only 7 goals scored at home

[doubledecker]

In spite of massive improvement under Harry we have still scored only 7 goals in 8 games at home. This is really indicative of the flaws in our 4-4-1-1 system. Our midfielders dont get forward enough in support of our lone striker and Modric does not look like scoring enough to justify building our formation around him.
So therefore surely the answer has to be to play 4-4-2, buy a really strong DM to fetch and carry for Luka and a striker who can score 20 goals plus alongside either Bent or Pav. Owen or Defoe would be fine by me. We can always revert to more of a 4-5-1 in some of our tougher away games or change it around when things are not working.

 

[General Levy]

Virtually whole new team. Two different managers, a bit of patience mate :up:

 

[TheChosenOne]

I'd be more worried about the 7 goals conceded at home. Costly.

 

[mil1lion]

Dont you think that has something to do with the fact that Modric was missing in several of those games? You talk about going 4-4-2, yet we have been playing that formation while Modric was out.

 

[Spurs_Q8]

if we could have the right CM pairing in 4-4-2, we can take more goals by Bent & Pavyluchenko, but if we did it now, we could score more goals but conceded more. so we can't take the risk to use it more than recent weeks as we could lost more games.

but while we are improved recently in terms of performances & results, i think it's nothing with the system as itself, it might be because it's for the wrong strikers. I'm satisfied with Bent and Roman too as i can't ask for something they can't but they aren't consisently enough. Both, Modric & Bentley all need more work to improve scoring record.

 

[Damian99]

We haven't scored that many since Sir Les jumped on board :shrug:

 

[ultimateloner]

I've been emphasising our lack of ability to score goals and i'm glad that someone sees the same probelm.

I disagree though with your perspective - I don't think we are playing the wrong formation etc. I think it's simply down to a lack of good runs - the type of runs that goal-scorers would make.

For starters our wingers aren't running into the box enough. When Bentley crosses you don't see Lennon running into the box. When Lennon crosses Bentley doesn't try to get to the end of it either. Contrast this with Man Utd and Chelsea. It's a basic thing for wingers to attack the box.

Jenas doesn't make surging runs anymore either - only Modric does.

This implies that no matter how good our wing play/crosses are, we would at most have 3 players in the box - Pav/Bent, Modric and very rarely - Jenas. That's not a good sign if we are playing the 'British way'.

As for the 'crsip passing' football - this is all down to Modric and EVEN when he's around, we aren't very effective in terms of running into space. Needless to say if Modric isn't around we don't even have this part of the game anymore so we won't score..

 

[rabs]

we were always going to struggle to score goals this season once we shipped out 2 first choice strikers and shuffled everything about. we arent scoring a lot, but on the positive our back line has stopped shipping goals. we are now far more tight at the back.

lately we've had clean sheets vs Man U, West Ham, Blackburn, NEC, which for us is quite simply amazing. we had about 3 clean sheets all of last season.

So provided we dont ship goals at the defensive end, we should have enough to see out teams, but not high scoring affairs. we can leave that for Villa this year i think.

 

[mil1lion]

We do need to factor in the situation we're in though. We're hardly in a position to throw men forward and risk conceding crucial goals. We're still only a point from the bottom 3 and we just need to dig out more wins. If we can get ourselves into a relatively safe position in the next couple of months, i think we'll start attacking a lot more and looking for goals. In the meantime however, we're in a dogfight.

 

[tototoner]

I agree Modric doesn't score to play in a 4-4-1-1, and we don't have the right forward to play up front on their own either

 

[SpurSince57]

Superficially, it compares very poorly with last season, when we'd scored 20 in eight games by this stage. Remember, though, that 12 of those came in just three games—two against basket-cases Derby and Wigan, and a freak game against Villa. We'd also let in 16.

We're also a point better off this season.

 

[ginol@14]

think the real reason we aint scored a lot are down to playing 1 up front
poor service from the midfield
and more importantly the lack of class up front
we have gone from the best 3 strikers in the league to probably the worst
i still have faith that harry will add some class and improve our existing forwards

 

[There's always next year]

IMO, it is partly to do with formation and partly to do with having two hapless strikers, in the form of Bent and Pav. Bentley looked a world beater last year, when he had Santa Cruz and McCarthy to aim balls at all day long. Whilst here he looks up... and there's no one, either the two strikers or worse when it's a 4-5-1.

On the bright side, our defence has looked good, but the possible unavailability of King and Woodgate over the next few games does cause me some concern.