A Few Thoughts on Strategy & Tactics

[ucandomagic]

When you play a back 4, including 2 full-backs with almost no defensive instincts, you are setting yourself up to be fucked.

Burrows is a great guy, but the sun doesn’t shine out of his arse - his lack of defensive awareness was a significant contributor to Sunderland’s first goal at Wembley, and Brisl’s second yesterday. Both pivotal moments.

If you’ve got 3 at the back, or a double pivot defensive mid, there is at least someone to fill the gap when you go missing.

If Femi & Harrison are to be as adventurous as Rubes wants them to be, then they need a Bash (or Anel) & JOC behind them, not Tyler & Robbo.

If you want a hole you buy a drill, if you get a dose you need antibiotics - certain jobs need certain tools! Equally, if you’ve only got a drill, don’t try to cut something in half.

If your strategy is high action, high press, vertical running all over the pitch (chaos as Rubes called it) you have to have good defenders who can attack, rather than vice versa - otherwise you will keep losing 5-3 (on quite a good day)!

UTB & FTP!

 

[Tony_Kaufman]

Watching it back again Burrows is more at fault for the second goal than RND. A player has the ball in front of RND who closes him down, as no one else was around to do it. Hamer, I think it was, then runs in behind RND after the player rolls it to his right to an unmarked player who shoots straight away and scores. RND was in a no win situation. If he ignored the first player to concentrate on the unmarked player to the right then the first player shoots and scores. Where was Burrows? What was Hamer (or whoever it was), doing instead of picking up that player? It was such a weird run to make into the box.

As for goal three. Three United players went to the player with the ball and none got a tackle/block in. Peck was actually the player nearest to the crosser when the final ball went in, not RND. As for Bindon, that was plain slow reactions. It was almost as if he saw the three United players trying to block the cross, switched off and decided "no work for me to do here, job done." I wouldn't call it poor per se, more incredibly naive.

The first goal was a bit odd too. We had so many players dropping back deep quickly to the point where we'd flooded our box, but none of them seemed to be marking the only three Bristol players in and around the box, leading to a panicked tackle and free kick. I can't fault the goal itself, that was a good finish to his credit and we'd have been happy if Hamer had scored that.

I'm not too concerned about RND as he'll be out of the picture as soon as we sign another centre back. But I am a bit concerned about Burrows as defensively he looked off in pre-season and has continued this into the first game. With this high press attacking set-up the defence have got to do their jobs better. A player unmarked for the second goal. A cross coming in down his side which RND and Peck had to try to block. Burrows is more accountable for those two than anyone else.

 

[ThirdGenBlade]

Totally agree GraphMan. For the Sunlan goal, Burrows had Mayenda covered perfectly, while JLT was covering the guy in the centre with the ball. Burrows panicked and charged across towards the ball, leaving a huge gap in front of Mayenda.

The ball was immediately passed into that gap leaving JLT completely exposed on his outside to a fast winger - no contest, either a penalty or a shot - sadly Mayenda executed the latter perfectly.

For me, Burrows’ indiscipline cost us the game just as much as Big Kieff’s “assist”!

If we are playing to a system with full-backs, we need full-backs with defensive discipline.

UTB & FTP!