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Men in the box.....

nayimfromthehalfwayline said:
Who mentioned football science?

Im talking about rehearsed patterns of play, systems of movement/positioning the players are well accustomed to through training.

Football may be a simple game, but as with any team endeavour the more practice and preparation that goes into a performance the better that performance will be.

The very best teams, I am sure, work extensively on getting the simple things right and second nature. Making sure controlled premeditated movements/actions are done instinctively.
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Fergie?
 
Ive no doubt. Your point?

As an aside, Fergie is a manager who has always maintained a younger, forward thinking 'right hand man'. Someone to work with the team. Kidd, Queroz...
 
The Moonlit Knight said:
Hence my initial post. I've always believed if you play two wingers in a 4-4-2 when one has the ball the other should be coming into the box from the other flank effectively making themselves a third target (behind the two forwards).
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i'm not going to lie, i am VERY perplexed. infact, it was just the other week that you said our crosses were bad and i countered with what you're saying now. with your arguments at the time one would have thought that you had seriously come to a rock hard conclusion that couldnt be swayed...what changed? i dont think its this one barca game..

you probably havent even seen those comments i made in the past have you? that would explain it
 
africanspurs said:
i'm not going to lie, i am VERY perplexed. infact, it was just the other week that you said our crosses were bad and i countered with what you're saying now. with your arguments at the time one would have thought that you had seriously come to a rock hard conclusion that couldnt be swayed...what changed? i dont think its this one barca game..

you probably havent even seen those comments i made in the past have you? that would explain it
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I do think our crosses are bad. They are generally VERY bad. Bad in execution and in the type of cross.

I've preached most of the season that we don't get behind the full back and drill crosses enough. I've also complained a lot that when we do get wide quite often there is no one in the box to aim for..........
 
We don't make any space.

We need players to stretch the opposition by making runs beyond the defence. We play infront of them with nobody running in behind to get in decent positions or more importantly create space.

Think its almost as simple as that. Nobody moving infront of play, everybody is behind or beside the ball. If there's ever anybody infront of the ball, they've got their back to goal and are static.
 
Funnily enough at the start of the season I believe we had at leat two players in the squad who could make runs beyond a defence and create space for others:

Pienaar and Jenas
 
I'm not going to get sidetracked by the Barca conversation, actually think it has little to do with the main point.

Spurs for some time has had an issue (think AS was talking about this as well) re players attacking the box, either as the main striker or as a midfield runner getting into the box and creating a target for crosses. I actually believe in some of the games Bentley (just as example) played, he put crosses where a striker should be, no one was there, and everyone went on about how bricky he was at delivering the ball.

Part of that has been we have for the last number of years no player that provides a true arial threat, even when we have played a "target/big man" in most cases that was to knock down to the smaller/finisher in the pair.

My view, to improve Spurs results significantly we need to

- (to the point of this thread) Have either a striker or a midfield runner (e.g. what Cahill used to do for Everton) attack the box, provide the arial target that is a direct goal threat
- Get a more clinical finisher, we need a true 20+ goal a season striker
- Get something (anything for the love of christ) out of set pieces
 
I agree that our crosses are a problem,but our main problem is the lack of movement around the box.Only Lennon seems to run into the empty space behind defenders.Bale,Ade,VdV,Defoe are all players who like to get the ball at their feet and create space for themselves.We need a striker who will make constantly dangerous runs behind the opposition defence and let Modric and VdV play killer passes all day long.That's why Barca is so dominant,they have Fabregas,Messi,Iniesta and Sanchez running behind the defence all day long and creating havoc.Even when Chelsea parks the bus,they create a decent amount of chances.
 
I've said it so so many times but the reason why we have looked toothless in attack since Jan is due to Harry's 4-3-3 formation. The big problem with it is that his 3 in CM (Parker, Modric and Sandro) and 3 players who are all better deep and playing behind the ball. None of them are players who excel around the box (Modric is a deep lying playmaker not a VdV) and none of them are natural goalscorers. For the formation to work, you need someone like Lampard, Scholes, Fabregas, Cahill etc etc as 1 of the 3 so that you are more potent in attack. Otherwise you have 7 players behind hte ball and only the front 3 which the opposition has to worry about
 
I actually think we are much improved at getting players into the box. I remember in the Jol years it would feel like we would always end up in a 1 v 4 situation in the opposition box as our players didn't break quick enough, and I remember thinking in so many games under Harry that I was impressed with how we were getting players into the box.
 
If we want to work on our off the ball movement we need to primarily focus on our fitness, which is very lacking. When Wenger first came to Arsenal he introduced lots of games to improve off the ball movement and fitness, including basketball and two/three touch football. Now given our sparse training sessions i'm unsure we practise any of this.
 
punk_is_back` said:
If we want to work on our off the ball movement we need to primarily focus on our fitness, which is very lacking. When Wenger first came to Arsenal he introduced lots of games to improve off the ball movement and fitness, including basketball and two/three touch football. Now given our sparse training sessions i'm unsure we practise any of this.
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You mean this team has training sessions... Wow... Wonder what they do? :(
 
They do close to fudge all as documented already by numerous players and other sources.

Certain players (Defoe) took it upon themselves to do extra work (fitness in his case) and the results have shown. Pity he didn't play more often.
 
mick cooper said:
maybe you should, you might learn something
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Chelsea game was about to restart :-k

Lets not beat around the bush here, his essay was just a cover up to let us know ONCE AGAIN that he doesn't like Benny and that he should be dropped, well he has his wish now as Benny's done for the season.
 
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