Whats happened to it of late?, first half today was abysmal, second half marginally better, a couple of months ago we were getting rave reviews from opposing managers and pundits alike, defending from the front with the high energy press, changing the front line after 55 mins so we could maintain it, where we now seem to have adopted permanent hoofball, i know some on here claim that theres structure to it, but i just don,t see it, certainly not today, i think we,ll make the play offs but unless we revert back to what we do best we certainly won,t be promoted, we got the result today which was great but the performance was pretty poor..I know whatever happens whe,ve had a fantastic season, but its so frustrating when we,re so close, and if we were still playing the same tactics i genuinely would fancy us because nobody could live with our pressure....
Middlesbrough just booted it, so gave us no time to press. We often just booted it too like, but if you have a look at the stats they played far more long balls than we did. It didn't help them, we still won, and we won with them barely creating a chance. And yes, the first half was pretty awful, but we ground them down and it was as easy a victory as we've had all season. It wasn't attractive football, but we were as dominant as we have been in any game.
I hope you've got a good tin hat. I raised the same point on here a few weeks back and got a reight shoeing.
You can only press if the opposition have the ball at their feet & today Middlesboro countered us by instantly kicking the ball long therefore leaving the high press ineffectual but we high pressed at Luton on monday & caused them problems and the classic example was the other week at Bournemouth when we pressed them for the full 90 & won the game , you cannot expect the opposition to ignore our style , they will adapt to try to deal with it which is a complement to us .
Because we don’t play in isolation. The other team wants to stop us. We have to find ways of winning. Simple as that.
To be fair thought you saw it a bit in the Luton game - they tried to play out from the back a few times and just couldn't do it. We forced them to kick it straight out on more than one occasion. As others have said - most teams now are adopting tactic of going more direct to try and play over it.
Today i saw us playing a poor football team that if we had got the ball down a bit more, we would have beat them far more easily...
Whenever we play pretty football against Colin’s sides they just kick lumps out of us and we very rarely get anything out the game. Today we were a bit more rigid at the expense of the nice football and we won. Football is like that.
We won, I believe. Which means whatever tactics VI used, worked quite well. Against the manager with most promotions from this league. Job done.
It was the same when we played weds, it was obvious the long ball wasn,t working after the first 20 mins, so get it down and play, how many aimless balls to nobody have we seen today?, Collins kicking it straight back to their keeper etc, i wouldn,t mind if we were trying to find our players with long passes, but they,re not passes, they,re just constant long and hopefulls and all we succeed in doing is conceding possession very cheaply and inviting pressure...
The game we play is above the tactical comprehension of most of the managers in this league. You know, those professionals whose job it is to counteract our style. Those who are paid thousands a week to do it, and can't. Those who have been 'in football' for decades, and can't. It's certainly above the tactical comprehension of someone who hasn't had those years of experience. And it's definitely above the tactical comprehension of someone who doesn't even know how to use a comma.