Probably a good time to start a thread about this afternoon. Our form aside ( four wins from six), the last two performances should make this a home banker. Our defence looks porous while up front, Bonne looks lost, while Aneke looks as if he is running through honey. But Charlton occasionally turn the form book upside down, so maybe we can nick something this afternoon. Hope springs eternal.
We have an attacking move going forward which we used again and again at Derby and it's driving me nuts. We intercept an oppostion pass in our half and quickly put the ball out to the left wing. Whoever collects beats the first oppostion player opening up the chance to run at the defence or pass to a Charlton forward breaking up front. At this point, the player on the ball takes a couple more unnecessary passes. At this point, the wingers in front have had to stop and check back because they have run offside, so they have no momentum and have been marked. The backtracking opposition players are back in the centre so our midfield are marked as well, so the ball goes back to the defenders who quickly get closed down and either pass back to the goalie who thumps it forward, or give it the big one themselves, usually into an area where Charlton players are not congregated. The oppostion (Derby on this occasion) mop up the loose ball and attack us again. We've been doing it to a greater or lesser extent all season, and our run under Holden seemed to begin when we changed the dynamic and the guy with the ball put the ball forward quickly for CBT or Rak-Sakyi to run onto.Both those players have pace to cause problems so the lack of confidence putting the ball forward to them is annoying to begin with and worse as the opposition actually cause us more problems than we do to them when we hit them on the break. CBT was awful saturday. There was a comment from someone in the studio after the game which seemed to suggest that Derby let him have time on the ball as they knew he would over think and trip over his own feet, which was what kept happening. I'll happy accept Derby are currently where we hoped we would be last july, and light years from where we actually are, but some of the stuff on saturday was Keystone Cops football.
