• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Hugo Lloris

Pulled of a couple of great saves yesterday, but his passing the ball out is poor and must frighten his own players at times.

That one time where he passed it straight to an Arsenal player *in the fudging box* was literal cardiac-arrest territory.

We really need to stop playing out from the back with Hugo. That just isn't his strength, and will never be - teams know this, and are pressuring him and the defense to ludicrous levels to get him to make mistakes, which he is making.

But that isn't his fault at all. Thinking about it, the requirements for elite goalies have evolved dramatically over the last ten years.

The basic, eternal element of goalkeeping is good shot-stopping. But by the time 2009 rolled around, command of your box had also become a big one, because of the way Van Der Sar handled his box and the way a young Joe Hart cleared people out of the way to get at the ball on set pieces.

Around 2012-ish (the time we signed Hugo), the big thing was having a fast goalkeeper able to sweep up behind a high defense, like Valdes at Barcelona. And we thought we were getting one of the best of the game in that with Hugo - and, credit to him, we got just that. A great shot-stopper, able to quickly get out of his box to close down and play a sweeper keeper.

However, around 2017/2018, the paradigm shifted again with the rise of Ederson and Allison - suddenly, it wasn't good enough to be a good shot stopper, to command your box and be quick off the line to sweep up. Now, you also needed to be an elite distributor - a good passer from deep, to evade the press and build from the back.

Hugo's just fallen short of that new marker of excellence for goalkeepers. To be fair, the vast majority of keepers have - just the way the game goes. But we can't try building up like Liverpool or City when Hugo is critically weak at that aspect - that's just inviting disaster.
 
I would imagine the stats show that we hardly ever concede from it and conversely frequently work our way up the pitch.

Which only tells half the story obviously.
 
I would imagine the stats show that we hardly ever concede from it and conversely frequently work our way up the pitch.

Which only tells half the story obviously.

I mean, the logic is obvious. Hugo is weak on the ball, so teams will push up to pressure him. But that will theoretically leave space in behind them to play into.

However, in practice it doesn't work that way, because Hugo tends to just slice it into touch, or teams just push up the second line behind the first so Hugo's clearances fall to someone well into our half, forcing the entire team to backpedal to set up a defensive line.
 
I mean, the logic is obvious. Hugo is weak on the ball, so teams will push up to pressure him. But that will theoretically leave space in behind them to play into.

However, in practice it doesn't work that way, because Hugo tends to just slice it into touch, or teams just push up the second line behind the first so Hugo's clearances fall to someone well into our half, forcing the entire team to backpedal to set up a defensive line.

Its the second line of defence that hurts us as we lose the ball bs possession 10 yards from the halfway line. And start attacking again

Hugo has to get it over the halfway line to prevent the return ball

It’s why he we try to suck teams in and then play it wide
 
Its the second line of defence that hurts us as we lose the ball bs possession 10 yards from the halfway line. And start attacking again

Hugo has to get it over the halfway line to prevent the return ball

It’s why he we try to suck teams in and then play it wide

Yeah, exactly - I wonder if it's maybe a case of just getting him not to skip leg day or something so he has the muscle power to boot it into the other half.

It doesn't matter where the clearance goes, as long as it's in their half - if he can do that, we can work on it from there. But passing out from the back isn't going to work with Hugo long-term, imo.
 
I have no idea why we insist on using this tactic -
The point is that you draw the opposition towards your goal, leaving more space behind. So if you can get past the initial press, you have lots of space to exploit.

The downside is that if you lose the ball, you lose it close to your own goal, instead of at the half way line.

So far, I'd say we've had more benifit of it. Can't remember us conceding as a direct result of it, but we've scored quite a few.
 
It's sweetly ironic that our first goal came from a Lloris clearance. Initially our captain played the ball out to a defender as per usual but when it came back with opponents bearing down on him he had no choice but to welly it straight upfield.

From there Kane won a great header for Son who outpaced his man and laid it off to Lamela.

The rest, as they say ...
 
The point is that you draw the opposition towards your goal, leaving more space behind. So if you can get past the initial press, you have lots of space to exploit.

The downside is that if you lose the ball, you lose it close to your own goal, instead of at the half way line.

So far, I'd say we've had more benifit of it. Can't remember us conceding as a direct result of it, but we've scored quite a few.

It’s also easy to press against a three man attack.

It’s by sheer luck we haven’t conceded!!!
 
Back