I think I'm going to ask a fair few of you deep thinkers (like me) to add an extra focus on our defensive line and offside tactics when putting this whole thing together. The more I watch, the more I feel that so much of the players discomfort defensively comes from how the line is dictating our play. There was some incredible tight offsides that our defence coordinated last night. It is a joy to watch when it works. However, when one of the players loses their bottle and drop a little, bad things happen. This is perhaps the biggest example of where it is practically impossible to simulate this on the training ground. It is similar to how the players comfortably play that one-touch, two-touch football out of tight spaces on the training ground. Then they all look in shock when the opposition know exactly what they're going to and it doesn't work in a real match day situation.
As you're saying, it's the same things that are happening in an attacking sense. We're not not using the full width of the pitch and we're not creating a creative grid of players that can play one-touch / two-touch football against a team that is behind the ball. We're not creating space because the players are getting in each others way.
The frustrating thing for me is that these issues aren't huge. They are very fixable if we had the right coaching platform in place. There is so much to build on.