Over reliant on crosses today?

instructor

Well-Known Member
I think with players like Hagi, Kent and Aribo on the park, we should have varied our play and mixed it up a bit with the threat of playing through them as well as the crosses. Some of the crosses were finding no one and they were strong in the air apart from their one lapse. Just a bit predictable for me.
 
I think with players like Hagi, Kent and Aribo on the park, we should have varied our play and mixed it up a bit with the threat of playng through them as well as the crosses. Some of the crosses were finding no one and they were strong in the air apart from their one lapse. Just a bit predictable for me.
100% agree and have said the same thing to my mates.
 
My lad - 13- said half through the first half that the crosses weren’t working and we should trying to go through the middle more. Why we persevered with crosses is beyond me.
 
It was the quality or lack of quality of the crosses - Barrisic kept hitting the first man and Tav was just skelping it.
Notably, the goal came from a cross that was early and from a different angle to most. (most were from the bye line to 8 yards out and as a result easier to defend.
 
We couldn't go through them as they literally had every player behind the ball. The space was out wide it's just a pitty that bar the ball in from Barisic for the goal our crossing was absymal.

Also don't think Morelos with his back to goal on the edge of the box is much of a threat and we haven't seen enough of Itten doing that. Defoe is our man for that yet he was only given 10 minutes.
 
Our full backs are good crossers and they were getting all the space that's why we crossed so much and part of the reason we brought Itten on as the first change
 
We got our goal and a couple of other good chances from crosses into the box so they weren’t a complete waste. I would have liked to have seen it mixed up a little more with playing through the middle and I also feel we missed opportunities to shoot from distance on a few occasions.
 
We were a little over reliant but we always play a lot of cross balls into the box per game. The issue for today was the accuracy of them, tav and borna were barely beating the first man at times, especially borna. That’s where we need to improve for next game, we need to be more accurate on our crosses
 
Crossing was poor today from both sides of pitch.

Not looking for excuses but is the Fir Park pitch narrower than Ibrox?

Team didnt seem to have the space down the flanks like we do at home.
 
I think with players like Hagi, Kent and Aribo on the park, we should have varied our play and mixed it up a bit with the threat of playing through them as well as the crosses. Some of the crosses were finding no one and they were strong in the air apart from their one lapse. Just a bit predictable for me.
Play through all ten of them?
That’s easy enough.
 
We need to vary it more. Try a long, probing pass up the wing outside the full backs, so that Kent or Morelos can turn them. Then the defenders are suddenly chasing back and under pressure. We play too much of the time with 9 defenders facing us.

No one appreciates the attacking wing work of Tavernier and Barisic more than I do, but the fact they play so high up the park reduces the options for playing this type of ball.
 
Badly missed Arfield and his runs into the box in that type of game. In saying that we needed a lot more from Aribo, Kent and Hagi.
 
We were firing balls into the box as if Mark Hateley was still playing upfront for us.

Flinging high balls constantly in to the penalty box is a Scottish defenders dream.

Bringing Defoe on at 83 was criminal the amount of time we spent in and around their box.
 
This was Motherwell’s tactic, allow us space out wide to cross ball as they felt they could defend them well and it also congested things in the middle. I think we need to be more confident in playing balls into our forwards in and around edge of the box, today some players made good runs & found space but we didn’t have the confidence to try and find them
 
Our crossing was so poor today,Motherwell were in no rush to close Tav or Borna down,basically defending the cross ball when it came in to the box,luckily for them our guys had an off day.
 
What we missed today was a player like Albertz or Pedro Mendes. A deep-lying midfielder who can reliably hit the target from 30-35 yards.

Motherwell were happy to sit in two banks on the 6 and 18 yard line when we had possession in their half, show us down the sides and head anything that moved.

We become very predictable in that situation as it’s impossible to go over the top, and very difficult to play through it.

If the deepest lying midfielder is a long shot specialist (or one of the centre halves) it gives us the option to go back into the middle of the park if there’s nothing on down the wings.

At that point either one of their players steps out and we can try and play through them, or we hammer one at their keeper and look for a deflection a rebound or a corner, barring the odd one that actually flies in.

As it stands, there’s no good reason for an opposition team to step out and really press one of our three midfielders picking the ball up 35-40 yards out.
 
Think it was about 70 crosses today which is crazy.

That being said, we did score from a cross into the box.
 
I dont mind the crosses theres not much space to play through the middle of a packed penalty area... the goal came from a simple cross. its not having the big lad on earlier and changing tactics which i felt was the issue 2 in the middle and we win that today(imo) same with Livi which was a similar type of game where points were dropped.

I totally accept players, manager, have a bad day at some point no one has a perfect season and overall they have been superb.
 
Think it was about 70 crosses today which is crazy.

That being said, we did score from a cross into the box.
We maybe need to vary them.
Maybe drilled crosses, too high to kick, too low to head, crosses deliberately looking for a deflection and a second ball might yield something.
Even if it’s just sore midriffs!
 
It was the quality or lack of quality of the crosses - Barrisic kept hitting the first man and Tav was just skelping it.
Notably, the goal came from a cross that was early and from a different angle to most. (most were from the bye line to 8 yards out and as a result easier to defend.
Absolutely spot on here. Our full backs have had heaps of praise this season for their delivery but were both of it today. Let’s just put it down to a bad day and move on to next week
 
I think with players like Hagi, Kent and Aribo on the park, we should have varied our play and mixed it up a bit with the threat of playing through them as well as the crosses. Some of the crosses were finding no one and they were strong in the air apart from their one lapse. Just a bit predictable for me.
I didn't think we put enough crosses in the box, 2nd half especially we wasted good opportunitys to hit Itten
 
The Motherwell defence dealt with the crosses well all game apart from the goal when we finally got a quality ball into the box i just wish we'd try having a shot tho mix it up when teams are defending for there life's like that.
 
Time for Borna and Tav to provide a goal threat themselves. There's plenty of occasions when each could be driving into the box, instead of going outside to sling a cross in.

We should be working on this.
 
Motherwell set up to make it difficult through the middle.

Id like to see more shots outside the box. Defences will come out quicker if we become more dangerous from distance
 
Our reliance on crosses wouldn't have been a problem if the quality of final ball had been better. Tav and Borna - besides the equaliser of course - were well off their usual standards in their crossing.
 
Our crosses are far more effective when we are playing on the counter but unfortunately we play in Scotland and teams set up to frustrate.

For me we need to mix it up a bit more, we move the ball well from side to side and create the space to put the cross in but I would like to see us do that more centrally to maximise our chance to get clean strikes away from 20-25 yards.

All in all it’s nitpicking really given how well we have played this season overall.
 
It is all very well saying "play through them" but our guys with the best control - Kent, Aribo and Hagi - were getting the ball caught under their feet throughout the game. On the pitches that we are going to face from now on this is something we are going to have to get used to and adapt.
 
Motherwell defended well, and forced us into the areas that they felt they could defend best. That said, our quality wasn’t up to snuff today. From either flank. And even at that, we really could and should have scored more than the one goal.

Arfield and Roofe give us options, great movement and guile. Both out at the same time is having an impact on our attacking game.
 
I think with players like Hagi, Kent and Aribo on the park, we should have varied our play and mixed it up a bit with the threat of playing through them as well as the crosses. Some of the crosses were finding no one and they were strong in the air apart from their one lapse. Just a bit predictable for me.
Agreed, had similar thoughts 2nd half. Played to well's strengths defensively. Still could and should have won it, but could have made it easier for ourselves
 
Other than Barasic's assist for the goal the best cross of the game was morelos drilled cross from the right. Their full backs actually stood off us a few times to allow us to put in crosses as they were confident they would deal with them. We should have mixed it up more than we did particularly in that 1st half.
 
As poor as we were today sometimes you just have to give the other side some credit

Again they had a game plan, whether we like it or not, and they executed it pretty well

It was clear they wanted to push us wide so we couldn’t play though them and were confident they could defend our crosses. For the most part they did and when we went narrow they had 10 behind the ball and everywhere was so congested

We lacked some spark/urgency/tempo but controlled the game and Motherwell done the job they set out to do

We dust ourselves off and get ready for next week, we had an off day and they did a job

If at the start of the week we were told we would open up an extra 2 points on the tims come Sunday night we’d all have bitten someone’s hand off for it
 
This was Motherwell’s tactic, allow us space out wide to cross ball as they felt they could defend them well and it also congested things in the middle. I think we need to be more confident in playing balls into our forwards in and around edge of the box, today some players made good runs & found space but we didn’t have the confidence to try and find them

Or occasionally our wide men could have carried the ball into the box and let fly at goal or across goal. We certainly were being given the room to do so. It was a day of insufficient quality.
 
My lad - 13- said half through the first half that the crosses weren’t working and we should trying to go through the middle more. Why we persevered with crosses is beyond me.
Problem was they were contesting the middle and giving us more room on the wings

Is near impossible to play through the a middle 8

There's no real easy solution when the middle is that conjested tavs header back is an example crosses we're working but itten our morelos were to slow to react
 
A lot of clubs, academies and independent professionals have completed detailed analysis on crossing.

Each study always provides the same metric for your chance of scoring from a cross: 2%.

We scored 1 out of 41 attempts today, giving us a 2.4% success rate.

We missed Arfields ability to play centrally, combining passes on the ground and bouncing off Roofe.
 
I think with players like Hagi, Kent and Aribo on the park, we should have varied our play and mixed it up a bit with the threat of playing through them as well as the crosses. Some of the crosses were finding no one and they were strong in the air apart from their one lapse. Just a bit predictable for me.
We need more low crosses at the front post
 
The biggest problem we had today was the same problem we had at Ibrox and will continue to have.
The opposition scored first.
Correct. Changes the game. They were happy to defend the crosses. However, scored from a cross with big Cedric. Is he worth a shout? Pitch was not great. Everyone was having trouble controlling it. A difficult day. Point gained. Let's move on.
 
We scored from a cross. Defoe nearly scored from a cross. We would've scored through a cross if someone anticipated Tav's header across the 6 yard box.

The team would be accused of tippy tappy pish if they tried to play through a bank of 10 men as it's very difficult to do so.

Goldson had 1 cleared off line too. Motherwell gave us so much time and space down flanks but Borna and Tavs final ball today was awful. Unusual for both to have an off day.
 
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Borna’s cross did produce a goal!!!
However, it was a bit like watching a rerun of one of last year’s games when we put loads of aimless crosses into the box against big central defenders.
This season, mostly, we have varied the deliveries from wide with many passed along the ground.
However, today we did not have that variety and it meant it was easier for Motherwell to deal with what we did put in
 
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