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Why can't we break teams down?

I think a team needs several things to be able to break a down a well drilled two banks of four defence.

1. A player than can beat one or two players by dribbling -as opposed to running past them at speed - because there is usually very little space to play in.
2. Intelligent running off the ball couple with quick passing when required.
3. The ability to mix up play and go direct with a long ball or have passages of play when you just fire it into the box and compete for the knockdowns.

These things have to be in combination. Unfortunately we lack players with the necessary abilities to do this. Other than Townsend -who should get more time on the pitch in these types of game - we don't have "dribbler" type of player. Nor do we have a forward that can compete aggressively for the ball in the air -despite Ade being tall, he's pretty rubbish at aerial combat. As for movement off the ball, some players are better than others. Defoe is particularly poor though, being more of a loiterer, than doing anything purposeful when we are passing it back and forth.
 
Well AVB has at least recognised this and wants William and Moutinho who would help overcome a lot of these things.

If William is really like a better Kranjcar then that would be what we need, when Niko played he was always able to slide in some nice passes, pick a player out that you didn't think would be on etc.

But also we move the ball far too slowly.
 
P.D. said:
Well AVB has at least recognised this and wants William and Moutinho who would help overcome a lot of these things.

If William is really like a better Kranjcar then that would be what we need, when Niko played he was always able to slide in some nice passes, pick a player out that you didn't think would be on etc.

But also we move the ball far too slowly.
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The problem is AVB came into the job wanting those two as replacements for Luka and VDV, I don't see that changing next month sadly.
 
If you don't move the ball quickly spaces close up. Need a higher tempo to break teams down. I know it's hard when a team sits back but quick side to side passing will move the defending team around thus creating more spaces
 
We had a much more dynamic side last season. There was more movement off the ball, several players making runs at the same time, and it seemed like the players had more freedom to express themselves. In the end, we perhaps overdid it, and there was too much freedom, but this season it seems like we are locked in some kind of system that just isn't working. We are a decent counter-attacking team, but when attacking against a set defence, we are too slow, lack movement and lack ideas.

I also don't like the way we set up under AVB at home. I think we push our full backs forward too early, especially Walker on the right side. We actually kill the space ourselves by having Walker high up the pitch, almost on line with our forward line, with Lennon in some kind of inside right position where he is quite useless and don't know what to do with himself. The center of the park gets clogged up that way, and it becomes more difficult to find space for combination play through the middle. We need to stretch the defence of the opposition. Get the wingers wider, get the ball out to them earlier, and draw the full backs and wide midfielders of the opposing team wider as a consequence. That will free up space in the middle of the park, either for a cross, or for combination play through the middle if our wide men decide to go inside. The main thing is a quicker build-up though. We are so slow in everything we do that it becomes easy to defend against us.

Of course, having lost our two most creative players, best passers of the ball, and the two players who took the biggest reponsibility when it came to conducting our attacking play, has played a huge part.
 
Jurgen the German said:
Before anyone starts, this is not an anti AVB thread. We had the same problems under Redknapp even when we had Modric and VDV, we still struggled to break teams down that sit back when they come to the lane.

For me, a big factor is the movement of our strikers, it isn't good enough basically. We've been crying out for a replacement for Berbatov for more than 4 years now! We need someone who can make more intelligent runs. Someone like Llorente would be ideal for us, his intelligence, his link up play and vision would improve us in that aspect.

I think the fans play a big part too. Many players and teams have come out and said they know exactly how to play against Spurs at WHL, i.e. sit back and frustrate them and the crowd are bound to turn on them.
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Lovely post, have to agree with most points. Though I think ideally we may need two players, one midfield creator and another deadlier striker, and I don't really think Llorente is really the Berba or Sheringham type striker.
 
King of Norway said:
We had a much more dynamic side last season. There was more movement off the ball, several players making runs at the same time, and it seemed like the players had more freedom to express themselves. In the end, we perhaps overdid it, and there was too much freedom, but this season it seems like we are locked in some kind of system that just isn't working. We are a decent counter-attacking team, but when attacking against a set defence, we are too slow, lack movement and lack ideas.

I also don't like the way we set up under AVB at home. I think we push our full backs forward too early, especially Walker on the right side. We actually kill the space ourselves by having Walker high up the pitch, almost on line with our forward line, with Lennon in some kind of inside right position where he is quite useless and don't know what to do with himself. The center of the park gets clogged up that way, and it becomes more difficult to find space for combination play through the middle. We need to stretch the defence of the opposition. Get the wingers wider, get the ball out to them earlier, and draw the full backs and wide midfielders of the opposing team wider as a consequence. That will free up space in the middle of the park, either for a cross, or for combination play through the middle if our wide men decide to go inside. The main thing is a quicker build-up though. We are so slow in everything we do that it becomes easy to defend against us.

Of course, having lost our two most creative players, best passers of the ball, and the two players who took the biggest reponsibility when it came to conducting our attacking play, has played a huge part.
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=D>
 
King of Norway said:
We had a much more dynamic side last season. There was more movement off the ball, several players making runs at the same time, and it seemed like the players had more freedom to express themselves. In the end, we perhaps overdid it, and there was too much freedom, but this season it seems like we are locked in some kind of system that just isn't working. We are a decent counter-attacking team, but when attacking against a set defence, we are too slow, lack movement and lack ideas.

I also don't like the way we set up under AVB at home. I think we push our full backs forward too early, especially Walker on the right side. We actually kill the space ourselves by having Walker high up the pitch, almost on line with our forward line, with Lennon in some kind of inside right position where he is quite useless and don't know what to do with himself. The center of the park gets clogged up that way, and it becomes more difficult to find space for combination play through the middle. We need to stretch the defence of the opposition. Get the wingers wider, get the ball out to them earlier, and draw the full backs and wide midfielders of the opposing team wider as a consequence. That will free up space in the middle of the park, either for a cross, or for combination play through the middle if our wide men decide to go inside. The main thing is a quicker build-up though. We are so slow in everything we do that it becomes easy to defend against us.

Of course, having lost our two most creative players, best passers of the ball, and the two players who took the biggest reponsibility when it came to conducting our attacking play, has played a huge part.
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We struggled last year and the year before that too.

I just think we lack that extra guile that bit of special creativity dare I say it someone like Berbatov. We had VDV but he was dropping so deep at times especially against the likes of Stoke etc that he became ineffective. We are based on pace hence the reason it is important to bring in some creativity either this window or the next
 
Against teams that park the bus, you need a combination of players in your XI with a mix of the following attributes:

1. The ability to find space
2. The vision to pick out the passes for those players in space
3. The dribbling ability to drag the opposition defenders out of position and create space for the others
4. Good technical players who can keep the ball under control in the final third when surrounded by pressuring opposition defenders
5. Finishing ability to take those rare chances when they do come

So what do we have?

1. The movement of our forwards has been noted as a problem of ours for years. Poor coaching? Who knows. Sometimes Defoe and Ade's movement is awesome though, but on other days it's terrible. Hard one to explain.

2. The only really creative player we have for the final third is Sigurdsson really. Huddlestone plays deeper, Dempsey and Dembele are only so-so at picking out those intelligent through balls. There's Carroll too but he also looks to play a bit deeper naturally. Sigurdsson's form started off badly this season but he is getting better and should have started against Stoke, as with any other team that tries to play this way against us.

3. We do have some good dribblers - Bale, Lennon, Dembele, Defoe, also Townsend on the bench

4. This is a bit of an issue. Defoe, Adebayor and Dempsey offer us much better ball control than the Bent/Pavlyuchenko/Campbell options we had a few years ago, but likewise, none of them are exactly Berbatov or Sheringham. We could really do with a player with a really good first touch to spearhead our attack.

5. Defoe's finishing has been very good this season, but we've seen him taking chances for fun in the first half of the season only to turn dogbrick at finishing in the second half a fair few times before. Adebayor's finishing is arguably the weakest aspect of his game.

Conclusion - we need a striker with better technical ability (same story as the previous 4 seasons) and to use Sigurdsson more in these types of games until we can sign another creative midfielder with an eye for a pass.
 
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