cityfanlee23

Danny Rohl has instantly changed the way Rangers setup and play compared to sideways ball under RM, and in their first game under MON, Celtic fans were very vocal about the increase in tempo and press and the more direct attack being entertaining. Both teams have unburdened themselves from sideways ball and both have instantly improved. New manager bounce? Maybe, but tactically they both looked rejuvenated. End this 8 year possession obsession experiment for crying out loud.

I agree completely, but it looks like they are being instructed not to. None of our strikers are getting into the box, they did under all of the other managers.

He looks like he has. Poor attitude, with that said. I wouldn't want to be a striker in a team that has a system that revolves entirely around a single winger and completely nulifies anything the striker wants to do. He's not good enough at all, but under a progressive manager who adapts to his players, he gets chances.

Quality plays a role. As does tactical approach. I’ve already provided multiple sources which discuss this subject at length, if you think that possession based football doesn’t lead to an increase in low block oppositions then I’m not sure what else to say on the subject.

I'm not against possession football as a philosophy, I understand the style and it's interesting to watch when it works, my issue is most of the time, "possession" is more often than not "slow". There are some outliers, like Thiago Motta at Bologna for example who played exciting possession based football, but the vast majority of the time, it ends up being slow and predictable under most managers, and that makes it boring. We do have a playing staff problem, but we also have a tactical system problem, we have a manager who is determined to continue to play a system that you yourself admit the playing staff can't play. To be really broad about this, I think any possession based managers would continue to make us boring however there are plenty of non possession obsessed managers out there playing fun and exciting, attacking football. The possession based managers who play fun and exciting football are in a tiny minority.

No, I'm suggesting attack quicker. Stop passing it sideways constantly and we will face less low blocks. The issue we faced under Enzo and now under Marti is that our possession is slow, opponents have too long to organise themselves and they will inevitably adopt a low block the longer we control the ball, they are happy for us to pass it sideways all game. As I've said, obviously with a team of our perceived quality at this level, and especially so under Enzo, we were likely to face a deep block more often than say Millwall or Norwich, however, our system of absolute ball control absolutely plays into how frequently teams adapt to our ball control with a low block. I did edit my previous comment just a moment ago but I assume you'd already started your response so would have missed it. The FIFA ran "Fifa Training Centre" talk in detail about the different playstyles and they cover the fact that possession based teams often face more defensive setups as a result. “Teams that seek to control possession tend to face opponents who defend deeper and prioritise compactness over regaining the ball high, forcing the in-possession side to break down organised defensive blocks.” https://www.fifatrainingcentre.com/en/environment/fifa-research/high-performance/possession-analysis/part-2-1-possession-based-v-defensive-styles-of-play-new.php

The low block is an out of possession tactic to try to nullify the opponents attack. If you control the ball for long periods of time, teams will often form a low block. It's not a coincidence that possession based teams face the low block far more often than counter-attack teams do... Coaches' Voice | The low block: football tactics explained EDIT: FIFA's own training courses teach about the role of possession-based v. defensive, and they themselves cite that: “Teams that seek to control possession tend to face opponents who defend deeper and prioritise compactness over regaining the ball high, forcing the in-possession side to break down organised defensive blocks.” https://www.fifatrainingcentre.com/en/environment/fifa-research/high-performance/possession-analysis/part-2-1-possession-based-v-defensive-styles-of-play-new.php

Pretty much every single possession team faces a low block, because we would pass it backwards and sideways 25+ passes before going forward. We faced a low block because of how we played, or atleast it plays a large role. We face the same issue now, we defend a corner for example, but then on the break, but we take so long to get the ball into the box and end up passing backwards that the opponent just forms a deep block in their third. No doubt teams set out to try to stop our talent, but more often than not we force it upon ourselves and that was a major issue under Enzo. Chelsea face more low blocks now than they have under previous managers.

Klopp ball > Pep Ball in every conceivable way. Sadly many of our fans especially during the Enzo period were brainwashed into this view that anyone who dislikes this obsession with control, must only want 1980s hoofball as an alternative. I watch football because it’s an entertainment sport, we all find different things entertaining, I watch football because I want to be entertained for as many of the 90 minutes as possible. Possession football especially when you don’t have hundreds of millions to spend almost always delivers boring monotonous football in my opinion. I do admire the philosophy and the chess-like approach to wearing the opponent down but from an entertainment perspective it almost always under delivers. Danny Rohl may have had us in the same position in the league (personally think we would be comfortably higher) but atleast it would have been entertaining. Under Enzo and now under Cifuentes I have actually forgotten the time on a Saturday/Tuesday on multiple occasions. The Hyper-commercialisation and posession-obsession have pretty much killed my passion for football over the last 8 years.

Agree to an extent, but I do think the vast majority of football fans would prefer to watch Bournemouth for the rest of their lives over Man City. Pep has been forced to defend his obsession with passing and “control” recently because of fans kicking up a fuss, and he’s one of the few who can make it work.

Yep, never going to happen sadly

Challinor would be a gamble I could fully get behind, massively exciting. Would take him tomorrow if he was available to us.

I’m so glad DD has publicly called this poisonous man out. It’s word for word exactly what he did to us. We are still feeling the effects of his transfer wisdom to this day. Another couple of windows and we can finally rid ourselves of every player that he brought in.

Brendan does often get a 12 month bounce 👀

I have seen James make the run a couple of times and it's been quite effective with him getting the ball in dangerous areas, my issue is it happens nowhere near frequently enough and often too late. We need to do it more often with multiple players making those channel runs such as Thomas or Ramsey, but we also need to move the ball quicker. Rangers yesterday moved the ball so much quicker under Rohl than under RM and although they didn't play incredibly well, they were pulling Kilmarnock all over the place at times, completely different level of opponent vs championship squads obviously, but the movement of rangers was pulling the opponents out of position constantly because of the pace. One big issue we have now even more than under Enzo, is we don't seem to have the composure or confidence to move the ball between positions quickly, which this system heavily relies on. I hate this style with a passion but I get it, you move the ball and force the opponent to tire themselves out chasing, inevitably creating space. But this only works if the opponent has to do more than a light jog, a huge problem we have, is we hit a team on the break with Fatawu, he gets doubled up on with little support, so he pauses for 3-4 seconds, passes it back to Ricardo, who then looks around, plays it to winks in the middle, who passes it to vestergard, who then either passes it to Thomas or finally passes to Mavididi, and suddenly our counter attack is faced with a deep block with everyone behind the ball. I can't remember the last time that we got the ball from wing to wing in less than 3 passes and actually dragged the opponent out of position or made them scramble to get across the pitch, we take 9-10 passes to get the ball across to the other wing.

It's a concern for sure, but with that said, we know Ricardo can play as an inverted full back and slot into midfield, there is nothing then stopping JJ from getting forward once Ricardo inverts. Again it's less about the quality of the player, more about the movement which forces open space. We just need a body to move somewhere, right now we are like statues at times.

Yeah I completely see your point and I do agree to an extent, even if we adopted Enzo's channel runs it would definitely be a downgrade on what we saw 23/24, my point is that imo it would still be an upgrade on the current system of praying fatawu can take on 3 players and put it in the top corner. I know that right now JJ is not producing the way that KDH was, but he's surely good enough to run in a straight line into a channel? That would create space for our strikers who up to now are constantly surrounded and never given support. Our strike force is pitiful right now, but we are certainly hampering them through the lack of space they are provided.

Yep, and this is exactly why so many have want to hound him into selling, because he simply cannot see what's happening. The crazy thing is, Top could literally have created a new position that was higher than DOF, for example a role that allows him to oversee KP's sporting interests as a whole for example, whilst bringing in a new DOF with fresh ideas. I've no doubt JR is an incredible intelligent guy and could be an asset to KP/Top, but as DOF we are in massive decline and repeating mistakes over and over.

Right but the issue as I see it is simple, Ricardo is more than capable of overlapping on the wing, Jordan James is more than capable of underlapping centrally in place of Ndidi, Thomas/VK/Aluko are more than capable of overlapping Mavididi/Monga. Ndidi and KDH were not naturals in that role, but their movement created space for Mavididi, Fatawu and Vardy. Ndidi was a bang bang average 8, but his simple channel runs created space for the players that were great in their position. All Jordan James/Ricardo need to do is create space for Fatawu to run at 1 defender instead of 2-3. My point is less about the quality of the individuals making the runs, but the fact the runs were being made, Ndidi made absolutely loads of errors whenever he ran through the channel between Fatawu/Vardy, often his crossing at the byline was awful, but what he did do was create space and that's what we are desperate for. We don't need to specifically sign a number 8, we just need James to be instructed to make similar runs to create space. I know we are a downgrade on what Enzo had, but these professional footballers imo are perfectly capable of offering an overlap.

This was the exact issue I was angry about under Enzo, the difference is, he was smart enough to have 4 players in the system that were instructed to over/underlap, so even though we were too slow with the ball at times to play centrally because of the inevitable deep block that we invited, we had alternatives. When Fatawu was being doubled up on, Ricardo or Ndidi would run the channels to open up space, sometimes both players would which would open up space for Vardy. On the other side it was KDH/LB doing the overlap/underlap for Mavididi. Under Marti it barely happens, our best talent have zero space to operate in unless we are hitting them on the counter, and more often than not that counter attack is too slow to matter.

I think deep down most fans feel this way. If he brought SW in or even NP as Director of Football (health permitting) and gave them control over the footballing side, then came out with an honest interview of his own mistakes and how he is going to rectify where the club is, most would be prepared to give Top some time.

Yeah I think it's a mixture of not creating enough clear cut chances then missing them when we do, costing us dearly at the moment. It feels like every game is on a knife edge, we go 1-0 up and often it feels more likely we will huff and puff then concede rather than go on to finish the game off.

His tactical system is doing a great job of stifling our opportunity to create clear cut chances even when we have a player overload. The players are to blame for missing individual chances and making errors during an attack, the manager is responsible for how we approach an attack, and he's proving to be awful at it.

If the board are still blindly obsessed by this god awful football, i'd rather take Puel than Martin.

Maybe not. But if we give them the ball in the box they might be able to do something with it. Instead we ONLY pass it to Mavididi or Fatawu and then pass it sideways and backwards for 5 minutes, before finally passing it into the striker who is now surrounded by 4 players. The strikers are bad, the system is making them worse. Do you think Vardy would be scoring freely in this system?