Central midfield

[May Contain Nuts]

This talk of a needing a proper DM to sit, control the midfield, cover the defence, win the ball back etc is all well and good.

...until you remember that Warne's system and preferred way of playing doesn't deploy anyone to do that job and he's on record as saying that he's aware his system leaves his team open to counter attacks and that it doesn't concern him all that much.

So, what if we don't bring someone in, or rather we bring in someone who doesn't offer what it's clear we need?

Do we just carry on leaving the defence horribly exposed, pretty much assuring  a string of 'individual errors', or does Warne see the problem and change things up?

Honestly I'm not convinced it would be the latter.

Edited August 6, 2023 by Kokosnuss

[Carnero]

1 hour ago, Ambitious said:

Warne mentioned it in his prematch interview for the Wigan game. I saved the video on my phone but file is too big to post on here. 

The exact words were: ‘I think we need to bolster the midfield and up top which looks like we’re close on doing so, erm, yeah, we are getting there’ 

I just took it to mean that we were close to strengthening up top, hard to tell sometimes 🤷‍♂️

[Marriot Ram99]

2 hours ago, Kokosnuss said:

This talk of a needing a proper DM to sit, control the midfield, cover the defence, win the ball back etc is all well and good.

...until you remember that Warne's system and preferred way of playing doesn't deploy anyone to do that job and he's on record as saying that he's aware his system leaves his team open to counter attacks and that it doesn't concern him all that much.

So, what if we don't bring someone in, or rather we bring in someone who doesn't offer what it's clear we need?

Do we just carry on leaving the defence horribly exposed, pretty much assuring  a string of 'individual errors', or does Warne see the problem and change things up?

Honestly I'm not convinced it would be the latter.

If he doesn't care about his teams being vulnerable to the counter all while having little attacking creativity he has the tactical nous of Postman Pat which I think is about right at the moment,  someone selected at random from this forum could have led us to 7th place last season and Homer Simpson could get us a top 8 finish in this league. Think we will have to wait until atleast 4 or 5 league games have been played and we've signed another striker to see how things progress but I don't think he is a good tactician at all and we don't look like a team who will score more than 60 goals this season which isn't good enough for our resources and our aims.

[sage]

8 hours ago, Mr Tibbs said:

I don't think it's pace, it's positioning for me. The other three just aren't very good at being in the right place at the right time. A good CDM knows when to go and when to sit, none of our CM's really have that quality. 

Thorne/Eustace/Huddlestone all did a pretty good job being that pivot and enforcer without any pace at all. 

We weren't playing the high press like we do now.