Minority Report v Hull City

I expected my view of the Derby game to be challenged, and it was, but equally there was more pressure to drop the indexes. The majority ignore them because they are not interested, but there is a core who hate them with a passion and who challenge them every time I refer to them in the text of Minority Report. I intend to keep using them. They let me get questions like, ‘which was the better team’, out of the way quickly because I want to concentrate on WHY. Why did my team dominate the game? What did we do right? What were the tactics that worked well? What did I enjoy about the game? And rarely, which were the players who I felt contributed most to our win? There are of course the opposite questions when we lose about what our opponent did that we found hard to match. I accept that the indexes rely on my choice of statistics, and I accept that the indexes rely upon my weighting system. I therefore accept that the indexes reflect my view of the game. I wish it was otherwise, but others have refused to become involved in the process of constructing the indexes, so I am at a loss to know what else I can do. The indexes will remain a very small part of Minority Report. If you enjoy the Report but hate the indexes, well simply grit your teeth and hum ‘Rule Britannia’ until you get past that bit.


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I am going to deal very quickly with the second half, because the damage was done in the first half, and the second half was caused by the over-commitment of players to attack in search of an equaliser. Having said that, I did enjoy the lottery of guessing which player was playing where, and what system is it now. Still we now know that Liam Kitching can play as an attacking full back in a back 4, and that Callum Styles can play as an attacking midfield player in a 4-3-3 formation. Personally, I wasn’t as keen on Jasper Moon as the lone defender in a 1-4-5 formation, or Moon and Helik in a back 2. Hull played the second half exactly as they should have. They dropped deeper leaving the game’s best player (Keane Lewis-Potter) high to exploit our lack of pace by breaking quickly. The Hull fans must think their team are world beaters on the basis of that second half, but at least our coach keeps his lucky tag. He was lucky it wasn’t six.


As I say, the first half was when the damage was done. In the first half, our system was the system the coach wanted to play, and it was in that half when the system and the players were exposed for what they are. You would not ask a centre back to play full back against a speedy winger, would you. Centre backs are built to win headers in crowded penalty areas. They are not built to match their pace against the pace of a talented wide player, in space, in a wide position. That is exactly what the system demands of the two wide centre backs, and I felt desperately sorry for poor Jasper Moon, who had been handed that particular ***** stick against Hull’s best player. I have complained about the system over and over again, but today was the best example of why I complain, and I am going to stick with it.


Hull played a 4-2-3-1 system. Our system was once again 3-4-2-1. Our two quick players were Cole and Iseka behind Woodrow, but because Hull played a back 4, and because they were narrow for much of the time, there was not as much space for them. Hull’s two quickies (Wilks and Lewis-Potter) were also just behind the striker, but they attacked the space out wide that had been vacated by our wing backs. There were favourable comments about our centre-backs filling that space on Wednesday, but on Wednesday, they did not have to face raw pace, and that pace was particularly evident down our right side. Why did the coach hang Moon out to dry like that, after all, Hull played the same system plus Lewis-Potter in their previous game.


The Hull system still left them with a player (Honeyman) off the lone forward and often in space because Helik was marking Magennis. That meant that we had to get our midfield players in close attendance quickly in the event of a break. His goal shows that the disappointing duo of Benson and Gomes failed in their task. I thought that both Williams and Brittain played well in their attacking roles, but the fact is that they are far too advanced to recover quickly in the event of a quick break by the opposition, and Brittain in particular was caught time and time again because he was too high to provide Moon with any effective cover.


Our front 3 began well, but gradually faded as we struggled to get the ball to them. Of course, a passer needs movement ahead of him, but when the midfield players are set so deep, it is hard to get the ball forward quickly, and that is what the team has to do if it is to catch the opposition defence unprepared. It gradually became apparent that it was not working. I also felt sorry for Cauley Woodrow, who once again was asked to play a position that is outside his comfort zone. He does not have the height and strength, nor the pace to play the role of a front man, and yet that is what he was asked to do. When I saw Adeboyejo warming up at half-time, I assumed Woodrow would be the one to go, and yet it was Cole who departed leaving both Woodrow and Adeboyejo playing out of their comfort zones in the second half.


I have written about balance in the past, but our team for the second half was even more out of balance than our team for the first half, and that takes some doing. We desperately need a tall man to lead the line, and much of the rest will fall into place. The coach said that Morris might be ready for the bench in his interview on Friday, but not only was there no Morris on our bench. There was no Oulare either. I will tell you right now, we are going to struggle to stay up if we cannot get at least one of them fit. That is only half the battle though, because we have to abandon this 3-4-3 system. In the absence of an effective press, we do not have the players to make it work.


Entertainment Index:

Barnsley 76

Hull City 123

Match 199


Performance Index: -45


PotM Callum Brittain

 

Indexes? Surely somebody of your standing would use the correct term of indices.

 

Best one of these I’ve read. I think you’re being generous to Woodrow. But I’m with you on the majority.

And you’ve acknowledged the indices are your view.

Bravo sir.

The only shame is that we are in agreement (and I assume most others will be too) that our side at the moment is a complete shambles.

 

What formation would you pick, out of interest?

 

https://grammarist.com/usage/indexes-indices/

 

I have only one thing to add.... Yee Haa.

 

Im not sure that Woodrow started up top, I thought he was far deeper until maybe the last 30 minutes.

 

I missed the midweek game also.

Today, we seemed to play a back four made up of five players in rotation.

When Williams went forward, Brittain played right back and Kitching played left back.

When Brittain went forward, Williams and Moon were the fullbacks.

The first time Hull threatened us, we lost all belief in the system, and stopped playing.

It was a complete shambles , and no one knew who they were supposed to be marking from one second to the next.

Why we didn’t match up with them (and try to grab a foothold in the game) is entirely down to the coach.

 

I can only apologize.

 

Funny when Hull fans were calling our support **** when their city brought just 1,503 to one of their closest trips of the season....



Not so funny was the defending for the two we let in.

 

We were poor.....really poor.
Not every team they meet will be that bad.
They deserved their 3 points and the scoreline could have been sooooo much worse. Better teams would have scored double that today. We need to have a long hard look at ourselves.....well done hull.

 

Great read and made good sense of some of the more baffling passages of play on show, thank you.

 

Having slept on it, I feel that I have been less fair to Joseph Laumann than I was to Markus Schopp, after all, the problems that they faced are the same. So I am going to review the game again, and the first basic assumption is that there has not been enough time with the players to change the basic system (3-4-3), and therefore he must pick the team to fit the established system.


The reason 3-4-3 was so successful last season was the strategy to play long balls into the corners and utilise the high press to win the ball back. The high press is just not feasible any longer. We cannot exhaust the front 3 pressing team as we did last season, because after we have kept 1 substitute in reserve for possible injuries, there are only 2 left. Last season, the team was largely free of long term injuries, and there is no doubt that they were a lot fitter, for reasons that have been identified elsewhere. That has meant that teams have had to be picked from the remaining fit few at times, and now, although more players are available, care is being taken not to over-tire the returning players and causing a return of the injuries that have kept them out for so long. Teams are being picked knowing that 2 of the chosen players are not going to play for longer than an hour, and that accounts for 2 of our substitutes, which allows very little flexibility to allow for tactical substitutions. When the coach is picking his team, he has more problems than those of us watching from beyond the touchline can imagine. I did not make that allowance in my report on Saturday.


So assuming we need to play a back 3, what are the problems that Laumann faced? The first problem is that without a tall striker, there is no-one to bring back to defend set-pieces. Last season, Morris was the difference. The knock on effect is that you need to pick the best headers of the ball in your back 3. For some reason, and I genuinely have no idea why, Toby Sibbick has struggled with his heading this season. That has meant that one of last season’s stalwarts cannot even make the bench. He has pace, so he would have dealt with the threat of Lewis-Potter far better than Moon did, but if he cannot be relied upon in the air in the box at set-pieces, then he cannot play, and that was the first dilemma that Laumann faced. He wanted to rest Andersen to save him from possible further injury, Aapo Halme also injured, his only options were to bring Kitching in on the left, and move Moon to the right.


The weakness of the 3-4-3 system is that the width comes from the wing backs. In order that the space ahead of those players is not already occupied, the front 3 must play narrow. Therefore, even though the team had two of our quickest in the front 3, they could not utilise the space outside, because that was already claimed by our wing backs. That meant that their movement had to be restricted, and that they tried to play within the area described by line extending between the two penalty boxes. It restricted their movement, and it made it hard for them to create enough space to receive a forward pass from deep, and because of Hull’s system, most of our passing was from deep as the two central midfield players dropped deeper in order to cover their free player (Honneyman).


The lack of a tall front player would be a problem for our attacking balance, whatever the system. We do not have a player with extreme pace, so we tend to look for the alternative, a target-man with height and strength. He gives the team balance because he allows the deep players to hit long balls forward when everyone appears to be marked. His job is to compete and make it hard for the ball to be cleared easily. Anything else is a bonus. With the logic supporting the forward press, no longer valid, this seems the best alternative if you are going to keep 3-4-3.


The basic assumption for this piece is that we have to keep 3-4-3 because there has not been enough time to work on an alternative, but I would prefer at some stage to return to the stability of a back 4, where the two full backs are not allowed to get as high in support of midfield. Whether that be 4-5-1, 4-3-3 or 4-4-2, I have no preference. It obviously depends upon the available players, but my thinking has not advanced that far as yet.

 

I thought we did get the ball to the forwards plenty of times especially first half but they just lost it time and time again .

 

I think Laumann suggested the turnaround was too quick to make any major changes, which makes the decision to keep Schopp after the Sheffield Utd game, for the Bristol City game all the more confusing.

I agree about switching to a back 4, mainly because we’ve started with a back three 17 times and only won twice. I just hope whoever comes in knows what formation he wants, how to set it up and goes with that.

 

There was also some half decent deliveries in to them in the first period but we didnt seem ruthless enough when we had our chances.....(or it fell to Brittain!!).

 

The last 2 games first half our build up play has been slow side to side against well set opponents, we just dont break that down so have to start to get that ball forward quickly like happened when Iseka got the ball wide and beat the defender. We did little of that

 

I still don’t agree with the view that we played a back three (particularly in the first half).

Even for the opening goal, you can see JW in midfield and a back four of CB; JM; MH & LK.

When CB moved forward, everyone moved across and JM dropped back.

They were doing this for most of the first half and abandoned it in the second half for who knows what.

With this in mind, I would not have selected Moon to do the job he was asked to do. Sibbick would have been a better choice.