Match Ratings Ratings vs Brighton

[mpickard2087]

Dier was transformed today. His passing was consistently penetrative, positive, attacking and accurate and his positional play was solid. In the first half, Dier and Dembélé totally dominated the Brighton midfield, winning the ball 20 or more times and entirely stifling every attempt by Brighton to construct an attack, while feeding the ball reliably to our attacking players, often in good positions.

I really cant agree with our midfield, the passing bit in particular. Yes most of what they did was neat and tidy, some of it occasionally eye-catching (Dier hit an aesthetically pleasing but not exactly killer diagonal ball with fade out to Trippier one time in particular), they (particularly Dembele) mopped up in midfield pretty well, but as I said last night in my ratings post, I thought what the cm2 were doing was a large part of our struggles.

If people disagree with me go back and watch that first half in particular. It's 'default' control as Brighton sit behind the ball, they just leave the ambling Glenn Murray up top (hardly a pressing machine) but for some reasons frequently both our centre mids are sunk back into defence. Many times one of our centre backs is stepping forward to receive a pass and has gone beyond them. They could and should be 15 yards higher up the pitch. All it does is pull Eriksen back, Son and Moura into less effective areas, the play gets shuffled down the touchlines and across the back. Against teams that sit back you cant just be playing neat and tidy on the periphery.