After Holtbys excellent showing in Europe game, surprised he didn't play. He would have supplied the link up play to get the ball to Soldado. Townsend played well but needs to look for the passs. Soldado will soon fall out with him if not. 57% possession at the Emirates proves the midfield is strong, just the final ball. Really excited for the season if that can be sorted.
It's more than just the final ball - the only player making good runs off the ball for us was Soldado, and when only one player is trying to create space for himself and others, he's easy to mark. The reason we ****ed up for their goal is because they came forward with 4 players making good runs into space at the same time, across the box and away from the ball completely confusing our defence. Contrast that to us and everytime we had the ball our midfield 3 would stand 6 foot from each other to play harmless triangles in the centre of the pitch; Walker and Townsend would meanwhile stand on top of each other almost marking each other and Chadli was nowhere to be seen after the first 15 minutes. Rose tried but it rarely came off.
We need to stretch the play from the wings to help give Soldado space, we needed someone with goal threat to occupy the space in front of their centrebacks so that they can't just sit deep and mark our striker out of the game and we need movement along with the passing from the other midfielders.
That's all stuff I'm sure we'll work on the training ground but we've just had pre season with most of these players in full attendance, why can't Townsend, Chadli and Soldado - who spent most of the summmer together - work as a trio, and ditto why did Paulinho, Capoue and Dembele look like they've never played a game together in their life? Makes me wonder what have they been working on in training up to this point; if its a case of AVB's system not working without a proper no10, then why drop Siggy for another defensive player? Sure things weren't coming off for him but he got a few good shots off against palace and Swansea which is more than Dembele or Paulinho did yesterday, and Holtby looked more than impressive midweek.
I could understand if we were trying some impressive looking play which just fails to work as the crosses hit the first man, the ball wasn't quite weighted enough, we were offside or we just didn't click for another reason, but it was the way it didn't look like we had a clue what to
try that worried me.
Individual performances will get better as the season goes on and players get used to the league, the team will also gell and we'll start to look like a quality side i'm sure, but until that point we're going to be ugly as sin to watch play based on the first three games.