Is the best we've played since Stendel. Some of our goals echo Redders, with Mowatt and Styles' long rangers, but the pressure we put on teams is phenomenal! Our second goal v Boro epitomises this season for me, brilliant workrate and tenacity. I'm not daring to dream just yet, but if we keep our focus, who knows? No complaints about our style from me. Defend - press - create - press - score. Simple football
Some of our football is bloody awful to watch that hoof ball we play when teams change their style against us to counter our amazing pressing game. Our press is so good that some opposition teams, dont attempt to play football against us. They are so fearful of playing out from the back. When Luton attempted to play out from the back they were caught in possession and gave us great opportunities. Our football was praised especially the second half at Bournemouth, but again against a team that played football on the ground. Similar when we beat Norwich in the cup. The problem is that teams are not good enough to play through our press. They resort to long balls over the top. This is where our hoof ball then takes over and it's not pretty, it's frustrating the number of times the ball goes straight to their keeper or simply to no one. We then compete for second balls and keep the game in the opposition's half. Its is an effective solution to teams who go long ball against us. When we dont find a red shirt with the clearances it looks awful to watch. We cant press teams that dont allow us to, and when that happens you get games like Derby (H) and especially the first half yesterday. We end up getting criticised but people should look at the number of long balls played by our so called footballing opponents. I admit when we hoof it and it is 'Have It' football its horrible to watch. I was going to have a drink everytime we did it yesterday but I would have been well and truly hammered. The points per game back it up and it could take us to the Premier League, so in this special season why not embrace it and enjoy the ride.
Horses for courses. We play how we play when we need to play it. Some of it looks great, some looks like ass, all of it's effective though. One thing's for certain, we can't play like this next season if we go up.
That’s a bang on analysis. When we play on our own terms the emphasis is ‘press, press, press.’ When teams try to play over the top of us, the emphasis changes to ‘we must not concede.’
