Defensive Errors---Eternal Loop

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ChipButtyBlade

ChipButtyBlade

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Both managers have had to deal with the same problem for months now,that tells a story in itself.

The players that are picked week after week are not capable nor do they have the quality to deal with the oppositions quality players every team has got one or two
some teams have several and some teams are full of them............we have one on that level and he's not our player.

Bogle,Trusty,Robinson,Lowe/Larouci are not up to the job,Basham is finished,Egan he was part of the early season ball watchers.......so what do you do ?

The only two that show any desire and quality are Baldock and RND.

Thats just the defence i could start on the midfield but i dont want to depress myself further.
 

Souza isn’t capable of protecting anel and Robinson who aren’t able to deal with to quality forwards which pretty much every team in this league have. We’re soft as shit
 
ChipButtyBlade said:
Both managers have had to deal with the same problem for months now,that tells a story in itself.

The players that are picked week after week are not capable nor do they have the quality to deal with the oppositions quality players every team has got one or two
some teams have several and some teams are full of them............we have one on that level and he's not our player.

Bogle,Trusty,Robinson,Lowe/Larouci are not up to the job,Basham is finished,Egan he was part of the early season ball watchers.......so what do you do ?

The only two that show any desire and quality are Baldock and RND.

Thats just the defence i could start on the midfield but i dont want to depress myself further.
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Think you are being generous to Baldock, he's been no better than the rest.

Like you say though it's not just the defence, there's huge, cavernous holes in midfield that the opposition just waltz through unchallenged most of the time. Individually I like Hamer, and I also think there's a player in Souza but collectively, when McAtee is being deployed as an attacking threat as well, they are awful as a unit.
 
We lack defensive shape when opposition teams progress into our final third. It’s as if there’s no one organising and speaking to eachother and this IMO is what Egan brought (for all his mistakes recently). The defenders aren’t helped by either z Norwood, Slimane or Souza in front of them all whom give away so much possession and space to the opposition and are far to slow in building forward momentum. Individual errors are compounding everything that’s wrong with us as a defensive system.

We have a complete imbalance of players playing in a system that’s not working. Plus keepers who severely lack command and confidence.
 
Those two players Eze and Olise (sp?) Made all the difference yesterday. We need 3 or 4 like that on our squad and we'd fly. When they went off we looked more organised than them and controlled things much better.
I don't think we identify and target those players to put them off their game. Need to step into them and get physical to put them off their stride. Can't allow them the run of the pitch or they just take the piss.
The whole midfield and defence needs to work on surrounding the quality players in numbers and pressing hard. If a few free kicks happen so what. They only need to create half a yard around our box and they finish. The quality is unreal. We just can't continually stand off like we do.
 
9 vs 9 last night we were the better team, we got beat because they had 2 players that are worth about £60m each

To defend against £60m attackers you need £20-30m defenders

In a decent Prem defensive backline theres maybe one thats a bit of a passenger, the weaker link

All ours are weaker links, we dont have 1 Prem class defender, we dont have the resource to buy 1, and if we did, would they come?

We beat Brentford without Toney & Mbeumo, when the star men are missing, its an equal contest

Imagine if we had Olise & Eze, alongside Macca and Hamer - we'd be nearer to mid table than bottom

Cant fault the lads for effort last night, its just that were not good enough at this level
 
I think for starters I'd get Trusty at centre back and either Robbo/RND at full back.

Maybe sacrifice some attacking intent and deploy another defensive-minded midfielder next to Souza to help pick up the spare men between the lines - we seem to be conceding an awful lot of shots from a man dropping off and finding space. Admittedly this is probably a deliberate ploy to help defend the box to tighten up on 'big' chances but opposition players are so good they're regularly finding the back of the net with what are considered lower probability chances.

Or, dare I suggest, going back to 3-5-2. Means one of the CB's can step out more agressively and we solidify the middle of midfield a bit.
 
ChipButtyBlade said:
Both managers have had to deal with the same problem for months now,that tells a story in itself.

The players that are picked week after week are not capable nor do they have the quality to deal with the oppositions quality players every team has got one or two
some teams have several and some teams are full of them............we have one on that level and he's not our player.

Bogle,Trusty,Robinson,Lowe/Larouci are not up to the job,Basham is finished,Egan he was part of the early season ball watchers.......so what do you do ?

The only two that show any desire and quality are Baldock and RND.

Thats just the defence i could start on the midfield but i dont want to depress myself further.
Click to expand...
Out of all the defenders right now, Anel is the biggest liability
 
I agree that our defence is not up to Prem standards, but our defensive work in midfield is woeful. So many times teams play straight through our midfield with ease. We're also guilty of giving players too much space and time on the edge of our box. You get punished for not getting tight and allowing long range shots at this level, you might get away with it in the Champ. Our players also often look physically weak when compared to the opposition.
I don't think we have any answers to our defensive problems in the current squad. Wilder's improved us going forwards, but we're still conceding despite the numerous formation and personnel changes he's tried.
I'm really disappointed as I thought the defence would be the least of our problems this year. I expected Anel to make the step up and thrive in the Prem. I thought we'd sign improvements at LCB and LWB. But we've gone backwards.
 
vas borbokis said:
Those two players Eze and Olise (sp?) Made all the difference yesterday. We need 3 or 4 like that on our squad and we'd fly. When they went off we looked more organised than them and controlled things much better.
I don't think we identify and target those players to put them off their game. Need to step into them and get physical to put them off their stride. Can't allow them the run of the pitch or they just take the piss.
The whole midfield and defence needs to work on surrounding the quality players in numbers and pressing hard. If a few free kicks happen so what. They only need to create half a yard around our box and they finish. The quality is unreal. We just can't continually stand off like we do.
Click to expand...
Exactly this. Last season we had Ndiaye doing what Eze and Olise were doing last night. When they went off, we were at least the equal of Palace. Both us and Palace are crammed with top 6 Championship players. And they have 2 world beaters. We have none. They find them more regularly than us (Zaha...), that's what the difference is. The other 9 of the Palace team could be swapped around with 9 of ours, without too much difference. And Eze and Olise were born in England. That is where we are letting ourselves down, in not finding similar talent.
 
There was a short term improvement when Wilder took over but we're headed back to previously where we look at sixes and sevens.

Can't say I'm surprised as my belief is that no manager would make much difference to this current squad at this level.

That said I still think a few players can take a look at themselves at times.
 
As a team, they can't seem to be able to do two jobs at once.

Games like Villa where we park the bus and everyone has a very specific job to do over 90 minutes - fine.

Gillingham away in the cup where we have a good amount of the ball and find it easy to exploit gaps and end up winning comfortably - also fine.

It's games like last night, Brighton at the weekend, West Ham, Luton where we get more of the ball than against the top sides but also have a share of defending to do is where things come unstuck.

The whole transition of mindset and role between attacking the opposition, losing the ball and having to switch focus is where things go wrong, by which time the ball is in the back of our net again.

It doesn't happen seamlessly - it's like someone has fired a gun in a field of horses and they run around everywhere and hope that the opposition miss rather than any planned effort to stop them. The defence is scared of diving into a tackle in case they get exposed and are out of the game but in so doing, they do nothing and the opposition attackers get their shot off and score anyway. Its been happening all season where blokes with a modicum of skill have been able to waltz through the odd cursory leg that gets stuck out and we go behind.

Defending is a combination of mindset and ability. Jack Robinson would throw himself in front of anything but doesn't have the footballing ability or mind to stop that situation arising to start with. Anel is a good footballer but chucks the towel in when it gets a bit difficult. He's been used to winning (therefore doing less defending) and popping up with goals and generally enjoying himself and believing his own hype whether that's with Malmo or with us last season and can't adapt to a different situation or has the discipline to do the hard, boring stuff.

Virgil van Dijk in comparison, as arguably the best defender in the world, can do all these things, struts onto the field like he owns it, hardly ever leaves his feet, organises the defence, wins everything, can see things happening 3 moves before they happen and will score more goals than most of our midfield will this season.
 
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Well let's have a look at this so called £50m player Ebereche Eze who Palace picked up from QPR in the summer of 2020, the price £16-17m we on the other hand brought in dodgy Ravel Morrison, headless chicken Oli Burke, past his best Luke Freeman and a large chunk of our war chest went on the dud Rhian Brewster about £30m worth of utter shite right there surely we'd have been better dumping £18-19m to QPR for Eze. See that's what well run clubs do spend a bit more on investing in good players we are always looking for the bargains which turn out to be next to worthless by the time their contracts have run down. That is just one example of players who were in our price range at the time, Oli Watkins another who we were reportedly interested in what's he worth now a lot more than Brewster. Another player who we got in 2020 Ismaila Coulibaly seems he will be on his way for less than we paid for him at the end of the season. No wonder we are perennial strugglers with an owner who has convinced himself he is the font of footballing knowledge by playing Football Manager and fantasy football much like he did with San Francisco 49ers, a top team who have done nothing of note since he dabbled with them. The Prince might be well meaning but I wish he'd just sell up and fuck off so we can get someone with a bit of money and a bit more in the locker than being good at Football manager 23.
 
When you look at the Wilder years and the running joke of British and Irish players only recruitment. The good thing with them is that understand the club and its values a bit more than overseas players especially when you have characters that are born and bred blades or even Yorkshiremen etc. When we had Morgs, Monty, Jags and then Billy (Paddy although "Irish" had passion) we had that extra passion in the dressing room. Clubs didn't fancy a trip to BDTBL as they knew they would be up against it. Even with "adopted blades" like Bash, George etc they knew how to play the crowd

Now we have a mix of overseas players who could potentially speak various languages and English isn't their first by any means.

Grbić - Croatian
Anel - Bosnian
Hamer - In UK since 2020 but from Holland
Souza - Brazilian
Slimane -Tunisia
Trusty - USA (obviously English but not that much Premier League exposure before he came here)
Larouci - Algeria

Plus the older generation that are shagged like Norward etc but the dressing room has changed shape too much.
 
metalblade said:
Well let's have a look at this so called £50m player Ebereche Eze who Palace picked up from QPR in the summer of 2020, the price £16-17m we on the other hand brought in dodgy Ravel Morrison, headless chicken Oli Burke, past his best Luke Freeman and a large chunk of our war chest went on the dud Rhian Brewster about £30m worth of utter shite right there surely we'd have been better dumping £18-19m to QPR for Eze. See that's what well run clubs do spend a bit more on investing in good players we are always looking for the bargains which turn out to be next to worthless by the time their contracts have run down. That is just one example of players who were in our price range at the time, Oli Watkins another who we were reportedly interested in what's he worth now a lot more than Brewster. Another player who we got in 2020 Ismaila Coulibaly seems he will be on his way for less than we paid for him at the end of the season. No wonder we are perennial strugglers with an owner who has convinced himself he is the font of footballing knowledge by playing Football Manager and fantasy football much like he did with San Francisco 49ers, a top team who have done nothing of note since he dabbled with them. The Prince might be well meaning but I wish he'd just sell up and fuck off so we can get someone with a bit of money and a bit more in the locker than being good at Football manager 23.
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Feel free to go to the Eze thread from 2019/20. We wanted him, couldn't afford to compete with Palace, plus he wanted to stay in London.

We wanted Watkins etc too. Blown out of the water by billionaire owned Villa, on both fee and wages.

Can't always get what you want.
Especially in the stupid-money world of the Premier League.
 
Hard to think of any player since 2020 that is worth more than we paid for them other than Ndiaye doing it on the cheap leads only down the road of decline it's a different world to when we were in league one.
Oh and while Palace were buying Eze another player we got was that Chelsea duffer Ethan Ampadu on loan, that went well.
 
We do look defensively frail at the moment. George seems increasingly injury prone these days though apart from a few loose passes I thought Larouci put in a good shift last night.
 
Alan Birchenall's hair said:
Exactly this. Last season we had Ndiaye doing what Eze and Olise were doing last night. When they went off, we were at least the equal of Palace. Both us and Palace are crammed with top 6 Championship players. And they have 2 world beaters. We have none. They find them more regularly than us (Zaha...), that's what the difference is. The other 9 of the Palace team could be swapped around with 9 of ours, without too much difference. And Eze and Olise were born in England. That is where we are letting ourselves down, in not finding similar talent.
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We have Category 2 Academy. Since the EPPP was set up about 9/10 years ago, clubs like Man City and Man U have been taking our best Academy players. The Prince is now having plans on us having Category 1 Academy and this will make it harder for the big clubs to take our best Academy players. Not sure if we start Category 1 next season or season after

Elite Player Performance Plan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Swannyblade said:
I agree that our defence is not up to Prem standards, but our defensive work in midfield is woeful. So many times teams play straight through our midfield with ease. We're also guilty of giving players too much space and time on the edge of our box. You get punished for not getting tight and allowing long range shots at this level, you might get away with it in the Champ. Our players also often look physically weak when compared to the opposition.
I don't think we have any answers to our defensive problems in the current squad. Wilder's improved us going forwards, but we're still conceding despite the numerous formation and personnel changes he's tried.
I'm really disappointed as I thought the defence would be the least of our problems this year. I expected Anel to make the step up and thrive in the Prem. I thought we'd sign improvements at LCB and LWB. But we've gone backwards.
Click to expand...
What’s disappointing is that Alan Knill hasn’t seemed to have had an impact so far on the defence.
 
Slim Man said:
What, inside the 6 yard box?
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I was going to remind the poster that the first two goals against came down our left, with all the damage done on the flank, when the ball has come over into the 6 yard box its usually already too late to defend against (particularly at this level), although thats not to say you dont try!
 
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