Re: ***The Official AVB Discussion Thread***
NWND - you're entire posts assumes AVB's vision is to be defensive and that what we are seeing is the ultimate objective. There's many, many things written about him out there that suggest otherwise and to simply ignore it all won't make your point any more valid.
His style of play was markedly different from Mourinho's for example who is more functional, and the Chelsea players didn't like it. He likes attacking full backs, a high line, a sweeper keeper, fluid play. But for some reason people are now suggesting a high line = defensive, which just isn't the case at all. It's about control, not about being defensive. Defensive is Stoke, sitting back with men behind the ball and then lumping it forward with no ability to retain possession. Functional is Mourinho's first Chelsea side. Right now we are functional too, but if you looked into AVB's past and his philosophies even a little then you would see that it isn't what he ultimately wants.
Last season Potchettino was accused by many of sucking away the flair that Adkins allowed Soton to play with and made them too functional. Many criticisms that went his way are going AVB's way now -right up to the fact that they performed better against bigger sides rather than ones that sat back. But he's got them playing well now - because they have gone through that phase of adjustment and it's now working for them. It takes time to learn this style, and when it isn't clicking it can look slow and laboured.
And before you say 'Well if Southampton are now performing a similar style well then why can't we?' I think it would largely be down to the fact that their main attacking players are the same from last year - their big new signing Osvaldo has been the worst - where as our entire attack is basically new and we've lost our best player. Big difference. Let's give it the season and see how we do before suggesting we are settling in for a decade of defensiveness.
Sorry, but where is the evidence that AVB's philosophies involve fluid play and stuff? Yes, it's clear he likes a high-line and attacking full-backs. I see that every time i see Spurs, with our full-backs pushed up at the half-way line, ready to be done by a long diagonal punt in behind when the last of our 100 sideways passes go astray.
I can see he likes a keeper to be off his line the instant the punt does go over the top. I see that all the time. I can see he values control. But control, while its not park-the-bus defensive, is AVB defending himself too much, its safety-first percentages football.
We retain possession all the time, what do we do with it? Its painful to watch. We don't do anything. And the thing is he did this at Chelsea, all the Chelsea fans I knew said "he'll make you boring to watch and you'll struggle against weak teams and get done on the counter all the time". You know what? I said you're just bitter that he's our new manager. It looks like they may be proved right.
He did this last season, so many games that were boring to watch, but Bale popped up with a goal, or we managed to get one from somewhere.
Pochettino has now got Southampton playing good football, so after half a season? Saints have had to bed in a lot of new players too, intact more players into their first team than we have.
This excuse of all these new players. Only Soldado, Paulinho and Chiriches have regularly started games for us!!! Even if you count Townsend as being new, who basically plays the same as Lennon, but with more shooting, then its still a stretch to explain the devastatingly awful football being played.
I trust what I am seeing, not what AVB wrote in a book while he was at Porto a few years ago, I am seeing a definite choice to play the way we are, basically it is always choose the safe pass, unless you see a stone-wall gap in their defensive make-up and you are sure you can make the pass…it's basically tiring the opposition out and waiting for the mistake.
The problem is in terms of effectiveness is if the mistake never comes, or if it comes, but you don't finish your one or two chances, or if they manage to score, then you're screwed.
Also, to watch its pretty horrible.
So please show me the evidence, as if i'm the jury right now, what i'm getting from you is "ignore all the blood splattered all over his apartment, the DNA traces on her body, the illegally owned shot-gun with his prints all over it…I met the guy a few weeks ago and he told me that he's a really calm kind of dude and he loves his wife, must be what he's really like, because you know, he said so!"
