I don't think he wanted to congest the middle, hence the selection of Benny at left wing. I don't think the plan also was to ping deep crosses in to the heads of Senderos and Hangeland either.
As Siggy has said this week, it just felt like the whole team was flat. There was no real good movement, everything was to feet instead of sometimes into space and I think a lot of players were carrying knocks that made them play well below par, Bale being the obvious.
I think it was 'one of those games' because I'm reasonably sure that if we had played a system with say Bale on the left and most players 'in position', I don't think the result would have been that different. It was a mental thing, not tiredness necessarily, just that the players found it hard to raise themselves, to get the burst of inspiration.
I'll give a possible explanation - I was worried about our future coming games while we were playing so well against Inter at the Lane. Usually, consistent teams don't smash every team, even the smaller ones, by multiple goals every match. They a lot of the time have poorer games but get the result and move on. I think a lot of the time in our good run, we've focused on being solid and not too swashbuckling and it's allowed 'room' in the mind to continue to drag out winning performances when needed. By restricting the high, you don't get as much certainty for the low. Last season I think we went completely for the highs when we could take them, smashing even smaller teams and it meant the lows to me weren't that surprising. So this season, we have focused on being consistent, tactical and grinding out results when need be.
But the Inter game, I sensed we were playing almost too well and worried that we might struggle to reach those heights in a game in the near future. I think it's human nature, you get highs and lows will follow. In footballing terms, it manifests itself in inspiration on the pitch. The quick passing and movement we saw against Inter was nowhere to be seen against Fulham, and I don't think such a drastic difference was purely tactical. Ordinarily, we could maybe hold off a bit, be happy with a 2 goal lead and remain solid to take the points in the league, but a 2 legged cup competition against a massive team means you want to take as much advantage of the home leg as possible, so we continued to eek out every moment of inspiration we could in that match.
Think of Chelsea last year, they'd raise themselves for the CL matches then lose at home to Saudi Sportswashing Machine or something like that. I realise this sounds like psychobabble but I think it's true, it's hard for players to raise themselves after a big effort and nothing much can be done to stop it, you just need to ride it out mentally speaking. The international break could have come at a brilliant time for us.
