Defensive tactics

[Jamie88]

I, along with 100% of anyone with eyes, know that our defence is abysmal at present. It goes without saying that certain players are not players who you would ideally want in a Premier League side.
However, one thing that has been going round in my head for the past week is that the emphasis of most is on the lack of quality defenders rather than what I believe to be even more of an issue which is the ineptitude of our staff and/or tactics. These players, are still professional footballers with CV's good enough that they should be able to perform under the right conditions to an acceptable level.

I think more questions need to be asked over SP and his coaching staff as to what on earth they are telling or not telling the players to do in training. The players are consistently and hideously out of position nearly all the time the opposition is attacking. To me it appears that nobody knows where to stand, who to mark, when to track runners, when to not etc.

This lack of organisation on the pitch is on SP and no one else. I won't go into TK and the flaws of our recruitment, that is blatantly an obvious reason as to why we are struggling as a team as well. But you work with what you got, and though I agree it possible that we could still be relegation fodder under a top manager, I don't feel that is the case. This team severely need someone to come in and organise the players better and give them clear instructions on what to do rather than what we are currently seeing.

We have seen many examples over the years of promoted teams with bang average players who were called championship standard, that have managed to perform well enough in the PL to stay up. We should be able to do the same with our current squad, but not under the current regime.

On the one hand, I don't want to get rid of SP because I think chopping and changing too much never helps anyone. But on the other, I would like to become a stable PL club and I would be lying if I thought that could happen under him - unless he can bring in some better coaches who know what they're doing.

[Deeping_white]

As I said on another thread last night, He needs to ditch Parkerball ASAP. I was critical of him last year and admitted after the PO final that I may have been wrong, however I think I spoke too soon. People at the club have spoken about having a footballing philosophy which seems to be ball retention and controlling games through possession - this is fine in the championship because we are the big fish in the pond and can muscle our way to being the best team from our financial standpoint. However, when we get to the PL it seems as though we decide we want to carry on this style of play, against much better teams of which 75% naturally adopt a sit deep and counter attack style, and the other 25% just have straight up better teams who will batter us if we go toe to toe with them. Look at the first three games, Arsenal unsurprisingly beat our passing game with better and quicker players because they've got a better team, and Villa and Leeds picked us off when we made mistakes and other than that didn't look too bothered,  although admittedly Leeds did look flustered against us for large spells (and I also expect them to struggle until their better tactician of a manager tweaks their system).

Parker and Khan need a reality check and need to get in players who will work within a counter attacking system and coach them as such. There is nothing to be ashamed of in being a counter attacking team. Yes it means it's not as fun to watch because we've not got 60% possession, but possession football with Parker isn't even that good anyway, it's just keep the ball for the sake of it. He's playing wingers on their weaker side because it means they'll usually turn back in on their stronger foot and retain possession with a simple pass. Look at Leicester v Man City, they thumped arguably the most expensive team ever by playing 5-4-1, they sat deep and did the basics and then hit City when they could because City are prone to the counter, as all total football teams usually are.

We already know our CB's are pony, and yet we expose them to more risk by still trying to be expansive. I've seen enough of Odoi, Ream & Hector to know they'll never, ever cut it at this level, but we can make things a bit easier for ourselves by getting them to sit deeper, not ask our full backs to push on too much, and have a more mobile until in front of them that works hard and goes for the throat when the opportunity presents itself. Unfortunately our best player is Mitro and he's not suited to that sort of style, but that's another conversation topic.

I'm worried that Parker won't ever go down this route, but I think we need to accept that if we want to succeed in the PL like most of the smaller clubs do, firstly we need to adopt a defensive, counter attacking formation and slowly fill it with better players who improve us step by step. If we stick with Parkerball we will get thumped most weeks because teams will look at us and say "keep the ball, we'll wait for one of your rubbish defenders to make a mistake and we'll punish it". Basically, and not that I trust TK to do this, but we need 2/3 CB's that are able to tackle, one of our wingers to be told to be direct (assuming Lookman plays regularly like we're expecting him to), and get in a quick striker who's happy with putting a shift in and waiting for us to be able to break at pace. I think we've got the CM's for it (Reed, Lemina, Anguissa, Onomah are all good at covering the ground), but we need some CB's quickly to give us a stronger base, and a quick striker who can work in that system. Realistically I don't think the club have considered another striker as they're consumed on the CB conundrum but I live in hope.