I think having Ferenczi and Odejaye up front makes our play a bit too obvious.Both are target men andare notvery mobile so the easy option is to play long balls to them from the back at awkward angles where they flick on the ball to usually no-one.You really need at least one nippy striker who makes runs that pulls defenders out of position.</p> Also, JCR - a right-footed player on the left. Nice trickery from the lad, but you just know he's going to come inside and try to cross the ball with his right. These aren't good crosses for strikers, they need to be coming in from the by-line from a left-footed player. Barnsley try to put crosses in but they often come in from too deep. I think the full-backs need to work a lot harder on the overlaps to help out the likes of JCR going forward or else he just gets stranded and loses it.</p> </p>
To be fair a majority of the crosses into the box were won by our players( Mostly Kayode) however the balls in were never attacked properly, the winning header looked more like a layoff/ flick on, Cardiff were more than capable of picking up the loose ball and clearing it, our support players didn't seem to be playing close enough to the strikers to capitalise on the loose ball. I do agree however that 2 strikers who are target men is probably not hte best way to go, Ferenczi seemed to suufer from the presence of Oddjob, if KO wasn't there and Ferenczi had been the primary striker to aim for on the crosses he would probably have looked a lot better although wouldn't have been guarenteed to create anything else.
It's just the easy way out for our defenders/midfielders- when there doesn't appear to be anything on, just lump it forward to the big men. We have a free kick just inside our half - get the keeper to take it and put all the big men in a line on the penalty area. Then if it breaks down and we get a throw in near their penalty area, get one of the full backs to launch it in with a long throw to the big guys again. It's Wimbledon tactics really, and league 1 stuff.
I think all the subtlety and sophistication of our play seemed to disappear when de Silva got injured. As much as I love Hassell, and think he does a decent job of protecting the defence, a midfielder he is not, and effectively becomes a 5th defender - something we just don't need
Talking of free kicks What the hell were they playing at with that "effort" just before half time? (banghead)
I assume that was practiced on the same training ground ... That Odejayi appears to be a great striker I just laughed