Evening all, There was some interesting talk on radio 5 live tonight. It all started when the pundits, one of which was Phil Neville, were discussing the Arsenal victory over Chelsea. The point being that Chelsea had conceded 5 goals, good attacking or bad defending ? Obviously, it was brilliant finishing from Robin Van Persie but also woeful defending as well. Phil Neville was then asked of his take on it and he basically said that this season there has been a trend among pretty much all the premiership teams to attack and try and score as many as possible. With that he pointed out there has been a noticeable drop in the quality of defending. Added to that he pointed out that a lot of teams are rotating sqauds that is not helping either. Really good to hear from a professional what their take on football is. Now watching Newcastle play Stoke has got me thinking. Newcastle have pretty much played the same back 4 all season and it is paying dividends. Their defenders actually defend first and attack if possible, but it is defence first. They have also got Tiote who is a fantastic player. One of our strengths under Roy was that we played the same back 4 wherever possible. We are still defensively strong but should we be looking more along the lines of a back 4 that is strictly defensive and not offensive ? I have not seen too much of us this season so this may be the case already. We are sitting 7th in the least amount of goals conceded so far this season, having only conceded 12 so far. We have however, only scored 13. So maybe if our strikers could start finishing better we will move up the league. Sorry to state the obvious !!!
Newcastle tend to have a solid back 4, and use Obertan and Gutierrez as wingers with Tiote defensive midfield and Cabeye box to box. Chelsea and Arsenal tend to use their full backs as wing-backs, leaving space for quick counters against slow center halfs. I think Fulhams weakness is Riise going forward, he plays more like a winger than full-back at times, and leaves the back 3 vulnerable. Interesting to see what Spurs do as they too have this problem with Karl Walker bombing forward.
The key to exploiting over-attacking full-backs is pace. It's often been said, but when we play our best-established attacking combinations, we lack pace. Perhaps Sunday is a day for Karim Frei to be given a run out?
Those of you who get to more games than me are better placed to make this comment, but I get the impression that Kasami has blown hot and cold so far. Perhaps Jol is unimpressed at his lack of consistency and doesn't see him as someone that can be relied on yet. Maybe Thursday night will be a chance for him to stake a claim for more gametime in Premier League games. With Ruiz and Dembele both unavailable, It's any three from Duff, Kasami, Frei and Dempsey to start behind AJ for my money. I wouldn't be surprised to see Dempsey rested along with Bobby and Danny Murphy again.
We lack pace big time. Davies and Duff both offer this option but one is injured and the other one has not been used so much. Kasami offers some pace but as Captain says he is a bit inconsistent. I think will see Duff, Briggs, Kasami and potentially Frei this Thursday. Resting Murphy will be a good idea although we need 3 points.
Our defense has been poor, by the standards set in our prior years. I'd like to offer some insightful observation about who, what and why we've fallen down, but frankly I can't figure it out. Other than Baird, I think they've all under performed this season, Hangeland included. If I were to guess, I'd say Jol doesn't emphasize defensive skills or strategy when training the team. As a result, we've been poor for the most part. QPR was a fluke and Wigan was pure, unadulterated luck. Speaking of Newcastle, they have the best defense in the league. And not surprisingly, they're fourth. If I had my way, I'd go right back to the system we had under Roy Hodgson ... our success and offense was built squarely on the strong shoulders of our back four.
Mana to my ears DR. You are sooo correct. And if you look at previous posts about JOL tinkering, from the beginning, with the CBs I think you will figure it out. Add the gaps that Riise leaves and you will perhaps have the solution also. It is a very short time ago that we, and not Newcastle, had the best defense in the league. That was simply becuase our back four played as a unit and all the other things that the 5Live and MOTD pundits have been bangingin on about over the last week. I can't remember whether it was Shankly or Docherty or Ferguson (probably some Jock anyway) who said, "you build a winning team from the back". How true. Before the flack comes flying in, I endorse what you say about the QPR and Wigan games but will temper the QPR description in that they gave up after we scored two fairly early goals and we were good enough to take full advantage. The reality though is as you say - only in that game and the second half of the Man City one (and this includes European ties) have we performed as we should.
Bit harsh to put the QPR result down as a fluke, yeah QPR were poor for long spells but it's a two-way street - the way we're playing in general we'd need teams to play poorly to nick a win, not hand out a hammering like we did. I agree entirely that the back four has been mostly unfamiliar, what with Pantsil going and Hughes struggling for fitness. Neither of these are entirely down to Jol, Sparky set that ball rolling by insisting on playing Salcido and letting Pantsil's contract run down. Jol is still tinkering when perhaps he shouldn't though. Agreed on Riise too, I think the centre-halves/defensive mids need to familiarise themselves with a wing-back system for it to work, i.e. one of the CBs needs to drift over and cover for the WB and the DM needs to cover for the CB. Attacking full backs isn't a new revelation by any means. This managing malarky's a piece of piss, I could do it!
It's a combination of midfielding and defensing performance. We didn't have a solid back 4 line so far I agree but we need to get used to that. The midfielders have their share of blame. Sidwell and Etuhu are the only two box-to-box that they can cover ground and challenge. We all have said our opinion about Murphy's legs. Dembele and Dempsey they defend but also tend to move too much in the middle leaving the sides open.
