#cuti our defense midfield and attack

[art-exhibit]

Umm

[whitehartlane]

any insight into why we've started the past 2 matches so slowly?

hi anon! yep, a multitude of things. i would say the main reasons are: setups against us, control, refining angeball, and players coming back from injury/playing themselves into form.

in the beginning of the season teams hadn’t had the chance to counter ange’s style yet because they hadn’t had a chance to see how we would set up yet. now what a lot of teams are doing is trying to go ultra defensive, whether it’s a low block and counter like palace or a 5atb in an attempt to suffocate space in the centre with counterattacking wingbacks like villa. this saw us surprise a lot of teams in the beginning of the season where we had bursts of energy and scored first half goals and tiring towards HT. now as teams try and set up defensively against us, we need more time to work down the block. at the moment, considering we don’t necessarily have wingers who take their man on but rather operate as inside forwards at their best (deki plays a different role but that’s neither here nor there) and our 6’s main weakness is his passing range, the main tactic is to physically tire the opponents down as we try and unlock the block. this worked well against both palace and villa. palace of course got their goal from that crazy fk but we limited their open play options and then pounced once we tired them down enough, scoring 3. villa were already exhausted from midweek and we tired them out further in the 1st half despite missing some final balls and capitalised on defensive mistakes in the 2nd half. their main strategy was also sending balls over the top to watkins and bailey but [meme voice] they don’t know about micky van de ven. holding possession here is the key - this doesn’t work against sides who also want to have the ball, but then again those sides aren’t ones who want to set up defensively.

control is another one. the way ange sees control is not necessarily like how other top teams see control, in the way that you’ve got to maintain possession for possession’s sake and snuff out the opposition’s chances as much as possible imo. his version of control is more so scoring so many goals the opposition legitimately give up. the best defense is a good offense, or so they say. that being said something that we’re trying to work on more these past few matches is gain control of the game and have it be more of a controlled chaos than just chaos. this is a by effect of the midfield and the defense playing themselves into form and actually being able to start together (the villa game was the first time the back 6 have started together since november). we’ve only allowed, what, 2 shots on target the past two games? or something like that. i still think that this is a department we’re lacking in because despite having control we sometimes struggle to find the final ball and play it slower. this will improve though.

what ange is additionally trying to do imo is still embedding his system into the players’ minds. sometimes we pass it a lot around the edge of the box and it makes you think ‘someone just fucking shoot’ but a lot of the time the players are trying to make the crosses and the cutbacks that are part of ange’s system. this was similar to what we saw against villa yesterday - cuti could have easily sent a couple balls over the top to sonny and madders but he tried to bait the press instead. the point is that we are still in season one. the players are still learning ange’s system and creating the ‘perfect chance’ is part of learning that system so that we can employ those attacking patterns consistently. just like he says all the time, i 100% agree that the attack is the part of this team that, funnily enough, needs the most refinement. we are doing well but we are not necessarily an Ange Postecoglou Team yet but that will come with time! we still need to create more proper quality chances and kill off teams faster.

also this is a bit of a shorter point but players are coming back and they need to find their chemistry again which is difficult since we only play one game a week. we can’t expect everyone to come back 100% and you can see players like madders and biss are slowly improving by playing themselves into form. this could be a reason for why we need a bit of time to get into the game properly, to find our rhythm and whatnot. our fitness is steadily improving and the fact that we’ve got players that can play 100 mins of high intensity football like that is special.

hope this was somewhat insightful! i don’t mind if we start slower as long as it clicks at some point especially against low blocks or ultra defensive setups. i don’t think the first half was bad yesterday as many people were suggesting, we went to a difficult place against a good team and dominated possession and snuffed out any kind of counterattack. give it a few months and that possession dominance to tear the team out in the first half will include some goals too, i’m sure! 🤍

[kylewalker-peters]

No i actually can’t do this anymore where the fuck is Cuti where is he? Where is literally any centre back that isn’t our centre backs? Where is an attacking midfielder? Where is a good defensive midfielder? Where are the players that can accurately pass forwards and spot good opportunities? Where are the players that move and run and create space for said opportunities? Where is any sort of attacking cohesion?