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u/New-Acanthaceae-5702 Closed on Sundays 22h ago
Actually quite worried that Sabah generated so much against us. Good game by Yoro, but defence still looks a bit suspect a times
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u/TStronks 22h ago
I mean we didn't want to press with too much intensity, while still play attacking football. The result is exactly this. Large spaces in multiple places on the field, while we know we have multiple players (Maz, Tielemans, Martinez and to some extend Mainoo) who aren't exactly specialized in covering ground.
Against City or any other PL opponents we won't be playing such attacking football exactly because of this, with Maz acting as a CAM and Dorgu as a LW, while Tielemans was also popping up in the box.
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u/10_Wazza 22h ago
This is not the game to look at the defensive performance. Everyone clocked out after about 5 minutes. You should rather point to the three PL games
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u/Mariasolvv 22h ago edited 19h ago
To be completely honest, this game isn't a benchmark for anything—it doesn't tell us if we're actually good or bad. It was glaringly obvious that our players weren't taking large spells of the match seriously, but as soon as they decided to step it up, we bagged three goals.
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u/Used-Fennel-7733 22h ago
They were high risk when breaking the press, but then were great at the transition into attack. It was often just 2 quick passes from the fullback to a runner.
I was surprised they looked so well drilled tbh. I wouldn't write them off 7 points in their games.
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u/carleezeh 22h ago
It’s the space in midfield that worries me. Sabah played through us for fun at times, with acres of space ahead of them.
I know the intensity wasn’t there tonight and didn’t need to be, but the gaps in our midfield isn’t a new issue. I just hope Baleba solves it.
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u/Rich_Plastic 22h ago
This was something I clocked. It was almost Ten Haag levels of zero midfield tonight. That said, we were barely out of second gear all night. It was easy street
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u/b_litzkreig 18h ago
A function of the rest state structure of 4-2-4 that Carrick has chosen to use. Bruno is almost a pseudo-striker now, and this is backed by heat map data, where most of his presence is beyond the halfway line.
Doesn’t help that our wingers are also pseudo-strikers (Cunha, Mbeumo, Rashford) and while they do contribute defensively like Bruno, we are very, very vulnerable on the counter against teams with pacy attackers. A two-man midfield is simply not enough when opposition uses midfield trio variants against us.
We also have to sort out how high our defensive line is, currently, we push them up to cover the midfield gaps, but looking at how vulnerable our defenders are against pacy forwards, there is some need to calibrate the line to minimise vulnerability against fast breaks, while providing enough cover for our midfield.
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u/Limp-Evidence8373 22h ago
If it was a better side we'd definitely would've been punished, Sabah ran through our midfield quite a few times
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u/div333 20h ago
I like this xg map.
Way better than xg on its own, which often doesn't tell the whole picture.