"YorkieLancsHampyLondoner, post: 16507640, member: 1004774"]I’m not really buying into this theory. We didn’t score a hat full of goals against Burnley. Sorry hampy, but not many teams in the championship are banging in goals against them either so that argument does not hold water. you mentioned half attempted shots etc. in the stats we can see we dominate possession & shots on goal. what constitutes an attempt. Is it something going vaguely in the direction of the goal ? say Harness (quality player, should be first on the teamsheet) trips over his bootlace & kicks the ball at goal accidently, is that a attempt?
Yeah, fair point on the emphasis through the middle. We look stodgy and low on tempo all over the pitch really, but it's notable that we're struggling to start moves. Morsy looks tired and I saw a video on social media of him mouthing off at some supporters showing their anger after the final whistle. Our central midfield options are gone through injury - Ball, Evans, and Camara all out. I get the impression we like to work it out wide when we can, but we're not effective down the flanks just like we're not effective playing it through the middle. The main issues seem to be a lack of pace in our play, a lack of ruthlessness in attack, and maybe a lack of belief? The 4-4 against Charlton is quoted often, and cited by me as a potential sliding doors moment, but I think the last minute Plymouth equaliser in the 1-1 draw a month or so ago can also be pinpointed as a moment things started to change.
Yesterday we had 21 shots, it certainly didn't feel like that. Throughout all the time McKenna has been here one thing even when we've been on a good run of form we rarely stretch the opposition defence enough, rarely do we see opposition teams make a mistake or give away a penalty because how we play gives them the chance to set themselves. We don't get in behind enough, we don't have strikers running the channels enough, we don't pull defenders out of their positions enough through good movement, we dont have players running across their marker in the box (we only seem to have late runs and hold our position from deep). We don't take opportunities to move the ball quickly when teams are out of shape We do all the stuff I've been banging on about which we haven't done for years the pass and move but forgotten the rest, it's literally like watching a game of chess. This is purists football that seems to be if anything overcoached. We lack players who seen to do stuff on instinct. Burns looked awful last night but his game isn't suited to a low block and passing side to side, its about pace power and aggression getting in behind and going 1-1 with the fullback at pace not from a standing position. We've got a snobbery about us that we're better than everyone and playing top class football but we're being tactically out thought by League 1 managers every game. I don't recall in previous season teams being this tactically aware perhaps the league has improved or its just so obvious to to nullify our threat even awful league 1 teams can do it. People say if we get to the Championship this style will suit us, to an extent I agree in that progressive passing football where players have to use skill will hold us in good stead and make the potential for us to get higher quicker but if we suddenly start doing well with this style of football higher up the leagues do you not think those teams will do exactly what teams are doing to us now? We need more strings to our bow and they're not even about doing the more negative things, it's about being more aggressive, proactive and actually clever and empowering our players to be unpredictable sometimes
It does hold water - if our problem is putting the ball in the net then there’s no evidence from the Burnley game that we’d do that better in the Championship. We’ve shot from impossible angles to try to beat the keeper at his near post with bodies in the way. We shoot at the ‘keeper without even stinging his fingers. That’s not the same thing as squaring to a teammate in a better position or picking out an area of the goal. There’s a risk of an interception then, so we’d have fewer shots and score more goals. We have a very high number of shots on target and we should reduce that number to score more goals. What counts in the stats is absolutely any shot regardless of the quality of it.
That was just a bit of maths. I gave us zero chance of being able to catch the top two and I never could have imagined the manner of it. Somehow, and I still don’t understand quite how, all XI came up to the level of Walton and Morsy.
