Thought I’d share a few thoughts about the performance today and the general state of the squad:
-this performance can be summed up by three words, the first one is ‘possession.’ Unfortunately the second 2 are ‘without substance.’ The amount of safe possession we had in our own half today (and at other times this season) was bordering on ridiculous in all honesty. Parker explained in last weeks post match interview that this was intentional, with the aim of drawing the opposition onto us and then in theory, giving us the opportunity to play through them. In theory this is a sound philosophy, but (and it’s a big but,) the success of this philosophy is very much dependent on having the correct personnel at your disposal. You really need to overload the midfield with creative players, players who can pick up pockets of space, and both drive forward with the ball and have an eye for a pass. To be blunt I’m not sure that we have these types of players, I think both Billing and Marcondes are late box arrivers/getting on the end of things type midfielders rather than creators. The only number eight I’d say we have currently who’s suited to this style is Stan, and we all know we can’t rely on him to stay fit. The result of this is that we are almost entirely reliant on our wide men/full backs to provide a creative threat, which is where most of our chances were created from not just today but also the entire season so far. As a result, if you are able to negate the threat of our wide men/attacking full backs then you are likely to negate us totally. We badly need a creative midfielder or two for this to work or else we are going to see many performances like the one today.
-this performance can be summed up by three words, the first one is ‘possession.’ Unfortunately the second 2 are ‘without substance.’ The amount of safe possession we had in our own half today (and at other times this season) was bordering on ridiculous in all honesty. Parker explained in last weeks post match interview that this was intentional, with the aim of drawing the opposition onto us and then in theory, giving us the opportunity to play through them. In theory this is a sound philosophy, but (and it’s a big but,) the success of this philosophy is very much dependent on having the correct personnel at your disposal. You really need to overload the midfield with creative players, players who can pick up pockets of space, and both drive forward with the ball and have an eye for a pass. To be blunt I’m not sure that we have these types of players, I think both Billing and Marcondes are late box arrivers/getting on the end of things type midfielders rather than creators. The only number eight I’d say we have currently who’s suited to this style is Stan, and we all know we can’t rely on him to stay fit. The result of this is that we are almost entirely reliant on our wide men/full backs to provide a creative threat, which is where most of our chances were created from not just today but also the entire season so far. As a result, if you are able to negate the threat of our wide men/attacking full backs then you are likely to negate us totally. We badly need a creative midfielder or two for this to work or else we are going to see many performances like the one today.