Parker is most definitely the problem here. The way he sets the team up is totally orientated around having possession for the sake of having possession. Our starting system is very easy to defend against regardless of who is picked to play, there are a few reasons for this:
-we have all of our wide players hugging the touchline and frequently our advanced midfielders too, I have never seen a striker so isolated as Solanke (or whatever other poor bugger is asked to chase lost causes for ninety minutes) is. We play all this intricate possession orientated football but to what end? By the time the ball comes into the box Solanke is always outnumbered at least three to one.
-our patterns of play are so predictable that I could actually just write pattern (singular.) We switch play to the opposite winger and then that winger tries to find an underlapping run either from the full back or number eight of that side. If we are lucky enough to get that far we then try to score from a cut back. And that is quite literally all we do. All an opponent has to do is man mark the two number eights tightly and we don’t look remotely like scoring. There is absolutely no variety in our play whatsoever, it’s the same patterns of play and it’s all done in front of the opposition, exactly where they want us to be.
Frankly I’ve had enough of watching this now, it’s bloody tedious beyond belief. Our style is even more turgid than the ‘football’ that the likes of Burnley employ. Unless he changes formation and philosophy going forward I genuinely can see us missing out on the play offs.
