Shame he has dumped the approach which got those 10 points in favour of tactics which guarantee defeat. Bloke has done a terrific job here but I hope Chelsea is the last time we see that ****e at home.
Very short sighted question Other teams employ tactics too Injuries Suspension Decisions Luck Conditioning of players Confidence
Freely admit I kna nowt compared to Rafa, but does anyone think we should stick with 3 at the back? I’d personally go with Lascelles, Fernandez and Dummy to give Yedlin and Kenedy wing back positions. I doubt Rafa will - he is to wingers what pards was to left backs; too many and all ****. But it looks like it could work better. I’d then go 3 across the middle with Shelvey alongside Diame and either Ki or Longstaff and persevera with Rondon and Muto up front. Hard to see how that’s much worse than we’ve been playing.
That's what I'd go with although I'd still want to fit Ritchie in somewhere. Could he play in the middle, since there'd be an extra man at the back?
I like the look of it, although when Kenedy gets forward and Ritchie inevitably supports on the RW you look at it and it is looking very similar to a 4-4-2 and the team that would probably get picked anyway.
Bournemouth were not at home so the comparison is off to a bad start. A more realistic approach is to look how we have approached home games against the top 6 sides over the last 2 seasons - afterall these are the teams where the gulf is so great in quality its seen as an impossible task: Newcastle results parking the bus over the last two seasons against the top 6 sides at home (Man C at home 2017/18, Chelsea at home 2018/19): P 2 W 0 L 3 D 0 GF 1 GA 3 PTS 0 (points per games average 0.000000) Newcastle results not parking the bus against the top 6 sides at home (Spurs at home twice, Liverpool, Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea at home 2017/18) P 6 W 3 L 2 D 1 GF 8 GA 6 PTS 10 (points per game average 1.6666666) Obviously you have to consider changes in personnel from managers, coaching, players, and the subsequent style of play. That is why I've chosen all 6 of the top sides as they have all varied a little over the last 2 seasons. I accept it will be always difficult to judge it accurately. Defenders of the approach to parking the bus at home point to being keen to preserve their goal difference. However does everyone actually know since the inception of the PL how many teams have been relegated on goal difference? 5 in 26 seasons. 19.2% chance if you do get relegated, it will be on goal difference. It would therefore strongly appear that worrying about your goal difference is not the most effective way to think about relegation. You appear to be far better served trying to win games and put points on the board. Plus if you are a side like us at present these home games against the top sides should always be viewed as a free swing. You're expected to lose, the pressure is off. You're at home. You play to win and you get in the faces of the opposition and utilise our single biggest asset in my time watching this football club. Our support at home when they see players getting after the opposition - especially big sides. That is just me though and I imagine Rafa has his reasons. However he has to accept that it is a clearly negative approach, adding to an already negative atmosphere. If we miss out by 1 point this season, he may well look back on his approach against the top sides and regret how he has gone about it. However I don't think Rafa will approach the others like this. I think this is solely his tactic for Chelsea and Man C. At least I hope so.
Simple for me. Man U at home. Yes, sometimes you have to defend and throw bodies on the line, but that's the minimum we expect - a team that tries. Nobody in that stadium expects us to be putting a top 6 club on the back foot for the match. But when you get the ****ing football, you keep it and try to attack at pace with it. What is the point in having Kenedy, Atsu, Murphy, Perez in the team and hoofing it long? None of those players like to play off the target man, they always look lost when they even try it. They like the ball ahead of them so they can run. All of them are garbage when they have too long to think about it - they're natural footballers who just want to attack. We have Dubravka because he's supposed to be able to sweep, but every time he's got the ball there's no way out for him. He grabs, he charges, he looks, then he ends up with nothing to do but rolling it to a defender. We then proceed to laboriously knock it about before we get chased down, it goes to Dummett and HOOOOOOOOOF up the pitch it goes to the opposition. The tactics at the moment stink. Rafa needs to get out of this funk and start playing to the few strengths he does have. Counter attack, a crowd who get excited by dynamic football and some pace.
I think the frustrating thing is Rafa and some fans justifying it by saying well we are crap so we HAVE to do it or it will be a cricket score. We didn't last year and we were crap then? I have to say apart from my spell of wummery I think Rafa has done a cracking job. Chelsea this season and Man C last are very much in isolation. In the main he's realised these games are free swings and we've done a good job.
The concept a team doesn't try because it doesn't attack to your liking is laughable. They were trying, they just couldn't deal with Chelsea pressing and, as a result, hoofed. The formation would have changed little for me. Perez instead of Schar? Yeh course, we would have won 12-0. The hoofing is nothing new, been going on for years. Even Carver admitted in fans Q&A they'd been trying to get them to stop hoofing in his time and it was the same under Pards. People have short memories. Why we play hoofball when lacking confidence is anyone's guess but atleast put it in context.
It can be the case that hoofball is partly down to confidence. However the formation/tactics for me is to blame for the hoofball against Chelsea. If you go out with the intention to put everybody behind the ball and sit in your own half as Benitez did then you have nowhere to go really and Chelsea will press you very very high obviously. They will try to press you high anyway but obviously you make their job far easier in that regard. The theory which Benitez is using is similar to what Mourinho has used i.e. if you deny them any space whatsoever behind you, they can move the ball all day in front of you. If you want a draw or to spoil the away leg of a cup tie its fully understandable. You are criticising 'his' concept saying they are not trying because it doesn't attack to his liking - we didn't attack virtually full stop. When we did we scored and they looked a mess defensively. If that is to anyones liking then I'm not sure they have much interest in football. I don't think he means or has said that either - he is talking about trying to win which Benitez appeared to abandon. It is no more laughable than to suggest people think we'd have won 12-0 by swapping Perez for Schar? I think you are missing peoples valid point that actually you can have a go without losing big or being overly attacking. We didn't play attacking against Man U or Arsenal last season. Indeed Man U dominated possession and Arsenal even more so (the latter probably in the 70's in possession terms). However we got in the face of both and had a go. We always carried a threat. We had people in attacking areas to allow us to get out. We attempted to press higher. We were not just kicking the ball out aimlessly because everybody we had was crammed into our own half. Against Man C last season and Chelsea this season we've put everyone behind the ball and tried to keep the score down. We've lost both, upset the fans and helped foster a negative atmosphere. I don't think that's particularly smart or necessary. I honestly can't see how anything positive from either game. Keeping the score down is not a positive, its just a really negative attitude towards a game of football. Surely that is nonsensical?
That was well wide of the point. The point I was making, in reference to the "backs to the walls" effort and subsequent MoM performance from Dubravka against ManU last season was that it's not all about attacking. However, it is about effort and posing that threat as Pouchy rightly refers to. The way we set up this season we might as well have two right backs and two left backs. The attacking threat on the wings just isn't there - yet we've got no option through the middle either? I just don't get what Benitez is trying to do. I see why we'd end up hoofing it. Under Pardew, et al, I may be wrong but I think the opposition actively made a point of ensuring the ball ended up with Dummett, and that's what he would almost always do when under even a limited amount of pressure. Funnily enough, Dummett is still here and hoofball still remains. Clark does it as well. Pouchy has it right, though, there's so little movement from CM and the wing, what choice is there? For me Rafa needs to progress. Football has moved on and his approach is a bit stagnant. I do not question his ability to get results, but when you have the likes of Gerrard, C. Ronaldo, Marek Hamsik or Didier Drogba at your disposal (amongst a sea of other talent from his managerial travels) it's a bit easier to just drill the organisation, then let some attacking magic happen. NUFC can't do that. Arguably we could have done with Rafa back in 1996, we'd have won the title at a canter if he'd been here. Now, though, we need better set up and a more dynamic approach to games. Safety first is ok, but safety first, second, third and last is too much. I'd like to see something change a bit. I don't mind going for a back 5, but have some purpose and use the players better. Dummett OR Clark, not both. 5 across the back but 2 up front, not 1. The way he sets up is having a back 9. Ki/Diame play DM, the two wingers are defensive. There's no out ball. Perez has been so drilled into defensive duties and chasing down defenders he's literally forgotten what to do when he has the ball. Even Kenedy is now looking like he's been Rafa'd..... I'm not suggesting go gung ho, but we finished 10th and have more or less the same squad. Chelsea aren't much changed from the side that got hammered. Cardiff barely bought anyone. City is a free hit. Spurs were there for the taking. If the point of this league is to just scrape by 38 games then everyone should just throw in the ****ing towel.
Can't argue with Cardiff, was a **** show. Spurs weren't there for the taking to me. Then Citeh, then a chelsea team that was easily playing worse than their ability last season, considering roughly the same team won the PL the year before, with a new manager, and a wave of confidence. Something we clearly didn't have. Oh, and they nicked jorginho from under the nose of the great city. Don't get this with the Benitez thing. Like he's missing this glaring error of telling em to run around a bit. The Harry Redknapp. It wasnt just clark or dummett playing hoofball, even watched our CMs and Ritchie do it. The same with the other seasons. Remember Cabaye doing it for about 6 month straight and he was one of the better ones. A defensive plan to force the ball to dummet? Might have noticed that one. Even shelvey does this countless times depending on his confidence. I genuinely don't believe Rafa sat the team down and told everyone to punt the ball forward and for all attackers to stand still. He even started with Perez on the left to try and get things moving in the centre against citeh because, without Shelvey, we're toast with the form of Kenedy and the swap of Ki for Merino. Just think he tried against Chelsea what he did against Citeh and was a bit unlucky in the fact literally nobody could string a pass together. Kenedy 0 in first half. Sorry, is that a tactic? Is that rafa's coaching? Nah. Basically the stats mentioned against Manure etc. sound no different to Chelsea so i'm confused as to how people can't understand, we don't get to beat everyone whose not City all the time. We were a Yedlin boot away from a draw. He's always set up like this and played diame and shelvey as DMs in nearly all our big wins last season. Those wins were also brought by Ritchie and Kenedy's defensive work. And yes, the point of this league is to scrape by if you start with the same level of ability as last season and save more money than any other in the process. Don't know what else you were expecting. I expect us to finish 14th-ish because 10th was an overachievement last time. I'm prepared for more **** games just like there were even last season. And come off it, we been saying Perez turned ****e in attack long before Rafa was here.
