..I was thinking about this recently. Our squad is being shown up for its horrendous weaknesses right now, and there are many that are utterly undeniable.
- Davinson Sanchez is close to the worst, most utterly brainless, heartless and gutless center-back I have seen in two decades watching this club. I'm starting to loathe seeing him on the team sheet for how utterly guaranteed it is that he'll look like the miserably hapless fool he is.
- Davies is miserably average, and gets sat on his arse by League Two players.
- Sissoko...Christ.
- Winks....Christ.
- Lucas...his head knows what to do, his legs simply cannot execute them.
We also have a shedload of rapidly declining players, from Lloris to Toby to Dier, who look relegation level. No doubt.
But...thinking about it, there are two common threads that run through this team.
- The inability to think for themselves - in terms of football and off-field intelligence, these players are among the poorest in the Premier League.
- The inability to pass a football or to retain possession when pressed, *at all* - again, they are probably the poorest in the league at that.
I've been wondering why that is. And I think I know the answer.
For six years, we have followed a squad building strategy that prioritizes finding the players to play one way, and one way only. That is, extremely high-intensity, high press, *very* quick football.
The sort of gegenpress Poch employed means you have to be constantly pressing high up the field, and when the opponent makes a mistake, you have to get the ball into the danger zone with one touch or one pass. However, it also means you have a lot of space to make what are relatively simple passes to execute, because you catch the opposition high up and they aren' t in a defensive shape, meaning passes are easy to make.
The best part is, this system doesn' t really need you to think, or be technically skilled. For a baseline level of results and regularly good performances, all it needs is enough stamina, speed and strength to press, and a relatively limited tactical intelligence to play the quick pass when possession is turned over and follow pressing traps/instructions otherwise.
Now, this system will generally fail when up against opponents that give you the ball (ie, sit deep), because you can't play into spaces. And thus play becomes very laboured. You can avoid that by having players who are both supremely fit and also technically brilliant to play intricately when faced with a low block, but those players are very expensive.
And that is our problem today.
Under Poch, we built a side very suited to gegenpressing, that worked even better at WHL because it was a small pitch, easy to cover ground - in fact, it astonished me that we had turned a weakness in the Harry years (WHL small = no space to play or break down smaller sides) into a strength. We didn't need players to think or be good technical players - we only needed them to be the fittest in the league, and they were. It worked against the majority of sides, but we lost in the big games against sides able to play our press or able to sit deep and counter us. To overcome that final hurdle, we needed players that were technical, intelligent *and* fit.
But Levy cheaped out, again and again and again, on buying players in that top category that could fit that description. It's not that we didn't try - the fact that Liverpool and us both went for the same players again and again is proof that we recognised this need. But they outspent Levy, and they got the players we needed. And we got their second-rate replacements - brainless players who could run, but not really play or be intelligent. Sissoko instead of Wijnaldum. N'Jie and N'Koudou over Mane. Aurier when we needed to replace Walker. And so on.
And we saw the consequences of that - as we saw, we declined as we moved to a bigger pitch meaning our press was less effective, good players left or declined and were replaced with crap, and simple mental and physical fatigue meant our fitness levels plummeted.
And today we have this squad - which I'm afraid tocsay, can only play one way. It is the most tactically macaronic side in the league, and probsbly one of the least technical. And this, sadly, is true of *all* our players, even comparatively better ones like Son and Dele - they were built for a style which minimises their weaknesses.
To wrap up, Mourinho is a terrible dinosaur and he should leave. But I have no illusions that this squad will achieve anything after him, because it is solely built play one style. It cannot sit deep because it lacks intelligence and is error prone - it cannot play attacking, possession football because it is too technically limited to withstand the ubiquitous press nowadays. It can't even return to gegenpressing because our pitch now is gigantic and these players no longer have the fitnes for it. All it can do is play the sort of football we saw at the end with Poch - wild, aimless attacking that bypasses midfield, almost rush football.
And this will not change for years, Mourinho or not, until we buy a new set of better, more, more intelligent technical players. Mourinho is a problem, but this squad is the bigger problem.
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