My goodness it's really simple
Out and out 'possession' football with no purpose was found out several years ago.
Everybody has adapted. Even Barcelona play much more direct, and have invested in players that suit a fast pressing style. Nobody does 'possession for possession's sake' because everybody knows it can be easily countered -- any decent team within each division knows all the standard patterns of positional play. They know how to press teams like ours in our own half and force mistakes.
What we are seeing in Russell Martin is a new kind of footballing dinosaur. Unwilling to adapt, with his mind and ideas stuck in the early 2010s.
As we are seeing, two huge obvious issues are created when he tries to play this way. We're slow to build up, so our shots come off in less dangerous areas against a more organised defence. But critically, we get caught in possession trying to pass it around at the back. No amount of 'extra training or preseason' (as is his usual excuse) fixes this, these are structural issues and it's sad to see. When you lose 4-0 at home like we did, it's not purely down to individual errors, it's tactical.
Ironically, our success as a club was built on being one of the first teams to realise that we don't all have to play 'possession football' to WIN, and it collapsed the season after when Claudio tried to make us play more in that way.
