Badlands said:
Saturday wasn’t good but I'd take our play over turgid Cooperball any day. At least we trying to play football not hoof the ball out of defence and wait for it to come back.
3 wins and a draw from our last 6 games is a decent return, not great but decent.
I respect your comments until I got to the usual whine of no investment. Under Jackett, Martinez, Sousa, Rogers and Laudrup the owners made no investment. We spent what we had until the silly money (we didn’t have) and poor player choices during and after the Monk era.
Do you want to become a Derby? Of, worse, should we have been in the same position as we were after the old Division 1 relegation?
Apart from two periods in the highest league we have, at best, been where we are now. And if you think we are boring I have to assume you have not followed the Swans for very long. Any suggestion that we have a great history and deserve to be in the Premier League is plain daft. Should we want better? Yes. Do we have aright to be better? No.
I watched Forest Liverpool last night and Liverpool back line played as we do / try to do but with better players they have more success.
I genuinely think people are watching a different game to me.
Firstly, Cooper didn’t play hoof ball. And as for turgid, imagine that match we’ve just endured with zero crowd noise and atmosphere and then talk boring.
Secondly we don’t at present ‘play football’. We aimlessly pass it back and forth with almost no movement and no pace (although it can look pleasant) until we reach the half way line, where we suffer vertigo and have no idea whatsoever what to do. At this point, Wolf or Christie will almost always lose the ball, the team we are playing breaks relatively quickly and we realise we are quite hopelessly out of position, overloaded at the back, and reliant on the fact that the majority of championship teams can’t finish very well (see Birmingham as an example of this).
Almost all of our actual goals come from longer or quicker balls, played instead of the Martin recycle of the sake of it mantra.
The system we employ is designed to both overload in attack and overload in defence, resulting in rapid recovery of the ball where we lose possession and dominant attack. Liverpool don’t play it. Man City do. When Man City play it often looks like they have more players on the pitch than the other team. It’s because of the system. Liverpool are more similar to Martinez, Rodgers, Laudrup etc.
But this system , relies on several pieces being in place for it to work.
One is wing backs who are genuinely attackers when we attack and defenders when we defend. What we have is attackers who aren’t as fast and skilful as proper wingers would be, yet who lack the pace to recover and defend when necessary, so the worst of both worlds.
It also relies on central midfielders who switch play quickly from back to front and from side to side. Man City do it well because they have De Bruyne amongst others. We have Grimes as our number one. Who only has one foot and has the turning circle of a Range Rover so can’t do what is needed quickly enough. Allowing the other team to recover and the attacking overload to disappear.
You also need centre backs who are athletic enough to cover side to side in the absence of full backs, are strong enough or have sufficient anticipation to prevent the aerial threat in the presence of a tall opposition striker, yet are able to play to the extent that one or other breaks the line as part of the attacking overload depending on what side it is or whether we have split further up the pitch to allow the central player to advance. We don’t have that. We have full backs as holding players, centre backs as wider players and no one with an ounce of pace. And our keeper at present doesn’t seem strong enough either for the system.
Instead of attacking and defensive overloading we lose the attacking overload because we are so bloody slow and yet are out of position to the extent that our players are not athletic or fast enough to create the defensive overload. In fact, it’s so bad it creates a defensive deficit for us.
It’s not rocket science, it’s completely obvious what we are trying to do, and even more obvious why we don’t have the ability to make it work. The fact that Martin won’t accept that, and seems to think it’s a tactic so clever that any players can make it work is ridiculous.
Our play is predictable and boring the vast majority of the time. Unless we discover a hidden gem or four in our youth or for relatively minimal transfer fees, we will never get it to work without significant amendment. Martinez, Rodgers etc created the overload by fast movement of players and ball, creating an overload by use of triangles where one player could be part of three triangles at a time, left side, right side and forward spot with the other players doing the same thing. It meant we always had an available out. The beauty of that is it didn’t rely on raw athleticism, but instead quick thinking, positional sense and quick feet. Easier to find smart players who maybe smaller or less naturally athletic than others, but who could fit in to our system. Also cheaper as too many teams look for the same athletic attributes so may discard smaller or less athletic players even if they have the quicker brain.
Anyway, that all a bit rambling way of saying that Martin will either change his approach or will continue doing badly.
And I’ve been watching us since 1976 so don’t bother with the whole ‘you’ve obviously just been watching us for two minutes’ nonsense.
Finally, I do wish people would stop saying our history shows us to be ‘x’ level. That was before we spent 7 years earning the best part of a billion quid playing in the premier league at the height of its earning power with very little to show for it (as a club that is - a few have quite a bit to show for it).
