Observations of an eternal optimist

[Captain...]

I've not been on here since Saturday, for obvious reasons, and we were poor on Saturday no hiding from that...

 

...but we weren't that bad, we just lack one thing. Composure.

 

On and off the ball.

 

On the ball:

 

Against teams like Swansea we will go through spells without much of the ball, what we do need to make sure is that we don't give it back to them easily. I lost count of the number of times we panicked in possession and gave the ball away under no pressure other than the ones we put ourselves under. When we get starved of the ball we react to possession like we must score a goal and try an ambitious through ball, a panicked hurried attack that ends up with Ulloa isolated, or a hopeful lump forward.  

 

When Swansea had the ball they were patient in their build up, keeping possession and putting us under pressure starving us of the ball, but creating little for themselves, we had more attempts than they did but they have the quality to create an opportunity like their first goal.

 

Which brings me to my second observation when we have the ball and try to carve out an opening with patient build up, our forwards and forward players are very static and playing on the shoulder of the defenders. At one point we had 5 players all in a forward line and no options for Drinkwater, an aimless cross was the result. When we have the ball we need players around the person with the ball and movement from the forward players to create the space.

 

More important than any of this is not making stupid mistakes, Kasper and Konchesky again made huge errors gifting the ball to the opposition in a dangerous position, somehow we haven't been punished from these, but we really need to be so much better in possession.

 

Off the ball:

 

It is great to see Nugent, Ulloa and Vardy putting the effort in and closing down from the front, but is it counter productive? I didn't see Swansea players chasing Moore and Morgan around, they got back and put the pressure on the midfield giving Moore and Morgan time on the ball, but cutting off the options in midfield forcing them to go long. Centre backs on the ball won't hurt us and chasing the ball across the back four is just going to tire out our forwards when we do have the ball and again force us to rush our attacking play.

 

With the forwards taking up sensible positions rather than chasing the ball we will have a greater presence in midfield and drag the defenders further forwards leaving more space behind.

 

Final observation:

 

I commented on this a few weeks ago, but who has told our defenders to get back on the line, Moore did it again instead of covering Bony, just bizarre defending.

 

I do think we will beat West Brom on Saturday and I do think we are good enough to stay up, but we need to show more composure, but if we panic and start chasing the game when they have a spell of possession we will struggle.

[Stuliasz]

Agree with a lot of what you say here, I don't think it can be solely put down to composure though. Part of it has to be attributed to individual quality. It seemed noticeable to me that our players didn't have the quality of first touch, the speed of thought, or the accuracy of pass compared to Swansea. Many of those panicked passes came from a poor first touch, lack of decent movement in front of the defence or generally unintelligent choices.

 

That said, they have players with better individual quality than we have so that's what you'd expect. We just need to find a way of playing to what our strengths are, at the moment we're trying to match teams up who are technically better than us and we're getting found out because of it.

[Bettsj2]

If the forwards dont chase down they will get absolutely hammered from the stands.

[Captain...]

If the forwards dont chase down they will get absolutely hammered from the stands.

 

Hopefully not away from home, we don't want to be wasting our energy chasing around after the ball, get the forwards between the defenders and midfield and block any easy outs, force them to hit it long, or carry the ball out.

 

At home, it gets the crowd going and that in turn gets the team going, but we still need to be careful with how and when we do it, if the forwards are knackered and running all over the place we lose shape and the space between the midfield and forwards gets bigger, forcing us to try more optimistic through/long balls, this isn't the championship any more and the team that works the hardest doesn't always win. We need to work smarter and leave this championship mentality behind. 

[Kitchandro]

It's all a vicious cycle, we lacked composure because we lack confidence. We lack confidence because we keep giving the ball away.

 

And this is all caused by our approach to the game. From minute one we allowed ourselves to be on the back foot. We tried to slow the game down as much as possible - totally disrupting our rhythm in possession, allowing Swansea to pressurise us and forcing ourselves into mistakes.

 

Look at the error from Schmeichel when he gave it straight to Sigurdsson I think it was - it was all caused by us being slow to release the ball, going backwards and inviting Swansea to be on top of our back four. We caused ourself panic and with every concession of possession we dented our own confidence.

 

As you say we didn't give ourselves options off the ball - our formation was totally bizarre. There was no link between the defence and midfield (which is what Hammond was supposed to be) or the midfield and attack as Ulloa was way to isolated with Vardy and Nugent playing in midfield. Both of them looked the whole match as if they were thinking 'wtf have I been told to play in this position for?' We resorted to hoofball with no thought whatsoever.

 

The only way we can get our composure back is by going back to passing the ball with confidence, and to do that we need to pass it with tempo, playing as a cohesive unit. It's not about slowing the game down whether you're home or away - it's about keeping the ball and being a threat with it, and you do that by moving it quickly. Support and movement in all thirds of the pitch is paramount.

[Captain...]

Look at the error from Schmeichel when he gave it straight to Sigurdsson I think it was - it was all caused by us being slow to release the ball, going backwards and inviting Swansea to be on top of our back four. We caused ourself panic and with every concession of possession we dented our own confidence.

 

That just summed it all up for me, we were trying to control possession, but doing it in completely the wrong area, and instead of opening up the pitch we just played ourselves into trouble.

 

The only way we can get our composure back is by going back to passing the ball with confidence, and to do that we need to pass it with tempo, playing as a cohesive unit. It's not about slowing the game down whether you're home or away - it's about keeping the ball and being a threat with it, and you do that by moving it quickly. Support and movement in all thirds of the pitch is paramount.

 

I agree with most of that last bit, but we don't need to move it quickly all the time, we panic and go forwards too quickly and when the option isn't there, either by lumping it up top, trying an overly ambitious through ball, also known as a pass to the keeper, or it playing someone into trouble. We should always be looking to play a quick ball forward and release the attack, but when the option isn't there we are just giving away possession and attracting pressure, away from home we can't be doing that. Support, movement and patience is what we need.

[marbelladave]

I'm still spending much of my time overseas, often without reliable internet. I have watched all the games, bar Palace, mostly without commentary so I have no real idea of what is being said though several things are obvious.

 

The failure of the back 3 to control our box is the same as last year, but this is the Premier League, so it is actually worse, using DeLaet as an attacking outlet is fine, failing to cover for him is not.

 

The lack of energy and commitment is so obvious, like the players simply do not believe in what they are being asked to do, where has that come from?

 

Playing Ulloa without a single forward player capable of reliably getting in crosses is nonsense, if you are going to hit ball over the top, have Vardy lead the line.

 

Our play in the last 3/4 games has been quite feeble, what we do to change it is the difficult bit. Personally I think it is game plan and setup that has to change, we have shown we can be competitive at this level, we just have to do it each week.

[Monsell1976]

Captain, a very good post, we have proved we can beat teams, but your right we lack composure, but is that lack of quality on the players part or lack of confidence in the formation, I hope it's the latter, because it's a easy fix, play the system that suits us.

We are looking very naive at the minute, from tactics, to players mistakes, and defending.

I normally approach things, airing on the side of caution, but I believe if we can learn the lesson fast we will be ok, but for all involved with city, the performances of recent weeks need improving, like I have said, none of us expect to win every week, but when we lose, it's how we perform.

The last 4 games it's the way we have offer very little to be positive about.

[lee7]

You make a good point about our strikers chasing everything down. Not once in the Swansea game did you see Bony chasing down a left back or right back like ulloa does. Maybe ulloa would be more effective if he just planted himself infront of the centre halves?

But at the same time if we were losing 1-0 and our strikers were seen to be just standing off they would get so much abuse from the fans!

Like previous posters have said our players do lack the individual quality. For example Ki, Shelvey and Sigurdsson were all comfortable enough on the ball to take any of our players on yet when some of our players recieve the ball such as Hammond he seems scared to pass it forwards let alone take anyone on!

[suffolk fox]

You make a good point about our strikers chasing everything down. Not once in the Swansea game did you see Bony chasing down a left back or right back like ulloa does. Maybe ulloa would be more effective if he just planted himself infront of the centre halves?

But at the same time if we were losing 1-0 and our strikers were seen to be just standing off they would get so much abuse from the fans!

Like previous posters have said our players do lack the individual quality. For example Ki, Shelvey and Sigurdsson were all comfortable enough on the ball to take any of our players on yet when some of our players recieve the ball such as Hammond he seems scared to pass it forwards let alone take anyone on!

Careful I got ctiticised for mentioning Hammond only ever passes sideways and backwards? I got told he is anholding midfielder and that is what he is supposed to do? What a load of crap lol

[Captain...]

Careful I got ctiticised for mentioning Hammond only ever passes sideways and backwards? I got told he is anholding midfielder and that is what he is supposed to do? What a load of crap lol

 

It's not what he is supposed to do, but it is what he does, and Pearson knows that when he picks him, he will win the ball back and then pass it on to someone else to do the creative stuff. Which is fine when we have the movement and the outlets, but when we don't we need more from the midfield as a unit, not one player deferring responsibility to the other, in which case it is all on Danny to make something happen, especially when the wingers aren't providing the simple outlet. 

 

He certainly isn't a bad player, but Pearson has to accept his limitations, this maybe the reason for the formation, 4 attack minded players to compensate for the lack of forward drive from Hammond, but the problem is unless we got a quick ball out to Vardy/Mahrez/Nugent, we have to go through the middle and Hammond isn't the man you want for that.