cityfanlee23

That's a theory, but it's also rife with managers who adopt possession obsession, it happens under Martin, it happened under Enzo and has been happening with Chelsea. Sarri had the same issue, Brendan towards the end with us. But on the flip side, if they aren't capable why is Marti not understanding that and adapting to his players? Why is he not trying to bed in players like Nelson who are the long term future of this club and have the capacity to learn the system and instead persisting with players who won't be here next season? If the players are as bad as many think on here, why is he persisting with a system that is throwing away points every week?

There is a lot of hyperbole mixed in with both sides of the argument here, but the vast majority of fans do no expect us to be clear at the top of the table. We just expect us to beat a lot of what's infront of us over 90 minutes with the odd hiccup here and there. I made a thread previously you can go back look at it, I claimed Milwall were my dark horse this season. Why did I put Milwall down as a surprise challenger? Alex Neil. He knows how to get teams working for him, he knows how to make average players click as a unit, something Marti absolutely cannot do. We have better players than most teams in this division when they are on form, the issue is, the system we have adopted is making it much easier for players to not hit any form. How is Mavididi expected to hit form if he has to turn around and pass it backwards every time he gets the ball? if every time he gets to the by-line there is nobody bombing into the box to receive the cross. How can Winks hit form when every pass he makes is 5 yards and sideways, how can Fatawu hit better form if every single match he gets doubled up on and the manager is explicitly instructing players NOT to offer an overlap more often than not (he has to be instructing it at this point) How can any of our strikers hit form, when the entire system is designed around needlessly passing it around sideways, giving the opposition 20+ passes to reposition themselves into a deep block, so that every time the striker gets the ball, they have their back to goal 25 yards out with no options. Good managers like Alex Neil, or even for us, Nigel Pearson know how to get the most out of each player despite them maybe not being the best on paper, Marti cannot do that, he doesn't know how it seems. Hassenhuttl kept Southamtpon above water for far longer than they deserved. He didn't do a perfect job and he made many mistakes, but he's a huge upgrade on what we've seen so far. If we want to go all out Urs Fischer would be an instant upgrade. Go and watch how Rangers perform tomorrow under Rohl. The intensity, pressing and attacking will be far superior to anything Russel Martin put up.

Yep, I can completely see that point, and to be honest, knowing the board we will get rid of Marti and bring in Martin and things will go from bad to worse. If for example though Hassenhuttl said he would join, i'd probably take that gamble personally, but I have a very high bias against possession obsessive football personally.

Agree with all of these points, however, generally speaking the manager is in a position to somewhat offset a few of these problems on the pitch, by not playing negative, sideways, slow, predictable football whilst constantly picking favourites and seemingly happy to let the future of the club rot on the bench or not even in the squad (not that the youth are the overnight fix, but if we are doomed to mid table mediocrity under Cifuentes, atleast do it with Nelson/Aluko/Page getting regular minutes) None of the 5 points you made can be fixed overnight, the problems I mentioned which play a huge role in whether we pickup 0,1 or 3 points on a match day can be fixed overnight. If Cifuentes tomorrow decided to throw his system out of the window and adopt an attacking system along the lines of German Gegenpressing, or an attacking hybrid like Iraolas Bournemouth, we would be fighting for automatics imo. The system we are currently using is actively working against our best talents. The reason I wanted Rohl in, is because his system is aggressive and utilises wingers and a heavy overlap from multiple angles to create space for them, under Rohl, Mavididi, Fatawu and Monga would be unlocked. Under Cifuentes they are in chains, either having to pass backwards, or having to beat 3 players to get a shot away because they have zero support other than backwards or sideways. Again, completely agree with everything you've said, but none of them are an excuse for Cifuentes playing this awful brand of football that puts constraints on our best attacking talent. He promised attacking football, he promised youth, he promised always pushing for another goal even if we are winning comfortably, he promised players playing on merit. He's delivered none of that.

Professional football players unable to beat the first man on a corner is one of life’s great mysteries, crazily enough it isn’t just us, it seems these days 75% of teams have the same issue.

All we can do is hope that given the window we had, we have enough money to make a move if we continue to underdeliver.

This. Pretty much every single time the striker gets the ball to his feet, it’s when we’ve dithered with the ball for 15-20+ passes, the opposition have had 3 working days to form a deep block, then we pass the ball into the strikers feet, 25 yards out, back to goal, with 6 players behind them. And then fans scapegoat them all game. Our strikers have been poor everyone can see that, but they get given absolutely dogwater service, Vardy would be on maybe 1-2 goals max in this system because he would have finished Carranzas 1 on 1 from a few games ago, but beyond that, we just never play through balls in and allow the striker to sit on the last defender, all Marti wants us to do is pass to Fatawu and hope he creates magic, and if he can’t, the last resort is the pass it into a striker and expect him to beat 5 defenders. More often than not it ends up being like the Carranza situation a couple of games ago where he got the ball to his feet with 3 players around him and barely any passing options on apart from backwards, so he took a risk and try to push the ball into space to open himself up for a shot, lost the ball and we conceded on the break. People hammered Carranza for that, whilst completely ignoring the fact that as a striker he shouldn’t be forced into that situation in the first place. The system is the root cause of our attacking issue, NOT the strikers. Don’t get me wrong, even if we fixed the system they will probably still struggle to deliver 15+ goals, but they will struggle to get 5+ under Cifuentes ball.

Big issue is, it's slim pickings out there right now, the managers that would genuinely improve us likely won't come, we needed to pull the trigger early on RVN. Right now, Urs Fischer would be a massive scalp imo, probably won't come. Ralph Hassenhuttl imo would play better football than we currently are witnessing despite the rot in the playerbase, I didn't really want Dyche, but right now i'd take him over watching sideways ball any longer. Apart from that, it would need to be another gamble.

This is the part I just cannot grasp, how can people defend the manager and say it doesn’t matter who’s in charge whilst we have Top and Rudkin? We all know the rot starts in the board room, but for gods sake, how does that excuse having a single attacking plan the entire game. Even Enzo had multiple options, when Fatawu got the ball, either Ndidi overlapped the central channel, or Ricardo/Justin overlapped the wide channel. This created space for Vardy and Fatawu. Under Marti we do nothing, we pass it to Fatawu and his options become: A) Beat 3 players and rifle it top corner B) Cross it into nobody because our strikers seemingly have the explicit instruction to not run into to box for a cross C) Pass it backwards and do the inevitable horse shoe from Fatawu to Mavididi. I’ve watched opponent central midfielders literally WALKING from left to right because of how slow we do our little horse shoe between the wings at times, at the most they have to do a little jog, I can’t remember the last time we pinged a pass from Fatawu into Vestergard or Winks who immediately pinged it into Mavididi. This manager is just as pedestrian as Enzo, without the over/underlaps. MC is by no means the core problem, but he is having no problems creating issues for himself on match day, and ultimately he is a problem that can be addressed at any moment, if he wants fans on board fully he needs to start playing to his own principles and stop picking favourites.

To think, we were potentially a week away from getting Rohl, who is now going to instantly turn Rangers around before inevitably moving to a prem job, somewhere we won’t be.

Not going to lie, I much preferred Ruuds vision of football to the one we are seeing now.

He inherited rubbish, and continues to play said rubbish whilst we have players capable of playing a leading role in our rebirth in our youth ranks. Nobody’s expecting a silk purse from a sows ear, we expect the basics like not picking the same inconsistent rot every week, not attacking in the exact same way every single time we get the ball, and actually pressing. Largely boring football, very predictable system, barely sniff for ‘the future’ He got absolutely everything right when he arrived here, he’s made so many basic mistakes since.

Brendan Rodgers is an elite coach, so many players have said it and he often improves players initially, but he's a honking club manager, the issue is, he's a coach who demands management level responsibility, and it's the same old story, he comes into a club and immediately improves them with tactical and coaching tweaks, players thrive, but as the transfer windows pass, as staff leave and need replacing, his complete lack of ability to actually manage the club and find adequate talent shine through, and all of the good coaching work he does eventually gets overshadowed by him making bad coaching staff and player signing decisions trying to fit square pegs in round holes, and at that point when the heat gets turned up, his ego takes over and he blames everyone but himself whilst refusing to change. BR simply cannot succeed long term unless the club he's at is well run and refuse to hand him extra power, the moment they do, the club declines.

Missed out massively.

Honestly I didn’t even read what I was typing, don’t bother 🤣

He did hold it too long, but he tried to push the ball into space to open up for a shot because we love taking 25 passes to get the ball outside the box only for the defenders to drop into a deep block to defend it. Carranza hasn’t done anything in blue yet, but he’s barely given the ball in a position he can actually do anything. Hes had 1 clear cut chance for us (which he fluffed), the rest of the games, we take so long to do anything in transition that by the time he gets the ball to his feet his 25 yards out, back to goal with 3 defenders behind him.

Carranza is this weeks scape goat for the system not producing clear cut chances.

His ceiling is absolutely massive and he’s producing goals in a system that imo currently makes it harder for him, if he had a midfielder running into the central channel or a full back consistently overlapping him as Ricardo/Justin/Ndidi did under Enzo he would have far more space to operate in and be dangerous. Right now he’s doubled up on with no consistent overlaps leading to him being forced to go for the same cut in and shoot every time. If we can give the team a bit more attacking freedom Abdul will go from strength the strength.

Big improvement today, I enjoyed watching a fair bit of that game and we were comfortably the better team. Hopefully Marti can find a solution that gives the striker more space centrally as they are still often compacted into spaces where they get the ball and have basically no options or are surrounded by players, they tend to play as a False 9 at the moment with their back to goal. We need to figure out the central area because at present we still rely too much on magic from a wide player cutting in. 3rd and improving.

A clear improvement and positive steps today, but still utterly toothless as an attacking unit. Marti can hopefully address this because relying on magic every week is not a recipe for long term success. Under Enzo, we had constant overlaps on the left/right. Mavididi had overlaps from the LB and underlaps from KDH, Fatawu had overlaps from Ricardo or underlaps from Ndidi, which created space for either the winger, or dragged defenders wide creating space for Vardy/KDH. Under Marti, we don't seem to do that, meaning the strikers get absolutely zero service, and the wingers are pretty much exclusively cutting in and shooting as a means of chance creation. The Carranza miss is the sort of position I'd love to see us creating more often by creating space for the striker, albeit swansea had far more space behind them at that point as they were chasing the game, but we tend not to exploit central spaces when they are there. Big improvement this match, and the result was completely fair.

Fantastic goal that

Looks like we have another scapegoat for us not burying games when we are “dominating” Overall the performance was an improvement for me, but we still lack any sort of attacking bite under Marti and he doesn’t seem to be addressing what look like very basic tactical issues when you compare side by side with how Enzo utilised the team. Barely any overlaps, barely any channel runs from the strikers, barely any runs from the midfield overlapping in the middle.

I don’t think so, under Enzo the full back and either KDH/Ndidi constantly overlapped into the channels to create space for the winger or for the striker. We don’t really do that, all we do is pass it to the wingers with very little overlap which creates no space in the middle. I think if we saw Jordan James bombing forward into the channel I between the striker and the winger it would open space up for Daka/Ayew, just my analysis but every time I see Daka or Ayew get the ball played into their feet, it’s with their back to goal 30 yards out, they don’t seem to be tasked with making any runs on the last defender like Vardy did. It’s not something I’ve looked into deeply it’s just a passing thing I’ve noticed quite a lot in each game.

The system is killing our strikers atm.

We look improved and the players look up for it, it still feels like we need to work tactically on how we can abuse space in the central channels, top class goal from JJ, but once again came as a result of having to cut in from wide. When we control the ball we take so long to do anything the opponent just drops into a deep block and we are naturally forced wide where it's far harder to score and we rely on a bit of magic, plenty of times the midfield duo have had loads of free space but instead of playing it forward progressively, we've opted to go sideways and give Swansea a chance to close the gaps. Definite improvement though.