Match Day Thread Brighton v Norwich city

We are too light against the lower tier

 

Today we looked a shadow of the side that started the season. I'm positive by nature, and I love the club, DF and his backroom staff, and the players; but there was much in what I saw today that suggests it's all unravelling. It will be a miracle if we are able to beat Watford on Friday. Is there enough good news in the pipeline injury-wise to suggest that we could come back after the international break looking more like the side we know we are?

 

Is it me or is it a case of the more we try to focus on defending the poorer we perform.

 

Not just you.

We’ve gone from free flowing, fast moving and exciting to slow and predictable, yet it has not helped our defence.

 

I hate to say it but at this point I don't see things turning around until Zimm comes back.

 

You always need a little bit of fortune each year, especially when you get promoted. I think we must have annoyed the Football Faries last year and they decided to punish us with injuries. It doesn't look that good currently, but they need to keep battling and hope we are within touching distance when we get Zimm back.

 

I’m hoping beyond hope that Zimbo comes back soon and the tide changes. He’s not just a CB he is such a great leader on the pitch

 

100% and it is going to cost us dearly. it's painful to watch too with a very inexperienced backline, a largely ineffective midfield going forward or defending, and an enormous chasm between the midfield and poor ol' Pukki alone upfront. It's all too predictable now

 

Look at the table. See anything that distinguishes the bottom three from the rest? Those numbers have been the pattern since the start of the season. I said last season that, unless our approach evolves in a way which improves our defensive resilience, we will not survive in the EPL. In this league defences are better and attackers are better. If you simply want to be entertained, then fine; the Man Utd game was brilliant entertainment, it had everything. But it yielded us zero points towards survival. I don't mind if we go down with the aim of bouncing back better prepared than this time. But a big part of getting better prepared for the next time, is learning how to defend.

 

I think we were well enough prepared Robbie, just underfunded and invested the money in future seasons rather than this one. Would this change “ next time” ?

 

We've still got the same players that we had when we played Liverpool, Chelsea & Newcastle. The only difference I can see between now and than Is that Hanley isn't fit and we are now trying to play more defensively. According to most on here Hanley is sh1t and was at fault for most of the goals we conceded so that can't be the problem. Truth is we're putting more and more emphasis on defending to the point that we are offering very little attacking threat, we're constantly on the back foot inviting teams to attack us.

 

Yes the Man U game was entertaining as were the Liverpool & Chelsea games. Yes we got no points. But equally yesterdays game wasn't very entertaining and we still got no points. So where have we got our points from, the Man City & Newcastle games account for 6 where we attacked. Our only other point has come from the Bournemouth game. Lets just play the type of football that got us promoted and entertained us at the start of this season and if we go down so be it. Much better that than play as we did against Brighton and go down anyway.

 

100% agree canario!!

 

At the end of the day we haven't played a game this season with ARGUABLY both of our first choice CBs, that is going to hurt any team. I say arguably because I am a big fan of Godfrey, but many thought that we might go with Zimbo and Klose for some added experience, add the fact that Hanley has played possibly only 4 of our 11 games then it can be quite obvious why we have struggled so far - we have had 1 fit senior CB most of the season. Amadou and Tettey are deputising in a role which, although not completely unfamiliar, is not their best position.
For me the only mistake we have made is to try to be more defensive in recent weeks, rather than continuing the attacking philosophy with the old adage "attack is the best form of defence".

 

To lump the Man City and Newcastle games together as examples of "where we attacked", totally ignores the massive difference in approach characterising the two. We played quite differently in those two games. Against Newcastle we did indeed set out with our usual philosophy of "domination through possession", forcing Newcastle to drop back and defend deep against an almost continuous onslaught. Against Man City we made no attempt to "dominate through possession" (DF said quite explicitly before the game that we couldn't expect to do that against City and therefore we would adapt our game). We ceded the possession battle to City, let them come onto us, with all hands mustered in defence, and when the moment arrived, launched effective counter-attacks, not with long balls out of defence to waiting forwards, but with quick and exceptionally well-executed transitions up the touchlines from deep positions. Totally different from Newcastle.

It just isn't helpful to try and partition different approaches to games into two categories "attacking" and "defensive". If you insist on that, then we didn't "attack" against Man City, we "defended".