I’m not sure. We’ve always been deep, we’ve always been passive and now as you say we are disjointed.
I’d say the forwards been too wide has always been an issue in the PL. They all tend to stay out wide, it must be instruction. Which means we get the horseshoe passing map. Doc and Jonny dropping inside mitigated that slightly but it’s still always been a problem.
Yeah this is spot on imo. We were always pretty deep and had games like the Chelsea one where we dropped really deep. We have always been pretty passive too but Jota, Jonny, Moutinho were very good at pressing and winning the ball back. One is injured, one left and one hasn't got the legs to do it anymore.
Our forwards being wide has always been an issue and it's one that plagued Jota constantly. Great player centrally and running at any player in the box he's a nightmare but far too often for us he was out wide and up against a full back who just beat him for pace when he tried to go around them. Can name numerous games where this happened. No surprise that his and our best form came when he played centrally.
We're missing Doc massively, he's missing us too but couldn't give a fuck about that. For all his limitations and Semedo is without a doubt a better footballer but Doc fit in the system. His aerial ability from goal kicks/cross field balls was vital and so were his inverted runs because he could be the one that linked with the right sided player or Jimenez and in those positions Doc's drive got him into goal scoring/creative positions. We're still playing as if he's there but those balls aren't there to hit so we just go across the back 3 constantly then we clip it long and give it away.
We're also missing Jonny too as he set the tone for winning the ball back quite often, well our left side did. It often felt like we would push teams into those positions if we could for Jonny, Joao and Jota to press and pinch the ball, we can't do this now so we're just passive everywhere.
The formation pictures you put on earlier showed our problems from todays game and generally what the issue is with our 5 at the back right now. Nothing centrally further forward that the centre backs and so no combination play can happen. This leads to us giving it to Neto/Podence/Traore and hoping they will beat however many men and find a final ball. It happens now and again but it also means the ball just keeps coming back a lot of the time either because we have lost it or our only options to pass are backwards.
It's this reason why i keep banging on about attacking patterns of play and that i don't think we have any. For those who haven't coached this is basically set moves for when you have the ball. Far too often for me it seems players are in restrictive positions which don't allow passes to go forward e.g. too often our wing backs/wide players are given the ball tight on the touch line with no pass available inside leaving the only pass to go back to the centre half and then it goes across the back 3 too slowly to the other side and repeat or Boly/Saiss clip an aimless ball forward. Kilman today did show signs of wanting to carry the ball out which is badly needed imo but doesn't or isn't allowed to do it enough.
Sticking on the attacking patterns, too often our 2 midfield players are deeper than they should be or wider than they should be. It leaves the midfield vacated and a massive gap in the middle of the pitch and just slows the game down completely. I'd love to know what the reason is because it's definitely not a tactic that i think will catch on. I think it's trying to drag players out of there to exploit gaps but then we don't fill those gaps with players (Traore/Podence/Neto don't come inside enough together) or the gaps don't appear as their central midfielders don't follow ours as there's no danger that they are ever going to pick the ball up and drive with it.
Going forward as i said earlier i would like Nuno to get a chance to turn it around just because of what he's done for this club. The last season under KJ i thought it was a real possibility that we would be relegated again soon and i'd never see us be the club we could be. I never thought i'd see us in a European quarter final, i never thought i'd see us in an FA Cup semi final as an adult, i never thought we'd regularly be beating or giving proper games to the best teams in the country. I miss the feeling of following this club/squad home and away watching them accomplish all they have and i would hate that it come to an end like this but he does have to turn it around and quickly or the club will have no choice but to pull the trigger. I'm not sure we can wait until the summer and next season to see if Nuno can turn things around, yes we need better players, every team always does but these players are capable and Nuno needs to find a way of getting the best out of them now.
