Minority Report 2019-20 v Preston North End

At the beginning of January, I wrote a piece that asked whether the diamond had been rumbled. Before I started writing this report tonight, I re-read it to see whether what I wrote then is relevant to tonight. I do not think that it is, so I will not bore anyone with it. However, after tonight I must ask that same question again.


Do not get me wrong. Preston were by far the better team, and frankly, we were lucky that the margin of victory was not more. However, not only were Preston far superior man for man, they also had the better tactics. The home crowd has complained for months about using defenders to pass the ball forward. I have consistently argued that hitting the ball long, when your front two are small is tantamount to giving the ball away. In the last home game, I pointed out how poor Huddersfield were. In the first half, they effectively gave our back 4 all the time they needed to play it between them, holding the ball until the movement ahead of them got one of our midfield players into enough space to receive a pass, to control it and to pass the ball on to another player in space. All that changed in the second half. They got closer to us. They gave our back 4 less space and their bigger players bullied us. I am afraid that the message has been passed on.


Preston strangled the very life out of us. They gave our back 4 no time and no room. They marked very tightly for that first pass. The forced us out of our rhythm. When that happens, it affects the whole team. It accounts for the fact that we struggled to apply any consistent attacking pressure, but more than that, it explains why our opponents were able to put pressure on our defence, and why that pressure yielded errors.


Of course, there will be those who attribute the whole thing to lack of quality, particularly at the back, who will say once again that the players are too young, or that they are simply not good enough. That is not how I see it, and that will come as little surprise to those who read Minority Report regularly. My reading of the situation is that we are forced to play short passes, that we are forced to pile on pressure onto a very inexperienced back 4 because we have no other way of playing. Our opponents have worked us out, the Strubber system has been rumbled.


We have no tall front player on our books, and without such a player, we can only play a certain way. The way that we have been playing. Now personally, I have enjoyed the fact that my team plays that way. I would much rather see my football played on the deck, than in the clouds. But the problem is that if my team becomes too predictable, other coaches will develop ways of negating those tactics, and what we saw tonight was a team that set up in a way that we found very hard to play against. Basically, in addition to what I have already said, they flooded the centre of the pitch. I was amazed during the first half to find Mowatt playing centre forward, whilst Brown and Chaplin occupied the wide positions, almost a 4-3-3 for a while. Out wide was where the space was, but how far do you get when you have Brown and Chaplin firing in long crosses for Mowatt. Nowhere! They offered us that space knowing we could do nothing about it. Brown and Chaplin were a shadow of the players they have been recently, and the Preston tactics accounted for that.


Of course, it was not just that we did not score. We also conceded 3 times, and there is no doubt that there were errors. Nevertheless, is it my point that those errors were from players well outside their comfort zones because of the way the coach has asked them to play, and those errors resulted from the pressure that Preston applied on not only our back 4, but also on our midfield. Although we had more of the ball, much of that ball was not in control, not received in any space and therefore not received with any time to consider the next pass. I do not think that we created one decent chance throughout the 90 minutes, and that is the measure of control exerted by Preston. Of course, their players are older, and they knew only too well how to take momentum out of our play. That is what you get when you acquire older players. This is yet another area that has been done almost to death. Yes, there is no doubt that their older players were instrumental in them control the game, taking the sting out of it when they had to, managing the referee when they needed to. I have laboured the point endlessly why we have not chosen the same road, and if you accept my logic, any many will not, there will be days when you just have to hold up your hands and accept defeat on the chin. Tonight was one of those nights, but that does not mean Herr Strubber does not have a lot of thinking to do.


Rookie Watch

Marcel Ritzmaier leaves me scratching my head at times. He seems to drop out of games for long periods, and I will suddenly think where did Ritzmaier go. I will be charitable. He has a long way to go before he picks up the pace of the English game.


Killian Ludewig has plenty of pace, but he is another who will take time to settle. He swopped sides with Williams at half time, and seemed marginally more at home on the right.


Minority Report Player of the Match


This is clearly a toughie in a match in which we have been thoroughly outplayed. On my long walk back to my car, I went through every player name, eliminating them one by one. At the end of my walk the only one that I had left, which admittedly is not a big recommendation tonight, was Jordan Williams. He did at least keep going until the end.

 

I agree with some of you logic RR but i just feel the players we have are not at the required standard.
Preston did their homework and could and should have had more. They have players and a system that works and rightly exploited our many shortcomings. Our system fell very flat again no lack of effort just very poor. They cut our defence open time and again and were decisive with their finishing .....we were not. They had a very easy night.

 

I'm not at all convinced by the diamond, but playing Mowatt at the tip of it made him invisible for most of the game. He needs to be deeper, where he can control play and make occasional late runs into space just outside the box. If Marcel can play at the tip (as I thought I'd read) then I'd have liked to have seen him there, with Thomas on his natural left side, and Mowatt on the right. We seem to be shoehorning players into certain positions and it rarely works.

 

“He has a long way to go before he picks up the pace of the English game.”

“he is another who will take time to settle.”

Just what we needed in the January transfer window....

 

he just needs to be more patient.

 

Btw, on a positive ....Woody looked class when he came on.

 

The problem with playing the diamond is that most of our players were acquired during the Stendel reign when the team was arranged in a 4-4-2 with wingers. Struber just does not have the midfield players to play the diamond and most are outside their comfort zones. The standard fix is to play Cauley Woodrow at the head of the diamond, but if Struber is going to play Ritzmaier on the left of midfield, that leaves Mowatt on the right, with both Mowatt and Woodrow not in their best positions in my opinion. But for me, the problem yesterday was that we could not get the ball to the front two, and that produced pressure through the team from front to back. In his post match interview, Struber cited mistakes for our defeat, but for me, it was much more than that. The mistakes came because too many players were outside their comfort zones, and because the tactics that we used just did not work against a savvy team and a savvy coach.

 

If I was manager I'd have them in playing/training at 7 45 sometimes. When was the last evening game that we won?

 

The mistakes come because players like Mads Andersen are not good enough and neither is Radlinger. Tactics don't mean that players cannot do the basic requirements of their jobs. Lack of ability does.

 

Can I recommend that you read Minority Report 2019-20 - Talking Finance.

 

It doesn't excuse a lack of basic football ability or excuse signing players with such a lack of footballing ability.

 

It explains why the jump to the Championship is such a huge step now, and it explains why the club cannot spend huge amounts of cash on the quality required for that league (FFP), even if the owners were of a mind to put that sort of money into the club.

 

I've said this time and time again and I promised to wait until February 1st to say it again, but after last night I can't resist it. The problem is nothing whatsoever to do with finance. The problem is that we have a large number of average players (most of whom never actually play), instead of a smaller number of "very good players". For the same budget. I can't comment specifically on last night as I wasn't there. 9 more sleeps to sort out this mess and prove to the fans that the board are at least trying to win football matches.

 

Nowt like referencing your own work is there.

 

I certainly disagree with your view of how good Preston were. Unless you mean their cynicism of course.

 

Rochdale away in Aug 18. Unbelievable bad run in night games.

 

with regards to your opening paragraph, you could be right, prestons commentary team did say before the match that they were going to counteract our diamond by playing like for like, exactly the same thing happened with stendel back end of last season, when Daniel first arrived the high press worked a treat , but by the 2nd half of the season the opposition had us sussed and played us at our own game, unfortunately Daniel didn,t seem to have a plan b, lets hope struber is a little more savvy...

 

The two additions thus far in the window do not fill me with confidence.

The main criteria was experienced players that were ready to go. An experienced CB being vital. The club's hand may now be forced, with the likelyhood of Diaby being out for the rest of the season, if he gets a ban, or is appealing his case. If we bring in another overseas player I think we can confidently look forward to another campaign in L1 next year.

 

It doesn't explain how not keeping g Pinnock and Moore for an extra six months was such a good move!