- Aug 4, 2013
- 488
- 1,793
Well, I clearly disagree with you. I always keep hearing some of fans moaning when Chelsea and Arsenal have bad days against poor teams but still manage to scrap a win. Usually it's because one of their creative players have found the key to unlock the defence. It's not luck or coincidence.
We were a possession side under Harry. According to some stats I read we had 4% less possession last season than under Harry's last season and made 3000 less passes. And that's what I could see with my eyes all last season too, we looked like a great counter-attacking team, not good at possession but I didn't expect that either after the sale of Modric and VdV, who were integral to play that way.
If AVB wants to have more possession, he needs technical, creative players to keep the ball moving intelligently.
(I'll try make this a quick one ) Under harry the squad relied on the width of Bale and Lennon to retain possession of the ball, Modric and VDV used Bale and Lennon to move the ball up the pitch creating triangles etc.
This season Bale was turned into a central attacking force, players like Holtby, Sig, Dempsey were played out on the left and all of them enjoyed cutting inside and clusterf***ing the centre of the pitch that meant there was less width in the attack and led many players running into each other and there were less outlets to feed the ball to in a tricky situation as well as removing all obvious triangles to use to retain possession!
The squad was also full of new players who were adjusting to each other as well as what AVB was expecting of them, I'm sure neither Bale, Sig, Dembele etc had ever been coached in the same manner AVB likes to coach! Since the 4-2-3-1 was not AVB's prefered formation as well as inheriting a new squad he was probably unclear of what roles he wanted certain players to play, Bale's transition into a central position basically made the reasons for signing Sig and Dempsey redundant (as both were initially signed to play No10 and replace VDV)
I would explain further but I'm a little tired, as well as the fact people are probably tired of me posting long messages
Hope this clears up why we struggled creatively last season