Too easy to play against

[The Doctor]

15 minutes ago, Izzy Muzzett said:

so the pink boxes are goals, and the bigger the box, the higher the xG for that shot. So, all those small boxes for Everton are low quality chances with a very small probability of resulting in goals.

[Captain...]

The problem is it’s too easy to work out how to play against us. We start with pretty passing, but we have too many poor passers in the team. Morgan and Ndidi are the worst culprits, Morgan is uncomfortable on the ball and Ndidi is sloppy in possession. Which means that the opposition can just block the balls to our play makers, force the pass backwards and then put pressure on Morgan and Wilf force the mistake in an advanced position and start the attack high up the pitch. By this point Ricardo and Chilwell are high up the pitch trying to give an option. Mendy is tidy in possession but not going to hurt a team Nacho needs to get more involved if he is playing in that role and one of the double pivot needs to take more responsibility. If you block the ball to Maddison then we only have wide options and our wide players are good but they are not the quality of Mahrez 

[shade]

i would sum up our problems thusly, were set up as a possession based attacking team that isn’t very good in possession or at attacking.

[pazzerfox]

11 hours ago, kingfox said:

As we've seen so far this season, it seems that any team with pace in the forward areas are going to constantly batter us. Marco Silva got it tactically spot on today, he obviously took note of our game against Bournemouth and instead of going with Tosun, he decided to go with pace and power in Richarlison as the striker and give Bernard his first league start, unsurprisingly they were the two players who caused us the most problems today, everytime they attacked us our defence shit themselves, Bernard ripped us open for the first goal, Richarlison gave Wes a hard time all game which resulted in Wes getting sent off...again.

 

Every single team we've played so far with pace up front have caused us problems, battered by Bournemouth, punished by Everton, we were extremely lucky that Wolves didn't take their chances. It's funny how comfortable we've looked though against the teams who played with a target man and lacked blistering pace out wide, see Huddersfield and Newcastle.

 

There's been positives so far this season; however the biggest negative remains the defence, we are only eight games in and we're already talking about a defensive crisis, we've spent £30+ million on three defenders, one of which is slower than Morgan and Maguire, one is too busy taking English lessons, the other is out on loan, it's absolutely laughable.

 

Pre season was the key to fix our defence yet it's still shite.

 

Any team we play from now till January who possess pace in attack are gonna have a field day.

 

Is there actually any solution  because I can't think of one 

 

 

I see your point to a degree but up until the sending off yesterday, we were well in the game and looked the most likely to win.  We do look vulnerable to a quick counter attack however and Silva set his side up well in a closely fought contest.

 

Some of our current crop just don't look comfortable playing a possession based game (Amartey, Ndidi, Morgan) which makes what we are trying to achieve that bit harder!  I can see what Puel is trying to do and with a couple of additions we might improve again.

 

Wes has been great for us and obviously we are looking to replace him going forward because of his age.  Let us not forget that Richarlison cost £50 million and is a very good player!  Getting done for pace when you're 34 years old will always happen but the other defenders CAN'T be ready to step into the breach yet else they would already be playing.

[Bert]

3 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

Puel seldom changes central midfield when things are going wrong either, I don’t think he thinks it’s important which is peculiar. Also, surely Iborra or Maguire up top in the last few minutes is worth a chance?

Mentioned it in the match thread. Why not bring Iborra on and lump it up?! 

[ealingfox]

Any team with pace and/or strength going forward or a half-decent finisher stands a cracking chance of turning us over before a balls even been kicked. Slow CBs that are routinely exposed by their full-backs and centre-mids, ponderous and too slow in our average build up play, wasteful up front. We need luck to win games, any day the luck isn't with us we lose.

 

And the red cards are becoming an embarrassment. They've been a bit unlucky at times but we just can't afford to give refs the opportunity because when its us they always seem to take it.

Edited 7 October 2018 by ealingfox

[AlloverthefloorYesNdidi]

We should get one of those managers who wins every single game

[winteriscoming]

I think we would be more suited to play 3 centre backs and have chilwell and ricardo as wing backs. They are better going foward. As well as mendy has played this season do we really need to play 2 holding midfielders especially at home. 

[ian_marshall]

The issue we're facing with the defence is predominantly due to a lack of concentration and focus rather than pace (although this is a secondary factor). 

 

Playing 4 at the back with attacking full backs means that one of your holding midfielders has to drop into the back line when they go forward. Presumably this should be N'didi's job seeing as he used to play at CB and is considerable taller than Mendy. The problem is that this isn't happening meaning that the CB's are getting exposed particularly when teams attack us through the wide channels as the centre back has no choice but to come across. This is what happened for the first of Wes' yellow cards. If the holding midfielder drops Wes doesn't have to pull Richarlison down as he has another man to beat which would give Wes time to recover, but without that support failure to deal with the situation puts us in grave danger. 

 

Again concentration and focus was at fault for their first goal. Richarlison has had a fantastic start to the season and yet we switch off at the back and allow an in form striker a simple strike at goal from 5 yards out with absolutely no one around him. These are player errors I'm afraid, Puel can't be held accountable for such lapses in concentration, after all it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to work out that you can't leave any player at this level (let alone an in form one) unmarked in the box. 

 

Yes, the back line is missing pace and maybe some of these issues would be prevented by having a quicker CB, I'm certainly not suggesting that this isn't a problem, however some of the goals we've conceded this season are largely down to decision making and the pace issue has been magnified as a consequence. 

Edited 7 October 2018 by ian_marshall

[FLAN]

The fact not one on our defenders thought they should be tight to Richarlison in the box tells you how little emphasis Puel must place on defensive awareness. They all seem scared of making a long punt out of defence as he doesn’t like that but don’t seem too concerned about marking players. 

 

[StanSP]

6 hours ago, Koke said:

Had Morgan not been sent off we probably would have won. 

Quite simply, this.

We were well on top from start of the 2nd half up to that point. 

Had he not have seen red and been reckless fouling Richarlison a couple of times, we wouldn't have had to change shapre and I'm pretty certain we'd have gone on to capitalise on our dominance. That's one of the most frustrating things about yesterday, for me.

 

I don't think Everton were that great or much better than us. They just knew how to pounce on our weaknesses (pace against our defence) more easily than we could exploit theirs. 

[kingfox]

1 hour ago, pazzerfox said:

I see your point to a degree but up until the sending off yesterday, we were well in the game and looked the most likely to win.  We do look vulnerable to a quick counter attack however and Silva set his side up well in a closely fought contest.

 

Some of our current crop just don't look comfortable playing a possession based game (Amartey, Ndidi, Morgan) which makes what we are trying to achieve that bit harder!  I can see what Puel is trying to do and with a couple of additions we might improve again.

 

Wes has been great for us and obviously we are looking to replace him going forward because of his age.  Let us not forget that Richarlison cost £50 million and is a very good player!  Getting done for pace when you're 34 years old will always happen but the other defenders CAN'T be ready to step into the breach yet else they would already be playing.

I know we were, I'm not saying we wasn't; however that shouldn't overshadow the fact that our biggest weakness came into play again. Silva knew exactly what he was doing, play Richarlison instead of Tosun or Calvert-Lewin, give Bernard his first start up against our right side which has been our weak point, they exploited our weakness numerous times yesterday, Richarlison bullied Wes, Bernard caused problems throughout the game, we had our spells and looked decent at times but when Everton attacked us, the panic button set in far too often again.

 

It's alright saying we need additions but we all thought we rectified that in the Summer, we go and buy a RB we were so desperately craving, we go and buy three CB's we were so desperately craving, we got delivered exactly what we wanted, yet we are still having to rely on players like Amartey and Wes because those signings haven't been good enough, it's ridiculous and incredibly disappointing.

 

The majority want Wes dropped but right now we have no better players to replace him, we have Jonny Evans who is slower than Wes and Soyuncu who supposedly has communication problems. Those are the two guys that need to be our saviour, I'm not confident in either of them. 

 

Teams if they have the right personnel will take one look at us and be like "Pace up front will destroy these". 

[Ric Flair]

1 hour ago, ian_marshall said:

The issue we're facing with the defence is predominantly due to a lack of concentration and focus rather than pace (although this is a secondary factor). 

 

Playing 4 at the back with attacking full backs means that one of your holding midfielders has to drop into the back line when they go forward. Presumably this should be N'didi's job seeing as he used to play at CB and is considerable taller than Mendy. The problem is that this isn't happening meaning that the CB's are getting exposed particularly when teams attack us through the wide channels as the centre back has no choice but to come across. This is what happened for the first of Wes' yellow cards. If the holding midfielder drops Wes doesn't have to pull Richarlison down as he has another man to beat which would give Wes time to recover, but without that support failure to deal with the situation puts us in grave danger. 

 

Again concentration and focus was at fault for their first goal. Richarlison has had a fantastic start to the season and yet we switch off at the back and allow an in form striker a simple strike at goal from 5 yards out with absolutely no one around him. These are player errors I'm afraid, Puel can't be held accountable for such lapses in concentration, after all it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to work out that you can't leave any player at this level (let alone an in form one) unmarked in the box. 

 

Yes, the back line is missing pace and maybe some of these issues would be prevented by having a quicker CB, I'm certainly not suggesting that this isn't a problem, however some of the goals we've conceded this season are largely down to decision making and the pace issue has been magnified as a consequence. 

Agree with a lot of this, but Puel has to shoulder the responsibility in failing to have the players focused and ready from the off in games. I do wonder if his monotonous drivel he waffles on about is causing some of this? Are the players fired up from the manager? I highly doubt it. 

[Babylon]

10 hours ago, kingfox said:

And this thread has nothing to do with how many chances we or Everton created, I couldn't give a toss.

 

What I care about is how suspect we are defensively against teams with pace, certain teams will do better than others against us but the same problem will continue to happen, it's our biggest weakness right now and because of it I feel we are too easy to play against.

So you say we struggled against their pace but can't actually tell me what chances they missed that this pace is meant to have created. 

[Dan]

9 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

Puel seldom changes central midfield when things are going wrong either, I don’t think he thinks it’s important which is peculiar. Also, surely Iborra or Maguire up top in the last few minutes is worth a chance?

I keep saying this about Iborra. He carries a bigger goal threat than our other three midfielders combined. His record at Sevilla was similar. He's a genuine threat in the air and before people talk of this "we're a passing side now" we end up lobbing about a hundred crosses to nobody when we're chasing a goal. People sneer at Fellaini at Man Utd but it works.

[kingfox]

1 hour ago, Babylon said:

So you say we struggled against their pace but can't actually tell me what chances they missed that this pace is meant to have created. 

There you go, he embarrassed our defence yesterday, as I said I couldn't give a shit about chances, my point is that our defence struggles against pace. 

 

Are you too blind to see that?

Or don't you want to admit that we have defensive problems despite spending over £30 million?

 

[Ric Flair]

1 hour ago, kingfox said:

There you go, he embarrassed our defence yesterday, as I said I couldn't give a shit about chances, my point is that our defence struggles against pace. 

 

Are you too blind to see that?

Or don't you want to admit that we have defensive problems despite spending over £30 million?

 

Morgan shit himself every time any of the front 3 got across the half way line, look at those pointless 2nd half fouls that got him his last warning and then his marching orders. Cost us at least a point, a chance hadn’t even nearly arisen when he steamed in. 

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

We have spent plenty of money on players, but we are no better than mid-table, when we should be doing very much more as a team .Players just are not consistent enough in many cases, and this needs correcting.

[Sublime_Coatsworth]

13 hours ago, Koke said:

Had Morgan not been sent off we probably would have won. 

If my auntie had bollox she’d be my uncle...

 

Unfortunately Morgan was always going to get sent off as he’d already been booked, and warned by the ref.  If not then, then it would have happened a few minutes later.

 

[pazzerfox]

7 hours ago, kingfox said:

I know we were, I'm not saying we wasn't; however that shouldn't overshadow the fact that our biggest weakness came into play again. Silva knew exactly what he was doing, play Richarlison instead of Tosun or Calvert-Lewin, give Bernard his first start up against our right side which has been our weak point, they exploited our weakness numerous times yesterday, Richarlison bullied Wes, Bernard caused problems throughout the game, we had our spells and looked decent at times but when Everton attacked us, the panic button set in far too often again.

 

It's alright saying we need additions but we all thought we rectified that in the Summer, we go and buy a RB we were so desperately craving, we go and buy three CB's we were so desperately craving, we got delivered exactly what we wanted, yet we are still having to rely on players like Amartey and Wes because those signings haven't been good enough, it's ridiculous and incredibly disappointing.

 

The majority want Wes dropped but right now we have no better players to replace him, we have Jonny Evans who is slower than Wes and Soyuncu who supposedly has communication problems. Those are the two guys that need to be our saviour, I'm not confident in either of them. 

 

Teams if they have the right personnel will take one look at us and be like "Pace up front will destroy these". 

Richarlison would have played regardless, as Tosan and Calvert-Lewin have been playing poorly.  I know what you're saying though...Our weakness being Amartey and Morgan's lack of pace down our right.

 

Rome wasn't built in a day.  He probably needs January and the summer to get a starting 11 somewhere near his preferred options, that's providing we keep what we've got as well!

 

It may have been that certain targets were not available in the summer and we were not able to bring in exactly who we wanted, it happens to every team (Man utd, Spurs to name a couple).

[coolhandfox]

We are trying to play a high line, with fullback push on, we simple don’t have the right players to do this. We have CB’s that are slow and easily isolated one on one by pacey strikers.

 

We have two DM who can’t cover the gaps left by have a back four playing high and wide.

 

We also give the ball away in dangerous areas.

 

We have many to beat a poor sides Newcastle, Huddersfield and Southampton and a lucky win against Wolves. 

 

Against decent sides we are shipping goals!

 

 

 

 

[WigstonWanderer]

23 hours ago, kingfox said:

As we've seen so far this season, it seems that any team with pace in the forward areas are going to constantly batter us. Marco Silva got it tactically spot on today, he obviously took note of our game against Bournemouth and instead of going with Tosun, he decided to go with pace and power in Richarlison as the striker and give Bernard his first league start, unsurprisingly they were the two players who caused us the most problems today, everytime they attacked us our defence shit themselves, Bernard ripped us open for the first goal, Richarlison gave Wes a hard time all game which resulted in Wes getting sent off...again.

 

Every single team we've played so far with pace up front have caused us problems, battered by Bournemouth, punished by Everton, we were extremely lucky that Wolves didn't take their chances. It's funny how comfortable we've looked though against the teams who played with a target man and lacked blistering pace out wide, see Huddersfield and Newcastle.

 

There's been positives so far this season; however the biggest negative remains the defence, we are only eight games in and we're already talking about a defensive crisis, we've spent £30+ million on three defenders, one of which is slower than Morgan and Maguire, one is too busy taking English lessons, the other is out on loan, it's absolutely laughable.

 

Pre season was the key to fix our defence yet it's still shite.

 

Any team we play from now till January who possess pace in attack are gonna have a field day.

 

Is there actually any solution  because I can't think of one 

 

 

Only the solution that dare not speak it’s name: 3ATB

[kingfox]

1 hour ago, pazzerfox said:

Richarlison would have played regardless, as Tosan and Calvert-Lewin have been playing poorly.  I know what you're saying though...Our weakness being Amartey and Morgan's lack of pace down our right.

 

Rome wasn't built in a day.  He probably needs January and the summer to get a starting 11 somewhere near his preferred options, that's providing we keep what we've got as well!

 

It may have been that certain targets were not available in the summer and we were not able to bring in exactly who we wanted, it happens to every team (Man utd, Spurs to name a couple).

Of course but for the first time Silva decided to play him as the lone striker, it was the perfect tactical move, pace and power we couldn't handle him. He changed it up so he could accommodate Bernard too, 7 mins in surprise, surprise, Bernard destroys our weakest side.

 

He needs January and the summer, what an absolutely ridiculous comment. We made the signings we needed to make this summer, we spent £30+ on a right-back and three centre-backs and you're telling me we need another two transfer windows to get it right  

 

We signed Ricardo quickly, we wanted Evans in January, we've obviously scouted Benkovic and Soyuncu. We signed the right kind of players for the areas we needed the most; however we still have problems.

 

It's unacceptable.

[Hanan96]

While Everton did cause us some problem, there's period when we controlled the game, especially for 20 minutes on 2nd half before Wes sent off. 

 

Also happened with Liverpool and man utd. 

 

Its not like we are too easy to beaten by pace

 

Even Bournemouth happened because we are too offensive in right sided defence. 

 

What happened with our 3 new Cb is rather unfortunate, especially evans who got injured right before the start of the season. Its not laughable 

[NotTheMarketLeader]

On 07/10/2018 at 06:08, Babylon said:

Did they create much from open play today? If we took our chances we'd have won. 

?

 

Everton has twice as many attempts / on target as we did.