22-07-2018, 11:45 AM
Posted this one under the Oldham thread but should have been here.
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Still early days guys. I thought we played very well against Betis and Malaga. Those two games were against possession oriented opponents where we as a team could practice our defensive shape and pressing which we in my opinion, did very well. I believe it's always easier to defend against this type of possession play than being the team that must take control of the game and dictate the tempo.
Oldham was always going to be a completely different task (as Karanka also pointed out before the game) and it was disappointing to see and hear that we were not able to take control of the match until the last 10-15 minutes (and maybe the first 5-10). I was only watching the match through a smart phone stream but I thought we were lacking the tempo required to outplay these kinds of robust and defensive minded opponents. If we are to control matches we need to have much higher tempo and with that passing, ball control and vision needs to be spot on. It seems that the required tempo and urgency were only introduced with our Portuguese trio so at least we know that we have players at the club that have the required skills. I expect that the next game will address these points and we will have a much better outcome :-) If that is not the case I will start to worry.
Regarding our two #6s. I agree that Watson has been disappointing but i think that Bridcutt has been ok as have both Geddy and Yates. I would still have loved for us to sign a Vukcevic kind of player. I guess that Geddy is the closest to that kind of deep laying playmaker we have at present but I'm not sure that he's capable of regaining his form from earlier years. Yates has definitely impressed me but I expect that he will be loaned out. As it stands now, I believe all our DMCs will work fine when we don't have the ball but will contribute less when we are attacking. Again, from what I have seen from Vukcevic, he would have been great both when attacking and defending but I have accepted that he will not come :-(
Now, on to Scunthorpe and a much better performance. I believe!
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Still early days guys. I thought we played very well against Betis and Malaga. Those two games were against possession oriented opponents where we as a team could practice our defensive shape and pressing which we in my opinion, did very well. I believe it's always easier to defend against this type of possession play than being the team that must take control of the game and dictate the tempo.
Oldham was always going to be a completely different task (as Karanka also pointed out before the game) and it was disappointing to see and hear that we were not able to take control of the match until the last 10-15 minutes (and maybe the first 5-10). I was only watching the match through a smart phone stream but I thought we were lacking the tempo required to outplay these kinds of robust and defensive minded opponents. If we are to control matches we need to have much higher tempo and with that passing, ball control and vision needs to be spot on. It seems that the required tempo and urgency were only introduced with our Portuguese trio so at least we know that we have players at the club that have the required skills. I expect that the next game will address these points and we will have a much better outcome :-) If that is not the case I will start to worry.
Regarding our two #6s. I agree that Watson has been disappointing but i think that Bridcutt has been ok as have both Geddy and Yates. I would still have loved for us to sign a Vukcevic kind of player. I guess that Geddy is the closest to that kind of deep laying playmaker we have at present but I'm not sure that he's capable of regaining his form from earlier years. Yates has definitely impressed me but I expect that he will be loaned out. As it stands now, I believe all our DMCs will work fine when we don't have the ball but will contribute less when we are attacking. Again, from what I have seen from Vukcevic, he would have been great both when attacking and defending but I have accepted that he will not come :-(
Now, on to Scunthorpe and a much better performance. I believe!