New style and tactics ?

[The Scarlet Pimpernel]

The crux of our situation is absolutely based upon our midfield breaking the press. That means being comfortable in recieving the right ball out of defence and turning or playing accurate quick passing through the lines. Not trying to single him out but the biggist culpret for NOT getting it right is young Thompson who seems to have reverrted to pinging it staraight back where it came from. That has its place if absolutely necessary to retain posession but it really should be last resort. If hes not comfortable looking after the ball hes got a problem.

[Dimmu]

8 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Across pre-season I see no significant change in tactics from last year. I had been hopeful, but it shouldn't be a surprise given Rosenior did the majority of last season's coaching. 

If we don't change we won't score goals and will likely finish lower mid-table. I was pleased Rooney left because, despite being such tremendous a leader of men in our hour of need, the style of play was both negative and poorly conceived, and had to change. I have never seen a team consistently create so few chances. And to be set up to play that way. Not to mention being instructed to continually put ourselves under pressure, to no benefit whatsoever.

At least we still have a club to support, but I'm pessimistic about the new campaign.

Spot on. The amount of chances we create is ridiculously low, especially in away games. Therefore, I'm worried about the coming season as well. Fancy, possession based football is absolutely fine, if it includes an idea how we are going to pass the midfield... What bothers me most, is that we finally have some aerial threat in the box and how many crosses we've done during the whole pre-season? Not too many.

I think our ineffective style of play is a valid and analytical reason why Rosenior is only interim manager. I wish he would be success as he is very likable. So was Cocu and I do see some similarities between them.

[brady1993]

16 hours ago, Coconut's Beard said:

No chance IMO but there's no shame in that, it's why we had so many hopes attached to, and struggled so much to replace, George Thorne.

We had a system where the CBs could focus almost entirely on their forward play because the DM was so, so good at his job. Eustace wasn't the complete player of course but he was surrounded by a lot of quality.

We tried other players there for years but none could fully fulfill the responsibilities of the role until Bielik came along.

Bird is a fine, fine player but even he can't replicate the full range of abilities provided by past inhabitants so we can't really expect it from anyone else at this level.

My niggling worry going into this season with how we tactically are looking to set up is I think we are shallow in certain roles we need from players.

Bird's role is one of them with only really a fit Bielik likely a good fit.

Roberts' role is another. Its notable how worse the build up play gets when Fozzy has been on the pitch instead of him. 

Out-wide we are tactically playing people high and wide and there isn't anyone in the squad past Barks and NML who can do it. 

Any of those players gets injured we likely take a decent hit in how we want. Bird/Roberts gets injured build up play gets harder. NML/Barkhuizen gets injured teams can play narrower and press higher.

The best example of all of this was the pre-season against Stevanage where because there was no Barkhuizen there was less space to build up the play and because there was no Bird or Roberts we had worse players at it/tactically mismatched players trying to do it. (All the while under heavily fatigued conditions which makes everything harder).