- May 14, 2007
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It’s actually what you’re supposed to do as a fullback, show them inside so they run into traffic instead of isolating you one on one.
His problem was that he was too slow out to harass him and he wasn’t backed up by the team pushing up. He’s the fullback pushing out and should have had one of the midfielders following to plug the space Willian in pushed into. Instead our lot remained stuck in the 6 yard box and didn’t back him. Watch the contrast with Chelsea when we got players wide, we had constant harassment whenever we got funnelled inside. That was a team backing each other up, intelligently working to fill gaps and squeeze us into tight spots with no outball.
We can do this, we know we can as we used to be the best at this, but all the training, drilling and previous experience just dribbled out of their ears.
Having said all that, I’m not going to take anything away from Chelsea here, they did everything we used to. I don’t care that they’ve been in a bad run, they played very well today and totally took us out of our game from minute 1.
Thats where we disagree. In these days of inverted wingers, or just in this occasion from a short corner, there's absolutely no chance I'm telling my full backs to show him inside on his strong foot. Into traffic or otherwise. I'd much rather the attacker be guided down the line on their weak foot and tell my covering defenders to get goal side and outside of the posts.
Different strokes I suppose.