Like I said last night we seem to be in two minds when in front, do we hold on to the lead or go for the jugular? In recent years when we try to hold on we get deeper & deeper & invite unnecessary pressure. If you are going for the kill its more than about rushing at their goal like we saw last night (this happened under KD too). And even if you do that its the responsibility of the midfield to move up & down the pitch as a unit. Last night we lost the ball & left one midfielder (our winger) to deal with the counter attack while the other 3 dandered back from their half. BR keeps talking about switching from 2-1 to 1-2 in that midfield triangle but I don't think our players have quite got it yet. We were still playing 1-2 while ahead for the last few minutes attempting high pressure, keeping them in their box. we should have switched back. I don't mean necessarily go defensive but have more in the middle to break up what was obviously the tactic YB deployed all night of counter attack. Maybe with Lucas & our senior back four we could keep it at 1-2 and try that high pressure tactic but not with those players last night. Last night once ahead was a time to switch it back to 2-1 and just pass the game out. By all means if that resulted in YB chasing the ball to the extent we could break as a midfield and score again, fine. I think our players can do each part, fast paced passing, high pressure when ball is lost: they just haven't learnt as a squad the correct time to do it all, some are some aren't which has lead to uncertainty at times and that results in individual errors. A perfect example last night: Gerrard turns and almost passed back to YB attacker. He realises its because we were too deep so he yells at everybody to get higher. We then try the high pressure and when we lose the ball & they break, Gerrard & Shelvey are at their 18 yard line and Sahin is halfway into their half, no one busts a gut to get back except our fairly lightweight winger Assaidi; our makeshift back four turn into each other, they score. It'll get there. Its all stuff that these players will get better at & we can only hope any additions are already good at it.
