Lillehamring

ie. winning in games where the opposition score, as opposed to winning games when their opponent fail to score. smart arse.

Always nice to hear - especially with so much negativity on the board. I think it's far too easy for people to just say 'oh, we score and just sit back and defend our lead'. And you point out some further extenuating factors that people need to factor into things. We don't know why Enzo seems to be making fewer, later substitutions but it certainly has seen us less dominant later in games. I think teams are also making earlier subs to try to combat the effort needed to keep track of our passing game, teams are also less willing to just carry on parking the bus once they concede - i seem to remember, i think it was stoke, and we scored early and their keeper was already happy to time waste. i think teams were initially happy to limit the damage, now they've seen we're not impregnable and when they go behind they decide to have a go. things have changed, we're not finding things as easy as at the start of the season, but i can't accept that in games like the sunderland one we'd be idiotic enough to believe the best thing to do is defend a 1-0 lead for 77 minutes.

I didn't say 'generally speaking' - i said they 'aren't necessarily' suited for the EFL. For example, Nacho should be scoring 20 goals at this level not 5. He just doesn't seem to be able to play against EFL teams the way he did against PL teams. I think it's fair to say that the PL and EFL are very different - we bought Daka and to play against PL teams and in europe, not to play against 22 teams that park the bus. There's a reason why we sold Hirst and why he's been brilliant for ipswich. So, to answer your last question - it's horses for courses - there's no right or wrong answer - but i'm sure many championship managers will go for players that have a track record at this level on a reasonable salary, rather than a PL player on higher wages that may or may not adapt. At the end of the day - the original comment i was replying to was that we should have no excuses for not winning because we have the most highly paid players - which is nonsense.

If you're talking specifically about the sunderland game - i posted some general analysis on how it seemed to be to me - that sunderland set out to park the bus, allow us to have the ball and to try to see it out, they had 30% possession. As such to the viewer it looks like we are going all in and inevitably dangerous. After we scored, for the immediate 10 minutes following sunderland had 60% possession - they totally changed their game plan, they started to press and to control the ball. I don't think it was lacklustre, i just think we found ourselves up against a team that like to attack (don't forget their xG is almost as high as ours across the season) that decided to fight for the game. Did we respond well? - well, we won, but it was very similar to the first meeting between us, when no one said we stopped trying, but said that sunderland were the best team we've faced.... The nature of the change being initiated by sunderland seems a lot more plausible (to me at least) than to believe that we just thought, after 13 minutes! 'that'll do it, let's just sit back and defend for 77 minutes'

Ok - well the question was: And my reply was that against boro we had 24 shots of which only 2 were on target - the inference thus being that it was our players who were responsible for not killing off the game.

Not sure there's much difference between 'being focussed on' and 'prioritising'? The implication is the same, surely Anyway, when i replied to your comment 'prioritising not conceding over scoring' is what i referenced - and it is still miles from the truth. Only Ipswich in all four leagues have scored more goals than us - if that's the result of 'prioritising not conceding over scoring' - the mind boggles at how many goals we might have scored if we'd prioritised scoring over not conceding!

Not mine!

Not saying they can't add better players, but they don't come across as a system team or at least not a system that has any proven durability at the top level. Their success seems to be based on hard work and out-scoring opponents - sustaining that tends to rely on finding the right attitude rather than the right quality, it feels adding quality to that approach rather than just players with the same attitude is only going to mean at some point you have to change the system - as we discovered, we were much like ipswich in 15/16, but we quickly discovered that having a limited system based on attitude and out-scoring opponents isn't sustainable and that you have to play a different way to survive in the prem long term. I think our policy is more sustainable because it's built around the system rather than the players. the reason pep and klopp have been so successful is when they lose a top player like sane or david silva, they don't have to rethink everything. Beyond that it's a variation on a model that has a proven track record, what precedent has been set for long term sustainability by a team that concedes well over a goal a game? A team with a good defence can do well in the PL, but a team that leaks goals is føkked - look at us last year, scored more goals than chelsea but only 3 teams conceded more and two of them were leeds and southampton. Their losses are moot really, because most of the games we've lost we did enough to win - Ipswich have drawn three times as many games as us and won 3 fewer - neither team have lost many so I dodn't think it relly says much about the virtue or no of wither system. Only time will tell, but i prefer our path to theirs.

I've never had much time for the opinion of dogs. Cats all day long for me.

Sure, but if, as the original poster suggested, we were more focussed on not conceding than on scoring, we wouldn't have the third highest xG - the reason it is so high is because we've created the best chances this season, and i'm sure we're right up there by volume of chances too. The simple fact is, by virtue of having a good system and good players we've been able to adopt a system that results in a high number of goal chances whilst limiting teams to a minimal amount of scoring chances. Certainly nothing to do with prioritising not scoring over scoring.

Sure, but like so many other posters here you're making an assumption that they don't have the belief to push on. which they've proved they do as i suggested in my post - we have extended our lead on numerous occasions. Again, just because we don't seem to have any urgency doesn't mean that the game plan isn't still to score further goals.

I can only go on what Maresca said at the start of the season - that he sees building a team as a 3 year project. Furthermore, the club under KP has always been focussed on the long game, never on a quick fix.

Well, it is for exactly the points i raised. And arguing that something 'should' be a certain way is just adding to the silliness. We 'should' have avoided relegation last year, but we didn't. Any reference to how 'great' this squad is, is just opinion and based on arbitrary things like salary and PL experience - but nothing is guaranteed. For all our payroll we don't, for example, have the same EFL experience as other teams, or the winning momentum that ipswich came up with. There are so many thing beyond simply salary - to single that out as an absolute defining factor of success is, sorry, silly.

But how true is any that? Boro simply rode their luck and, fair play, took their chances, we didn't - 24-2 in shots backs this up. Leeds looked completely bewildered against us. Bournemouth over ran us but we defended brilliantly and took our chance. QPR - see the boro game - 18-3 in shots this time Sunderland - see the bournemouth game. We've had more than enough chances to have won all 5 games - oddly, the two we seemed most likely to lose, the two games where it might be said our opponents got the better of us, were the games we won -

No system or team is perfect, there will always be dips, but you have to remember that before we played leeds (in fact up until the last 10 minutes of the leeds game) we'd actually been playing the best we'd played all season, wining 5 out of 5 scoring 15 and conceding just twice. The problem here is people trying to blame that dip in results on maresca and the tactics, when every man and his dog know it is because the players didn't execute.

I think it's more that this thread started off about tactics, segued into a subsidiary post-match thread, and now has been taken over by people who are just looking for someone to blame for a recent string of bad results.....

I respect that that's your reading of the game, but it doesn't tally with reality - if that really was the focus/mentality we'd have GF/GA/GD stats like man u, but we don't we've scored more than almost anyone in all 4 leagues this season. What we should be saying is - how have we managed to score so many and conceded so few? And the answer is by sticking to the system whether it's 0-0, 1-0 or 5-0

it's almost like we didn't, immediately before, have a 5 game run where we posted figures of P5 W5 D0 L0 GF 15 GA 2

well not really - if we accept that maresca is using a significant percentage of players he'd rather not have then regardless of where we play next season, he's going to want to replace as many as possible. if we don't go up, we'll sell and replace with cheaper players that enzo wants; if we go up we'll sell and replace with slightly more expensive players that enzo wants. Either way, as long as enzo stays it's clear that he's building a system to fit a team to (a project, if you will) rather than building a team and adopting a system purely to get promoted (needs must, if you will).

Becasue Maresca has made it clear that he sees building a team as a three year project so the tactics are established then the players fitted to that system. Creating a system around the players you have is as short term as the contracts of the players.

But the problem is it's easy to say 'keep the pressure on' but in reality it's hard to do. In the first 13 minutes (up to the goal) sunderland sat back and we had 70% possession and created 5 shots on goal. In the 10 minutes after we scored, sunderland responded and doubled their possession to 60%. (for what it's worth we still had 2 shots to their 1) There's only so much of a change that you can attribute to a side 'easing off', especially so early in the game, and a team, especially a home team, 'adopting a plan B' - to jump from 30% to 60% suggests that this was more to do with a change from sunderland from letting us have the ball to trying to dominate the ball themselves

But in most games we don't sit back - we just carry on playing the same patient considered football that we play during most phases of most matches. Because our way of playing doesn't appear urgent or high-energy it's easy to mistake it, when leading, for us sitting back and not trying to extend our lead, but it's just that low-key steady way of playing that has seen us dominate games and get the results that we have been getting most of this season. If you score after 13 minutes you don't have to suddenly turn into Ipswich and go all out attack. Maresca favours the approach of controlling the ball, controlling the clock, breaking teams down and taking our chances when they come. That's why in the 33 league games that we've scored, 22 times we've managed to score again, only 11 times have we failed to, and even in those 11, we've only lost 4 games (one of which was the cov game). It's how we play, and it's generally been very successful - i think people here are just looking to find fault as usual, they need to find a reason why we've lost 3 games in a row - so the popular explanation seems to be blaming it on the style of play, rather than blaming it on the real cause - our finishing (let's not forget - the other 3 losses are where we failed to score despite having bucket loads of chances)

QPR - 18 shots 5 on target - that is the players failing. Leeds - 16 shots 5 on target (two sitters) - players fault Boro - 24 shots 2 on target - players fault You can't dominate games to that extent and be accused of not trying to kill off the game, the reality is that we have tried and failed to kill off games. That isn't sitting back and defending a lead, that's creating chances but not taking them. Even the sunderland game, there's no proof that maresca has ordered them to defend the lead, it's not like he brought Souttar or Nelson on. Perhaps it was simply that Sunderland, after going 1-0 down, realised that they weren't going to get anything sitting back with the 30% possession that they'd had up to that point and decided to adjust to the way they played against us last time and increased their possession to 53% post-goal. Yes, we can question how Enzo reacted to that change in sunderland's play, but it's not as simple as suggesting that he decided to park the bus.

This is frankly a silly argument: firstly, salary is no indication of quality and secondly, perhaps being on those higher salaries adds additional pressure. Whilst players coming up against us on lower salaries will feel like they have something to prove. Furthermore, most of the players that are on high salaries were bought to play against PL teams, not EFL teams - so, whilst they may earn a lot, they aren't necessarily suitable for this level.

I read it completely differently to that - i didn't see arrogance, i saw fear - the fear of conceding, the fear of throwing away the rest of our head start. I think you do this team a great discredit - put yourself in their place and try to the imagine the pressure on them. fans complaining and saying they're shit despite being in a race for promotion. The repercussions of failure are enormous, but they know they're capable they just need to get the confidence back - people are quick to forget how sensationally and successfully we played in the games before the three losses.