Anyone know how we can play through that?

ClubDeckBear

Well-Known Member
Tinpot clubs seem to have nailed the back four with a bank of five sitting in front. Any tactically minded bears know the answer in terms of breaking these shitehawks and carthorses down? Can't counter attack a team sitting that deep and if we do get a chance to hit them on the break, our decision making is so poor. When we get a shot off in open play, we've taken that long to set up that there's ten bodies in the way. We play with quite a bit of width which should stretch them but our final balls are that poor they're happy to let us have it out there. No-one running past Alfie from deep and no-one ever attacks the front post so it's a hit n hope into the mixer. Is it lack of quality? Confidence? Or is there a better way we can set up?
 
I’d have gone 4-3-1-2. Gives their centre backs more to think about other than just Alife and anything breaking to the edge of the box is hopefully taken advantage of by the guy sitting ‘in the hole’.
 
Play a little deeper to make them come for the ball and stretch them a little. Dont keep them penned in, it's just forcing 10 men behind the ball.

Be more patient looking for openings, don't just fck a cross in. We loose the ball at 95% of crosses from open play, free kicks and corners.

You can't thread a ball in with 6 or 7 in the box.
 
Play a little deeper to make them come for the ball and stretch them a little. Dont keep them penned in, it's just forcing 10 men behind the ball.

Be more patient looking for openings, don't just fck a cross in. We loose the ball at 95% of crosses from open play, free kicks and corners.

You can't thread a ball in with 6 or 7 in the box.
Agreed. Also, I can't remember us scoring from the front post this year? Have to go back to 2018 I think. A lot of the balls coming on from DC or Tav go front post. Are they being told to hit the ball deep and not listening or attackers not running where they should? Total disconnect.
 
Our passing and first touch in the final third was poor in the first half.
Our defending is nowhere near good enough. Concentrate on keeping clean sheets will relieve the pressure on our forwards.
 
Stretch them by moving the ball about at speed. These are not new tactics from away teams.
Is that something the players can't do though or are they being told to probe rather than go back to front quickly? Is it quality or are we setting up wrong? I don't remember teams setting up as defensively as this pre banter years? Maybe one or two but not this many?
 
I posted this in the 4-3-3 thread but it applies to this thread;

If we are going to persist on a 4-3-3 then we need to give up possession.

The system only works when teams have a go at us.

Leicester won the premiership giving up possession and we need to do the same.

The constant backward and side to side passes against a team with 10 men behind the ball doesn’t work. We don’t have the players for it.
 
I posted this in the 4-3-3 thread but it applies to this thread;

If we are going to persist on a 4-3-3 then we need to give up possession.

The system only works when teams have a go at us.

Leicester won the premiership giving up possession and we need to do the same.

The constant backward and side to side passes against a team with 10 men behind the ball doesn’t work. We don’t have the players for it.
Have to agree, suppose to play 433 against park the bus you need to have the quality to play the right pass quickly and the guile to stick two men out wide to run in behind every time.
 
Do what they do to us,kick füčķ out of them &keep kicking till the ref says please stop kicking or I'll need to book you.....maybe in injury time or maybe let you keep on kicking. Rant over.
WATP
 
An
We need to be more creative, that goes without saying.

However, watching the Wolves Man U game just now and it seems strange watching a game when a player isnt hacked down every two minutes.
Great point, can you keep the last ditch defending/game spoiling up when you've had 3 players booked in the first twenty minutes?
 
I can't tell you the exact answer to breaking teams down that are backs to the wall. It's easy to see what not to do against teams like that though, and we seem to fall into the trap every time. Tactically, we've learned nothing since the Warburton days, nothing at all.

1. Putting balls into the box when we've only one man in there vs 7 or 8 is not going to work.
2. Candeias is especially bad for this but we don't have a player that lifts their head and has a look at where the ball should go. Head down and hit and hope from the wide areas is exactly what we do every week. Gerrard should be cutting that right our game, it's basic stuff.
3. Midfielders aren't willing to break the lines and get into the box to support Morelos. Arfield does this at times but we need more of them taking that gamble, we're too scared of conceding and it's affecting our attacking.
4. We shouldn't be conceding goals against teams set up to frustrate us. Our defensive midfielder coupled with the CBs should be able to deal with counters due to opposition not having numbers going forward but somehow we still manage to concede. The midfield aren't providing enough cover and the 2 CBs are on their own at times. We could learn from other teams about fighting for each other, we don't fight for each other IMO.

In a simpler sense, we just don't have the quality to unlock a stubborn defence, nor the workrate to stop other teams scoring into us from the break.

Frustrating stuff.
 
I know they don't grow on trees but we need a (young) Durrant type, who can burst from deep and go straight at defenders in the middle of the pitch / edge of the box area. Defenders shit themselves from that type of player and will either back off or be drawn into fouling them. Get them doing that deep enough then you're accruing free-kicks at the edge of the box or penalties, regardless of shite referees.

The players we have just now who are sometimes capable of such runs aren't quite up to the job on a regular basis / get kicked out of it / are guilty of bad final balls and decision making.

That aside, we need to wisen up in the full back positions. We're still too gung-ho at times and leave gaps for teams to counter into.

Finally, we do need one or too players in there who will happily blooter %^*& out of the opposition at times. Some games we can dominate and dictate due to having better players on a big pitch with a decent surface. Other games are going to be battles from minute 1 to minute 90. And despite Gerrard's proclamation on game day 1, we are still being bullied.
 
1. Speed
2. More goals from wide attackers
3. Far better technical skills to take, and recycle ball far, far quicker

Take Bayern v Liverpool. Two 433 systems but we are Bayern....Liverpool were more physical, direct, and forwards were constant threat.
 
Play a little deeper to make them come for the ball and stretch them a little. Dont keep them penned in, it's just forcing 10 men behind the ball.

Be more patient looking for openings, don't just fck a cross in. We loose the ball at 95% of crosses from open play, free kicks and corners.

You can't thread a ball in with 6 or 7 in the box.

The Ibrox crowd will never allow that.
 
You can do what you want with formations but if you don't have quality, someone with that bit of magic, it will always be difficult to break these kind of teams down.

I also feel we need more from the midfield, very rarely do our midfielders make late runs past the front men. Dare I say the way st pats have in McGregor and christie?
 
This and move the ball quicker. Then press in packs soon as we lose the ball making the opposition punt it.

We had it working most of the first half of the season and in patches after new year.

Needs to happen every match.
Spot on the pressing seems to be patchy need to hunt it back in packs constantly. Can't work out if we're meant to be pressing or not.
 
Said in another thread, we could play more quick 1 touch passing and through balls. If you skilfully play round their statues at speed, will soon bring them out. Also hitting shots from distance.
 
I want to see Alfie in the no10 role with Defoe ahead of him AND the two wingers

Alfie will draw centre halfs to him and then JD can make smart runs.

Seems obvious to me

I said the same in the match thread.

When they sit in we could go
3-4-1-2

Two players inside the box and Alfredo in and around the 'D'.

Because Alfredo can hold the ball better than anyone, he can turn players better than anyone and he can strike a ball from that distance.

The four behind Alfredo need to be quick I think one touch, two touch aggressive football. With the triangle - Morelos, Defoe and Lafferty there are various options.

Barisic, Kent, Arfield, Kamara, Davis, Grezda, Tav. We have the options to build a few variations of attacking MF's.

Goldson and Katic as defenders and a Candeias type player sitting infront of them (A fast runner, who can put a foot in and break up a counter attack - he just needs to put the ball 10 meters back to either of the defenders or out of the park. Candeias may well be an attacking player, but he also has saved Tavs ass countless times) the key for that position is speed.
 
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I don't think a single dynamic MF'er is the answer, as teams will simply double up on him and take turns kicking him off the park.
Our days of these type players are finished imo, it needs to be more complex.
 
One thing we need to be doing more of is playing the ball to Alfie's feet. That's where he's devastating. Look at the goal today. Morelos is sensational rolling defenders, so why persist with stupid long balls? Get players running beyond him, take defenders out of position. Just move the ball and the players at speed.
 
Centre halves not having a starting position 30 yards inside their own half would be a start, full backs high and press the game, force the difficult passes and start having belief AND balls. I bet they zip the ball and unlock the low block at ease under the non pressure training environments
 
Defoe must feel physically sick at moving away up here thinking he’s getting first team football at a huge club and a chance to win things , only to be met with sitting on the bench in a colder climate then being thrown on with 20 minutes to go in games and asked to perform miracles , then get booed off the park by 50,000 pissed off bears in the pissin rain .
 
If we have to play this current formation, we need 3 strikers, not 2 wingers, who interchange and are constantly making runs behind the defence.
Now the hard bit, we need midfielders (at least 2) who can see those runs and pick a pass. Who can shoot from distance and run beyond the strikers.
Use Liverpool for an example, as our manager certainly does.
The only difference being, is that our players and shape are confused and disjointed at best.
Another big weakness, hard to believe, is the apparent free role Tav enjoys. Full backs shouldn't be hitting the by line, certainly not as often as ours. This is forcing us to constantly rely on crossing into the box. It is also preventing our midfielders getting into attacking positions as they're covering.
Next time, watch how static the rest of the team look. No one makes the unexpected run as they know they're not getting the ball. Hence, we're too predictable.
Imo, we've not got the players to play this system. The biggest red flag is that our midfield just hasn't got any balance. This makes any formation or shape difficult to implement.

I honestly think we've got a big problem. I think an experienced manager would find it difficult to solve this predicament.
 
A start would be to stop fannying about, hoping that passing sideways and nonsense interchanges are kidding us on.
I'm sick of seeing our players constantly pointing elsewhere.
 
Tinpot clubs seem to have nailed the back four with a bank of five sitting in front. Any tactically minded bears know the answer in terms of breaking these shitehawks and carthorses down? Can't counter attack a team sitting that deep and if we do get a chance to hit them on the break, our decision making is so poor. When we get a shot off in open play, we've taken that long to set up that there's ten bodies in the way. We play with quite a bit of width which should stretch them but our final balls are that poor they're happy to let us have it out there. No-one running past Alfie from deep and no-one ever attacks the front post so it's a hit n hope into the mixer. Is it lack of quality? Confidence? Or is there a better way we can set up?

Better quality of player!
 
The only way to beat teams who park the bus is to get behind them. Our wide men never beat their opponent and turn the defence. We cross the ball from too far out making it easy to defend against. Get to the byline and get more bodies arriving in the box with the defenders facing their own goal.
 
Tinpot clubs seem to have nailed the back four with a bank of five sitting in front. Any tactically minded bears know the answer in terms of breaking these shitehawks and carthorses down? Can't counter attack a team sitting that deep and if we do get a chance to hit them on the break, our decision making is so poor. When we get a shot off in open play, we've taken that long to set up that there's ten bodies in the way. We play with quite a bit of width which should stretch them but our final balls are that poor they're happy to let us have it out there. No-one running past Alfie from deep and no-one ever attacks the front post so it's a hit n hope into the mixer. Is it lack of quality? Confidence? Or is there a better way we can set up?
How do Celtic do it so easily.....that's the answer.
Better quality who all carry a goal threat
 
Better wide attacking players, we have work rate and dribbling which when you play teams that come at you are useful but against teams that sit back are not as good and better midfield, we have plenty of nice tidy midfielders who do well defensively and keep it simple on the ball but we lack any sort of ability to put through a great ball or score. I'll say it every time, this team is close to being able to actually win some trophies but the issues the squad has absolutely cripples the team if certain players dont step up
 
Tinpot clubs seem to have nailed the back four with a bank of five sitting in front. Any tactically minded bears know the answer in terms of breaking these shitehawks and carthorses down? Can't counter attack a team sitting that deep and if we do get a chance to hit them on the break, our decision making is so poor. When we get a shot off in open play, we've taken that long to set up that there's ten bodies in the way. We play with quite a bit of width which should stretch them but our final balls are that poor they're happy to let us have it out there. No-one running past Alfie from deep and no-one ever attacks the front post so it's a hit n hope into the mixer. Is it lack of quality? Confidence? Or is there a better way we can set up?
Cooper and Johnstone.
Or
Laudrup, Hateley and
Okay, that a fantasy but, for me, the emboldened line is the winner.
If we can find a modern day Johnstone or Hateley, that would be ideal.
 
Earlier posters have correctly highlighted that we need better quality and skilful players. For too long now, we have struggled against tightly packed defences. Although collectively they are hard to break down, individually the defensive players are not all that good and are prone to making mistakes. Until we can come up with players with sufficient quality and skill, it seems a bit pointless trying to work our through packed defences, as recent games have shown, we are struggling to do it successfully. We might be just as well lamping balls into the box in the anticipation of defensive errors and pick up the scraps. I know that this is agriculture stuff but the way things are for now, we haven’t much to lose.
 
We need a monster of a cf,I mean with height and aerial ability.its not rocket science,we constantly play around the edges of the box looking for that perfect opening and we eventually lose posession.If we are in a wide position just throw a high ball in to the box and if the cf doesent score the rest of the forward players in there can feed off the scraps.think back over the years when we have had this option,Hatley, DJ,Colin Stein even Colin Mcadam.
 
We need a monster of a cf,I mean with height and aerial ability.its not rocket science,we constantly play around the edges of the box looking for that perfect opening and we eventually lose posession.If we are in a wide position just throw a high ball in to the box and if the cf doesent score the rest of the forward players in there can feed off the scraps.think back over the years when we have had this option,Hatley, DJ,Colin Stein even Colin Mcadam.

That's it then, get Crouch and Defoe back together next season.

Leagues won.
 
Earlier posters have correctly highlighted that we need better quality and skilful players. For too long now, we have struggled against tightly packed defences. Although collectively they are hard to break down, individually the defensive players are not all that good and are prone to making mistakes. Until we can come up with players with sufficient quality and skill, it seems a bit pointless trying to work our through packed defences, as recent games have shown, we are struggling to do it successfully. We might be just as well lamping balls into the box in the anticipation of defensive errors and pick up the scraps. I know that this is agriculture stuff but the way things are for now, we haven’t much to lose.

IMO, That is not the answer, for one simple reason. They will get kicked all over the park by the hammer throwers.
 
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