v Blackburn (A) Match Thread

[Jimbo Ram]

7 hours ago, TINMANTED said:

That leaves another conundrum,if Warne proves not to be up to the task,and we are looking doomed, do we accept our fate and hope Warne can pull another rabbit out of the hat,or change manager in the hope we can turn it round 

Let’s give him more than one game before having the discussion 😉

[DavesaRam]

10 hours ago, brady1993 said:

One thing I wanted to talk about because I hadn't seen it mentioned so far really is all 4 goals come from bad positioning/organisation/pressing especially in midfield. Ozoh was a major culprit either getting sucked in to the danger late, overcommitting in a useless press or not anticipating where danger is unfolding. All 4 goals the danger originates from it being trivial to breakdown our structure. Yes there are individual mistakes past that don't help but at that point it's mostly panicked defending where you are relying heavily on individual quality to bail you out. It's the kind of thing we could get away with in league 1 because our individual player quality was higher than most teams so they could often recover and the average league 1 team would often not punish these situations. To highlight my point let me walk through the goals in how they unfold:

Goal 1:

• It starts at point of almost complete safety and the first big issue. The ball is being rolled out to their left back deep in their half. Osbourne who is already a bit out of position, decides to go press the left when there is no real chance of closing him down in time and pulls himself majorly out of position and pretty much taking himself out of the game.
• That is the major contributor in leaving acres of space in the middle allowing one of their forwards to drop into the space as Kenzo follows his marker out to the wing. The forward dropping drags Wilson out of position to follow him. I think their is a argument here that neither Kenzo or Wilson should follow their man into the positions they do. But it's following that trend of pressing/marking individually without consideration. And leads to Kenzo in a right back area and wilson in midfield for the rest of the play.
• Second big issue you can already see starting to unfold here by looking at Ozoh who's taken a terrible position up by sitting on the left side of midfield and not reacting to where the danger is going to be. 
• He only reacts to move over after it's already too late and overcommits himself allowing him to be taken out of the game. At this point you've effectively got a 5 (blackburn) on 4 with massive amounts of space on the right wing and a makeshift defence. Any good team is going to score here.

Goal 2:

• It's kinda staggering how similar this goal is in a lot of ways. Jackson presses the left back on his own but this time I think it's mostly fine based on starting positions.
• Ozoh however has allowed himself to get dragged right out to the wing. Then gets dragged further as he goes to win a ball he's not getting to a huge amount of the time. When he should have been talking to Kenzo to go cover it or communicating to Kenzo that he's left his space.
• Ozoh getting dragged out opens up a massive space in midfield for their forward to drop into with which Cashin has to follow him into to contest because if he doesn't the forward is going to have all the time in the world to turn and do what they want. But we are now at a point where we are majorly disorganised.
• Cashin does almost recover the situation (again relying on individuals to bail out team problems). This should have bought enough time to reset. Osborne though goes with him getting pulled into a spot Cashin is either going to win or Osborne won't be able to help
• Watch what Ozoh does whilst this is happening. He's coming back but stops when it looks like Cashin has won the ball rather than continue to come back into position he loosely stays hanging out the right wing. Where he's neither covering for if something goes wrong or taking up a meaningful position to provide a passing option.
• It means that when this breaks down again it becomes 7 vs 4 where one of our deepest players is Collins coming back to help out. Any good team is going to score here. 

Goal 3:

• Ozoh has the ball. And nobody is giving him a decent short option aside from Osborn to go slightly backwards. He makes a bad decision and a bad pass leading to the turnover.
• He then overcommits once again. Pressing right into the space that Osborn has occupied. Taking himself out of the game, leaving acres of space in the middle (which on this occasion the Blackburn player doesn't see and instead plays a good ball releasing their winger). It means that he's in no position to later cover for runners or take up defensive positions as the defence shifts across.
• Cashin gets dragged out of position in a point where he should probably leave it to Elder. And it's easy from that point especially given the lack of midfield to cover.

Goal 4:

• Blackburn break on the counter. Cashin steps out to press and challenge. Ozoh who's coming back checks his run back to watch what happens, when he should be sprinting to cover where Cashin came from or sprinting to go for the player free on our right wing.
• It's only after the ball has gone and released the player in space on the wing. Does Ozoh go over there, after the defence has already shifted across and he should be moving to cover centrally. By doing this it leaves a player in the centre in absolute acres of space.

 

In this I know I've criticised Ozoh a lot and I do think he's severely culpable in a lot of the goals. But to be honest in all of them there just seems to be structural problems. A lot of naive pressing and poor positioning as a team. Suggesting there hasn't been enough or good enough coaching around when players should press, how they should press, what positions to take up or hold and who should be looking to cover for who. It strikes me as a lot of individuals making decisions in a moment as opposed to a collective understanding of who should be doing what.

 

 

This was specifically true of the first half, especially Ozoh taking a while to find his feet at this level. The improved second half came after Ozoh was pushed further forwards, with Osborne sitting deeper. We saw a similar improvement on last Saturday’s final pre-season friendly. Ao having it seen it work, why not do it from the start next time? But at least Warne did eventually make the change, and we did play better as a result. A further improvement came with the arrival of Collins enabling our winger to actually play on the wing. But then Warne changed the midfield, and suddenly it was open sesame. Why? When we were controlling the game? That is what caused the goal fest for Blackburn. Suddenly the defence was overloaded and couldn’t cole with the extra impetus. And although Cashin hasn’t had the best of starts, part of his problem was gim having to cover for Elder going defensively AWOL. We saw this happen to Kepgh, bless him. He struggled when he had to cover for one, sometimes two team mates.  Cashin was playing two, maybe three defensive roles on his own. No wonder he kept going gung-ho.

No matter how much the players messed up, some if the blame has to be at Warne’s door.

We can survive, but both players and coaches must do better.

[IlsonDerby]

I’m glad it’s started to be picked up on by analysts but I couldn’t get my head around the system we played Friday.
 

I don’t mean 433, I mean Osborn and Kenzo becoming full backs allowing Wilson and Elder to push up.
 

Yeah you have more options out wide but it hurts us in 3 ways.
1) it crowds out NML and Jackson who want some space to attack

2) it leaves Ozoh isolated in the middle if we lose the ball making us susceptible to counter attacks straight through our centre.
3) some of our best players on the ball are stuck in full back position stopping us from having them further upfield to help create chances and keep possession in the final third.
 

It just seems so over complicated in order to provide 1 thing - an overload on the wings to get more crosses in. Yet we’re playing without a striker.
 

I’d love Barker to sit me down and explain the rationale behind it to see if I’m missing anything other than ‘more crosses = good’. 

[TomTom92]

On 11/08/2024 at 13:20, Chellaston Ram said:

Why not put Osborn LB/LWB and bring in Adam’s and play Ozoh higher up in midfield 

Think we'll end up doing this.

Blackburn proved that Adams needs to start to help us defensively. Clearly we rate Gold mine and Ozoh so 352 with Osborn wing back gets all of them in and Osborn will offer us more than Elder.

[Ghost of Clough]

5 hours ago, IlsonDerby said:

I’m glad it’s started to be picked up on by analysts but I couldn’t get my head around the system we played Friday.
 

I don’t mean 433, I mean Osborn and Kenzo becoming full backs allowing Wilson and Elder to push up.
 

Yeah you have more options out wide but it hurts us in 3 ways.
1) it crowds out NML and Jackson who want some space to attack

2) it leaves Ozoh isolated in the middle if we lose the ball making us susceptible to counter attacks straight through our centre.
3) some of our best players on the ball are stuck in full back position stopping us from having them further upfield to help create chances and keep possession in the final third.
 

It just seems so over complicated in order to provide 1 thing - an overload on the wings to get more crosses in. Yet we’re playing without a striker.
 

I’d love Barker to sit me down and explain the rationale behind it to see if I’m missing anything other than ‘more crosses = good’. 

It's an odd tactical change considering the comments made at the time he was appointed - Roberts and Knight sitting inside as extra midfielders whilst the CMs pushed high and wide. I recall Warne stating a desire to simplify things, with defenders defending and forwards attacking.

[Eoghan1884]

Blackburn 4-0 up after 35 minutes with Szmodics getting 2 and Weimann and Ohashi both scoring again. Stockport also are no mugs wouldn't surprise me if they were battling for playoffs in league one. 

[DCFC1388]

23 minutes ago, Eoghan1884 said:

Blackburn 4-0 up after 35 minutes with Szmodics getting 2 and Weimann and Ohashi both scoring again. Stockport also are no mugs wouldn't surprise me if they were battling for playoffs in league one. 

7 goals in 1 hour of football with them 3 on the pitch

[IlsonDerby]

Finally built myself up to listen to the NTT20 weekend review podcast. They were not kind about us and our performance. They slated the defending. 

[Foreveram]

6 minutes ago, IlsonDerby said:

Finally built myself up to listen to the NTT20 weekend review podcast. They were not kind about us and our performance. They slated the defending. 

[IlsonDerby]

2 hours ago, Foreveram said:

In fairness I was hoping to hear ‘Derby worked well to get back into it and looked to be on top until defensive errors took the game away from them’ but alas no 

[brady1993]

On 11/08/2024 at 20:31, DE56Ram said:

Are you a football coach at a reasonable level? 
that’s a very detailed appraisal for a fan. 🤔

I honestly feel that our coaching staff can see and will address our opening day shortcomings. You aren’t chosen to be the management team of a top 40 football club if you’re not up to it. Clearly from past experiences the coaches can and will.

Ozoh has been sent out to learn and his club stated that his learning can not be served better at this stage of his career than under PW at Derby 😊

We didn’t mark runners at all well, they worked VERY HARD for their win though, and we do need at least three more better quality players. 👍

Not even a little bit 😅. I have no experience coaching and have almost no skill playing even. The only thing I've arguably got going for me is that I am a Data Scientist, so professionally at least all I do effectively is spot and analyse patterns.

[DE56Ram]

6 hours ago, brady1993 said:

Not even a little bit 😅. I have no experience coaching and have almost no skill playing even. The only thing I've arguably got going for me is that I am a Data Scientist, so professionally at least all I do effectively is spot and analyse patterns.

I had a kaleidoscope as a kid and used to look at patterns in that 😊

[Ambitious]

I saw that Yuki Ohahsi scored again at the weekend, 3 goals in his first 3 games in England. He really does look the part, as does the big striker upfront. Blackburn really have recruited extremely well given their owners' plight. 

Annoying really because I was banking on them being a mess this season, but they'll be comfortably out of any danger.