midfield player with no ability or desire to track back. Tarrabt would have been the worst player to stick on in that situation.
Lot of truth in this. Adel's an extravagance but, when he's fit and in form, he's a match winner against even the top teams. You need stiff defensive midfielders behind him. Whether we can get him firing on all cylinders for the remainder of the season must be a big issue confronting CR at the moment
We been looking like we needed someone with Adel's creative ability in central attacking midfield all season to me, no exception the last 2 games. In these we have added good crosses from Phillips from the right side as a means of scoring (think he's made all 3 goals under CR) to about the only other one we have had all season, the punt up to OBZ for him to lay off.
Barton made a couple of goal scoring chances with crosses from the left before he got sent off, one Furlong came very close to scoring a very fine debut goal with.
Ozzie, why hasn't Taraabt been in the squad for the last two games? He played well against the Saints but there's been no sign of him since. I'd have expected him to have been on the bench at the very least. Its very strange. Surely he's got himself fit by now?
I got no idea, not fit enough perhaps, sick, not the right games? Kranjcar has played well but somehow more within himself, playing safer than normally, and probably was told to do that. Maybe CR wanted us to play that way in those games and Adel don't fit? I think and hope CR may want to add a bit more creativity and incisivenes centrally or out left in our next games, and let's hope Adel is ready to give us that.
Fair enough, but for me, just putting him in front of Henry in place of Joey would have been a set. Allowing Henry to clean up in front of Rio and Caulker () might have freed up Adel to criss cross a bit along with Niko who was basically doing that anyways! and that happened because Yun and Furlong were able to support from wide. I don't think putting in Adel in place of Joey would have been all that disasterous considering what we did defensively.
If he would just play and leave his numbskull lout outside of the pitch, we actually have a good player in Joey but he's more a numbskull
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