by Ian Royal »
16 Jan 2017 17:58
NewCorkSeth paultheroyal We should concentrate on possession in the attacking half... keep the ball and probe. At the back, get it out.... be interesting to know how many points lost from goals conceded by mistakes in our own half like on Thursday.
From the limited footage I have seen (please feel free to correct me) there has only been one problem with our style of play in our own half and that is individual errors.
If, as I suspect, we have an increase in errors leading to goals I would suggest that is down to the tactical comfortability rather than a result of the tactic itself.
The more we persist with the tactic the more accomplished our defenders will be at utilising it which
should lead to the error rate dropping.
That's fair. The more used to it we get, and to the challenges presented by teams defending against it, the better decisions we'll make about when to up the tempo and where, whether it's through short passes or a ball over the top. QPR was a cluster of poor performances and some selection issues. It was not an example of a system not working.
And passing back to the defence can drag teams forward opening up space over the top or down a different flank. It's also very useful to be able to maintain possession at the back to give forwards a rest period. As long as we don't lose control of the game in that time and can turn it back on again.
We're not there yet, and we're lacking the right players in some areas, but no one should expect a new manager, particularly inexperienced ones, to get teams fully up to speed in half a season. We've had way too many changes, and even if Stam was actively doing a shit job and we were in the bottom half, we desperately need continuity of style and direction to build something quality. It doesn't happen overnight.
