If a team parks the bus against Barca, Madrid Munich...... Or even lowly FC basel then these teams still play inventive passing football, and that's because they are passing teams. Take our line up yesterday, take off Holtby and ask yourself how many players are known for their passing? If Wenger was our manager he would have at least four attacking players who could naturally pass the ball well. We have Holtby, Eriksen, Lamela, Carroll at QPR. If we want to break teams down we need width and passing ability, instead at times were no better the Stoke under pullis.
Even those teams you mention would struggle to break down some of the set ups we've seen at WHL this season. Holtby and eriksen to name two, can cause damage, but they can't be asked to get the ball through a brick wall. Until our wingers hug the touch line when we've got the ball, those boys will have very little chance of making us dangerous centrally. AVB must tweak something, or we're not going to see the best out of eriksen, holtby or soldado. In our next game, he needs to show justs how good he is tactically by surprising the opposition. - if they are going to park the bus as expected.... What is he going to do to ruin their game plan? We've always been good from wide positions. Let's see how we get on without the inverted wingers for a decent period of time. I'm yet to see 1 cut back for soldado where he can have a decent strike at goal, with a good chance of scoring it.
Roo, you missed the point slightly as it's more about the overall football,all teams can struggle to break teams down but that doesn't mean they can't attempt to break them down with inventive passing. We had one midfielder, Holtby, that is known for his passing, which is ridiculous for a team wanting to play high. Under Redknapp as a counter attacking team we had Modric and Vdv, which is fine for counter attacks.
Going only by MOTD, how good did Huddlestone look yesterday. Whilst he caused us big problems with his passing and shooting, I was thrilled to see him doing so well. Mind you, it helped knowing what the final score was.
i see what you're saying, but you have to ask yourself how those teams are actually set up. I don't think i've seen a team as narrow as us. IMO, we've got players who can pass the ball around well, but those passes are 5 or 6 yards to one another due to how narrow we are. That isn't going to produce any inventive passing. it's too close. - At that sort of distance you turn into an intricate "barca" type of team. - we even saw that yesterday in a couple of spells. The space was so tight, the flicks and tricks came into play. unfortunately, we're not barca and we've never played football that intricately. Therefore we didn't pull it off. IMO, it's all a knock on affect of not creating enough space. as i have said countless times, that comes from out two wide players not being wide enough when we've got the ball. We've not stretching the oppositions back 4. Do this, and the passing/throughballs/creativity will come, IMO.
I know we play too narrow, you know we play to narrow, even the cleaning ladies at WHL know we play too narrow, does Avb? If he doesn't then we can moan but just adds to the frustration.
Villas-Boas attempted to address the width yesterday by sticking Lennon and Townsend onto their correct flanks and they both promptly disappeared. Literally in the case of Townsend! He then went 4-4-2 and it still didn't seem to help, though I don't think that Soldado and Defoe are a suitable pairing. I'm still going to go back to the previous comments about a lot of changes and hope that the manager can sort something out soon. He's getting results, but there's a distinct lack of fluidity. The constant team changes are probably good in the long term, but it's leading to a lack of instant communication at the moment. We'll see a very different team for the League Cup game, but it's hard to see a big change in the performance level.
I mentioned this earlier, even with Townsend and Lennon on the right and left respectively in the 4-2-3-1 they still drifted, Townsend came in on his right and ended up where you'd expect the no.10 to be at times, and Lennon never really got the better of his fullback in any meaningful way. Then when we went to 4-4-2 we had Eriksen in one of the wide positions, which was never going to be truly effective. Plus we were minus Townsend for a while, by then the only winger on the pitch and thus obviously constraining us to 10 men and a bit of a rearguard effort for some of that time. If the 4-4-2 had involved Lennon and Townsend for a protracted period of time we might have seen something of a more positive effect. Maybe. Soldado and Defoe could work for me, Soldado seems very adept at putting in little flicks and passes around the edge of the box, and works better at the buildup than Defoe, so if Soldado is prepared to be slightly unselfish, at least outside the box, then we could see them work reasonably well together if Defoe can learn to read him and stay onside!
A bit like the Pirlo and Gattuso partnership. Gattuso played further forward but was still clearly the more defence minded. Different formations, I know, and Huddlestone did a lot of good defensive work yesterday but I think it's the case of getting the most athletic to cover as much of the pitch as possible and allowing the other to play in his comfort zone.
Was a bit surreal IMHO seeing the Hudd put in a shift and running around in defence for most of the game and getting stuck in.
In the first half, I thought it was just a case of the side being savvy. There's no point traveling to the bigger sides if you're just going to play into their hands and get comfortably beaten. Norwich are the only ones that have done it to us so far and they were very lucky it was only 2-0. We've shown time and time again though, sides that set up to frustrate us will get some joy and have a good chance of getting something out of the game. It's the time wasting and play acting I didn't like but I guess you could argue that's just being savvy too. It's increased a lot over the years and now you have even the big defenders going down holding their heads when their side's under pressure. I'm not going to do a Mourinho and complain about it like I wouldn't want our team to do it in certain circumstances too.
Agreed, Harper especially was a disgrace yesterday. Every goal kick he kept going to the opposite side of where the ball went out, took a slow walk back and then pulled his right leg up from the back doing a stretch before kicking the ball. Ironically after we scored, he felt no need to do the leg stretch and took a run up to when kicking the ball. It was very funny though when the ball went out of play not long after we scored and the fans never threw the ball back to Harper, you could clearly see he wasn't amused but I thought it was a brilliant from our lot and served as a bit of revenge, even if the ref probably did add the added time on it still made Harper look like a prick as he was just standing there throwing a little sulk to the ref.
We had seven first teamers out on Saturday and of the ones that were left, two or three more will be withdrawn from the cup game as beating Sunderland on Saturday will be the priority. So you can expect even more bus parking midweek. At least we've completely sold out our allocation.
I haven't read all the comments as I've only just arrived home from a long drive and ten days away but did anybody notice that this was Hull's second team we were playing yesterday? They had a stack of first teamers out and we only won by a "strictly as the rules go" penalty. Hull have won and drawn against us at WHL in the last two years so maybe they are a bit of a bogey team for us so maybe 1-0 was a fair result but overall it wasn't good. I feel we are lucky to be in 4th place today as a cross against Villa went in and Defoe's "record" goal was a deflection against Sherif. Things need to improve and we play Everton next. Should be interesting as North London play the Scouses next week and this once and only this once I want Arsenal to win as I think we most certainly can.
I didn't watch live, but it didn't sound like Hull parked the bus that much to me, indeed it sounded (and looked on MOTD) that we were VERY fortunate to win the game. The penalty was dubious and Hull had chances. I think its a legitimate tactic to park the bus opening 20 away from home. Shut the crowd up, get a bit of angst going. Worked a treat for you. Luckily for us, and unusually, we had the ref.
It seemed like a game of two halves to me. In the first half we played quicker passing and lost the ball more so they managed to get into the game at times and create a few chances on the counter. In the second half we passed slower, created less but Hull created nothing until we scored and they had nothing to lose. I preferred the first half
No commentary on this one. Stadium sound only. 2013.10.27 - Tottenham vs Hull (720p).mkv (1.17 GB) https://mega.co.nz/#!7Jkz0BDA!EXKaLAODT3cORzy464DHygTmyucUDr_BVLhHQ9C0QB4
