Cooper, Barrett, Bowyer, Lampard, Lambert, Frank, Cook, Monk, Moore, Jones, Karanka, Mowbray, Mcclaren, Adkins, Hurst & maybe more Who'd have thought please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
Not surprising. When you know who's going to be playing, and you know the formation, its so much easier to set up shop!
For a guy with as much experience and does as much homework as Bielsa, its absolutely mind blowing that he doesn't tinker with the team or formation depending on who we play!
I had a thought today in a similar vein. He will have seen how managers like Warnock and Chris Wilder got bang average teams promoted and should be able to adapt our play to match what they did. I think he has a style of playing that we know works but doesn't have the personnel to get the benefit out of it. Give him a De Bruyne, a Mahrez, a Stirling, an Aguero and all the ducks would be in a row. Unfortunately, he's trying to play the beautiful game with players that just aren't good enough for it. I think he's trying to make up for the lack of quality with very hard work and, to use a computing analogy, he's over clocking them. I think he's OCD so it's difficult for him to change. Just my thoughts.
Agree with most of what you said Blono.......however, for me, I think we do have most of the players that are good enough. Having said that, we have a couple of cogs not working properly and out of sync. I also think the players are taking Bielsa's instructions too literally. A lot of the time we are too slow playing out from the back, this is giving opposing teams time to regroup, in a lot of cases, too much time; we're creating our own obstacles and barriers. I think we're trying too hard to walk the ball into net. By the time we've got to their penalty area, they've all had time to get back and pack their penalty area......Personally, if we see this happening early in game, then we should change to taking a lot of edge of the box shots, cause a bit of confusion, throw'em off track and then revert back to getting back into their penalty area with our quick one touch defence splitting passes, and/or, make our crosses count, at the moment many ain't counting. We need another corner and free kick taker, we need another striker and another left winger. We are getting caught on quick breaks, and many teams are making those breaks count, why, cos they're catching our defence off guard and they're not really expecting it. First half of last season we were riding high with Bielsa football, it beat a lot of teams. I said last season, the big test comes during second half of season and whether some teams begin working us out, they did, and it took its toll, especially during last third of season. This season, Bielsa hasn't changed, but opposing teams are still catching us on break and working out how to beat us. There's an obvious problem with our striker and our left winger, but Bielsa hasn't done nothing to change it. Will it take us sliding further backwards for the penny to drop and for Bielsa to wake up to what's going wrong. We are being over run and beaten most of time in midfield, our CM isn't doing his job properly either, players are leaving him behind or playing round him. Our fitness last season kept us at, or near top of league, it even kept us in the playoff positions, this season, it ain't as influential as it was last season with many teams to date. Second half of season is going to be a bigger test regarding our fitness than it was last season. Bielsa needs to start changing tactics and players occasionally to throw other teams off scent.
