by Snowflake Royal »
20 Sep 2020 17:32
royalp-we Snowflake Royal royalp-we We certainly still need to start games better at home. I think everyone can agree it really wasn’t impressive up to Barnsley going down to 10.
If we persist with 1 up top at home, to actually create anything we NEED Swift, Olise and Ejaria to play closer together to create openings between them.
Olise and Ejaria were far too wide and too far from each other to create anything meaningful and it showed In the first half today. They simply are not wide players.
Two strikers at home with new wingers, or stick with our three best creative players behind the lone striker and work on things?
I guess it’s a good predicament to have for Pauno!
I thought we spent vast swathes of the first half playing into Barnsley's hand by playing extremely narrow and allowing them to squeeze the space and hunt in packs. Mick made several comments about being able to throw a blanket over the whole team. Olise spent half his time in the middle or even over on the left rather than out wide right.
The rule in football has always been the attacking team tries to spread play, stretch the opposition and make the pitch big whilst the defending team try to compact everything and make the pitch small.
We've been pretty poor at both of those for years. So often have our defensive shape spread and players pressing in ones or twos, defenders isolated or standing off. Whilst our attackers are often close together and marked by two or three opposition at once.
We needed to play out quicker and use the full width of the pitch better.
Whilst I agree in part, the general rule in football is not to spread play. If you want to play with wide men - you play with wingers or forwards out wide like meite and like you say, exploit the space. But Olise and Ejaria are wasted out there.
If we want to play Ejaria, Swift and Olise in the same team they have to play closer together to carve open opportunities and not isolate themselves.
We need to make sure that Joao doesn't get isolated, but that's more about making sure the central player gets up to support him. And maybe one of the deeper midfielders breaks late to attack the edge of the box. It's this that makes me think Swift isn't really suited to the attacking central role. He's quite slow, not one to really break into the box, better suited to feeding the ball forward. I think Olise and Ejaria are both better suited for that central role and Swift should be competing with Laurent for a deeper position, and possibly losing out to him because Swift isn't much of a box to box player despite his quality.
I think if we want to do well it's really important to use the full width of the pitch through the middle third, something we weren't really doing effectively against Barnsley but were doing better against Derby. We have a lot of players who want to play in tight spaces and slow the game down a bit. We need to counter act that and not just get bogged down in a crowded middle of the park. Making the pitch wider also gives Rinomhota and Laurent much more space to drive forward into. I don't think it was a coincidence neither of them really burst forward, it's because the space infront of them was so crowded.