FAO Someone With A Coaching Badge

Well, I managed to get through this one but I do not know how. We made Slovenia look like Brazil. Either our players are absolutely hopeless, or our tactics are making them look like it.

First the players. I noticed against Malta that we often needed two touches to get the ball under control. For players of quality that is one too many. It was the same tonight. Against Malta, most passes were delivered behind the receiver, who had to retreat. Even the passes to feet forced the player to stop. When you add the two touches to get the ball under control, all the pace and fluidity is taken out of the attack. When you add to that a defence that prefers to pass sideways or back to the keeper then you have most of the elements that combine to produce a slow build up with no cutting edge. But the final factor is Dier. I just do not know what he does, apart from passing the ball sideways and backwards. Surely we do not need two deep midfield players. Being so negative simply plays to the opposition strengths.

Do not get me started on Theo Walcott and Jesse Lingard. Once again we came up against a side that was weak at full back, and once again our wide players produced nothing. They will blame slow build up for the lack of space, but I thought that these two were meant to have pace. What happened to players who could knock it past a full back and beat him for pace. Finally, there is Sturridge. Is there really not a forward in England anymore who knows how to lead the line. Sturridge wants to drift in and out of games, pop up in unusual positions, drop deep and have a touch and then run off the ball. That is not what this system needs. It needs a battler, a player who can hold his own, an outlet, somebody who can make it stick. Some of the reason that the back four take so long to get the ball forward is because they know if they knock it long, the ball is lost.

It is hard to know what came first, a system that assumes that the players are poor, or the players being poor. Why is the Premier League producing English players of such abject quality. The FA is fiddling whilst English football burns.

 

Yeah at least West Ham have Andy Carroll.

At least he'd scare the life out of the opposition, providing we managed to cross it in, instead of forever just kicking it sideways and backwards.

 

I wish Carroll could get his fitness sorted, as he is the ideal player to lead the mine against the teams we come up against in the qualifiers.

If they are packed in defense, a long pass forward for him to knock down could produce a chance or two, or a diagonal cross from the fullbacks for him to attack will cause mayhem in the likes of Malta's defence...

 

We don't pass it forward, haven't you had the memo?

 

In the context of what you have said here (99% drivel as per) how would you rate the performances of the two deep lying midfielders on Tuesday and what do you think of their contributions to the team performance as a whole?

 

Mascherano is a centre half these days so it was a bad example on my part. Although I don't watch La Liga either.

I don't rememeber enough of James Bailey to make much of a comparison to be honest.

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