- May 17, 2018
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The pragmatic ones: those who recognise when we're winning games and getting results, thought it may not be pretty they recognise its a results game so will take it. But will also recognise when we hit bad form and quite rightly blame the negative tactics.
I'm pragmatic, or at least try to be. We could be shit every week and scrape results but if it meant we actually win something I don't care. But our recent form is shite. 2 points from 12 isn't good enough. Nor is defending 1-0 leads away to average teams. Not last 10 minutes defending either, we're talking whole halves.
That is selective pragmatism, though - true pragmatism would consider all factors involved, which that is not doing.
Tactics are a series of instructions and methods that the players are trained and given to follow, but the mistake is completely attributing the way players play as tactics. That is down to various factors, including a player's ability to follow or understand the tactics - individually, or collectively. If a key creative player has a game where he can't string two passes together, it can completely nullify an attacking approach.
'Negative' tactics would, imo, be stuff like bringing on a defender to replace an attacker. We didn't see that yesterday. I also didn't see us camped out on the edge of our own box. What I did see, personally, was incredibly sloppy passing, a lack of concentration, and a lack of creative movement. It's not like we're hoofing balls for Kane and Son to chase - it just looked like we had no cohesion in midfield.
What I think needs to be addressed, and this is something that I have no doubt Mourinho etc. know about, is that we have a bunch of players like Dele, Winks, Sissoko and Fernandes - no-one of which are capable of offering what Lo Celso does. So yesterday I have no doubt that what we saw was a lack of alternative to Gio.
What I don't understand, tactically speaking, is why we haven't got an alternative style that would accommodate a solution with what we do have. Why we aren't using Vincius more. I just don't think it's pragmatic to only see this part of the equation and not even touch on all the other factors.
Generally, it doesn't surprise me that we haven't been good at closing out tight scorelines, because I feel like we've never been good at that in recent years. I actually feel like, in many ways, we look very much like Liverpool did pre-VVD and Allison - that we are actually a couple of key players away from everything clicking.
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