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Garth Crooks
I'm bored so decided to re watch that event and break it down as best I can:
1) Spurs' Left hand side of the pitch: City counter and Spurs over commit before the ball is switched wide right to Dzeko who carries the ball into Spurs territory with Walker chasing back having been sucked in to cover Dawson vs Silva.
2) Dzeko cuts inside and tries a neat 1-2 which is cleared by Eriksen to City's left back, Dzeko drifts into channel between Rose and Chiriches.
3) City knock the ball around on their left wing before Silva plays a cute reverse pass (whilst dragging Eriksen out of position) to the on rushing Fernandinho. He is running at a square on Capoue. Bentaleb is marking Toure who is not involved.
THERE IS A MASSIVE SPACE NOW BETWEEN OUR TWO BANKS OF FOUR
Our back line is not organised
You could drive two busses side by side between Dawson and Chiriches
4) Fernandinho gets past Capoue who avoids making the foul. This however puts Fernandinho running into the space between our lines.
5) Dawson steps out to challenge Fernandinho. Walker stays in line but Chiriches runs back to goal aiming to cut out the pass between he and Dawson or the shot should Dawson be beaten.
6) Rose who before was somewhere between marking Navas and Dzeko now starts to run in support of Vlad, but he is too late. There is already too much ground to cover.
7) Vlad seems unaware of Dzeko's movement or assumes wrongly that Rose is on it.
8) Rose makes a great covering tackle but gets a red.
Things to consider:
It took 40 seconds for us to go from Rose crossing the ball into their box to Rose making that tackle. At the start of the counter Jovetic held the ball up well, yet despite us getting numbers around him he was still able to pick out an easy square ball to Toure, simply put we didn't close his options down and allowed the move to continue. Ade was on scene and could have done this but was half hearted and didn't even try to cut out the option.
Having cut out the 1-2 and cleared the ball we reverted to two banks of four with one extra. Capoue for me is at fault in this section as he and Walker seem to be marking the same man, standing goalside of Jovetic. Once Silva plays in Fernandinho, Capoue is ill positioned and ends up neither challenging nor fouling Fernandinho.
As noted earlier, Navas stays very wide throughout and as a result Rose is left unsure whether or not to tuck in or stay in a position which allows him to partially cover both Dzeko and Navas. He chooses the latter.
The communication between the defenders is questionable. Yes they were exposed terribly but the amount of space they leave between one another for players to run into is criminal. I can't help but wonder how things would've panned out if they had kept it narrow and dropped off a little bit before challenging. Likely Fernadinho wouldn't have been able to pass the ball through, and be forced to spray it wide to an open Navas. The issue for me comes from the midfield first and the defence second in this case.
You have said what I was trying to say in less words. I agree. The problem starts in midfield for sure; Bentaleb is clearly unsure of what's going on, and who can blame him when senior players allow others to stroll past them? The whole 'Walker covering Daws' issue has been seen often this season, our left-hand side was a shambles, but Rose should absolutely see how it's unfolding (if he's a class left-back) and drop back even a couple of yards so as he's not chasing Dzeko should Dzeko receive the ball, but is challenging with him. I agree with the space left. It's ridiculous, and continued to be so. Things are so very different when Sandro is there, but that's no excuse. I genuinely cannot figure out Daws anymore. He seems to play in areas where he is between the proverbial rock and a hard place (Roland?!!!!!!!)…