- Jul 9, 2011
- 7,177
- 23,627
We're all arguing about what our best team is and patting our squad depth on the back, but I'm wondering. What exactly...is this team?
I mean, we seem to want to go to play tika-taka possession football...but we're encouraging our wingers to cut inside and completely congest the pitch, completely missing the point of tika-taka. So then maybe we want to play with inverted wingers...but that means a) our full backs have to keep building our momentum as well as defending, leaving possibly the most difficult task to two early 20y/o's & b) our £26m striker is feeding on scraps, due to not being agile enough. This also means we can't use Eriksen to his best capacity.
The problems don't stop just at attacking. Do we want to play a two man midfield or three? Two? Well are we dropping a defensive midfielder? If so, we get easily exposed. So a box-to-box player, the likes of Paulinho & Dembele? Well they've had great seasons so far, plus they're capable of helping in both boxes. Alright, so we're not playing a creative midfielder in Holtby or Sigurdsson here. But then we lack all imagination and that killer ball.
So you play them all and go 4-3-3. Well that means you're either restricting or completely dropping Eriksen & Sigurdsson. Or you could play both of those, except, again, no width, plus signing Lamela'd be a waste & we'd drop our best winger so far. We could rely on a fast counter-attacking side, but Soldado isn't a fast attacking player, he's a patient player. But he's having to be very bloody patient because he's not getting any service, you'd think the passing from the CAM would set him up but no, our wingers keep getting the ball, cutting inside and taking potshots, or choreographing the most obvious cutting insides that could only be more easy to defend if they shouted "I AM CUTTING INSIDE NOW DO YOU SEE WATCH ME AS I MOVE IN".
Don't get me wrong, it's better that we have these players than don't, but it currently seems like we're trying to build a side out of sticklebrix. We can't figure out one philosophy and formation, so we're going for the best of all of them, but that means our side resembles something Frankenstein-esque. I don't want to make quick judgements on these players or our scouts, but it seems we used the money to buy the best player we could in their position rather than actually thinking it through.
What's important is that Sunday exposed these problems. It's brought it clearly to light. Either we have to have a system and pick the best players for it, possibly dropping a few, or we try and jigger it around to create the best team. Either way, we're going to have to change something, this side has no coherency at all.
I mean, we seem to want to go to play tika-taka possession football...but we're encouraging our wingers to cut inside and completely congest the pitch, completely missing the point of tika-taka. So then maybe we want to play with inverted wingers...but that means a) our full backs have to keep building our momentum as well as defending, leaving possibly the most difficult task to two early 20y/o's & b) our £26m striker is feeding on scraps, due to not being agile enough. This also means we can't use Eriksen to his best capacity.
The problems don't stop just at attacking. Do we want to play a two man midfield or three? Two? Well are we dropping a defensive midfielder? If so, we get easily exposed. So a box-to-box player, the likes of Paulinho & Dembele? Well they've had great seasons so far, plus they're capable of helping in both boxes. Alright, so we're not playing a creative midfielder in Holtby or Sigurdsson here. But then we lack all imagination and that killer ball.
So you play them all and go 4-3-3. Well that means you're either restricting or completely dropping Eriksen & Sigurdsson. Or you could play both of those, except, again, no width, plus signing Lamela'd be a waste & we'd drop our best winger so far. We could rely on a fast counter-attacking side, but Soldado isn't a fast attacking player, he's a patient player. But he's having to be very bloody patient because he's not getting any service, you'd think the passing from the CAM would set him up but no, our wingers keep getting the ball, cutting inside and taking potshots, or choreographing the most obvious cutting insides that could only be more easy to defend if they shouted "I AM CUTTING INSIDE NOW DO YOU SEE WATCH ME AS I MOVE IN".
Don't get me wrong, it's better that we have these players than don't, but it currently seems like we're trying to build a side out of sticklebrix. We can't figure out one philosophy and formation, so we're going for the best of all of them, but that means our side resembles something Frankenstein-esque. I don't want to make quick judgements on these players or our scouts, but it seems we used the money to buy the best player we could in their position rather than actually thinking it through.
What's important is that Sunday exposed these problems. It's brought it clearly to light. Either we have to have a system and pick the best players for it, possibly dropping a few, or we try and jigger it around to create the best team. Either way, we're going to have to change something, this side has no coherency at all.