Tactics Under Maresca

[adejo92]

39 minutes ago, alanf0x said:

I very rarely see a change in tactics from Enzo. Change of player in the same system, yes, but not a change in tactics.

 

You see this frequently from opposition teams against us, mainly because they are chasing the game I know. Managers doubling up on Fatawu after a couple of runs at their full backs, taking off a defender for a striker, changing formations etc. Managers reacting to situations during the game. 
 

We just seem to play the same way and hope that over 90 minutes it will work. 
 

 

And then when we do get a win. After a game where players look like they are just beginning to gel....

 

He'll make about 6 changes!

 

Ridiculous.

[alanf0x]

1 minute ago, adejo92 said:

And then when we do get a win. After a game where players look like they are just beginning to gel....

 

He'll make about 6 changes!

 

Ridiculous.

Definitely a case of over complicating things. As Martin O’Neil used to say, play your strongest team for that game. Make changes when your players dip in form or pick up knocks. Go 2 / 3-0 up and then rest players. 
 

On Wednesday, Enzo clearly had one eye on Saturday and in my opinion it’s cost us two points. 
 

Completely different game had Wilf,  KDH and Justin started 

[Dusty]

2 hours ago, alanf0x said:

Definitely a case of over complicating things. As Martin O’Neil used to say, play your strongest team for that game. Make changes when your players dip in form or pick up knocks. Go 2 / 3-0 up and then rest players. 
 

On Wednesday, Enzo clearly had one eye on Saturday and in my opinion it’s cost us two points. 
 

Completely different game had Wilf,  KDH and Justin started 

If he does this and players pick up injuries because they’re burnt out then he’s showing his inexperience by not rotating. As much as I like MoN, Pep regularly and constantly rotates his players and I trust him more than MoN.

 

We’ve got to rotate or we’ll get tonnes of injuries, after the few years we’ve had with constant serious injuries I think it’s a fresh perspective that we desperately need. Yeah we’ll drop points, but hopefully means we have more players ready for the first time so when we do get injuries then we can easily replace with someone who’s already up to speed. 

[inckley fox]

1 hour ago, Dusty said:

If he does this and players pick up injuries because they’re burnt out then he’s showing his inexperience by not rotating. As much as I like MoN, Pep regularly and constantly rotates his players and I trust him more than MoN.

 

We’ve got to rotate or we’ll get tonnes of injuries, after the few years we’ve had with constant serious injuries I think it’s a fresh perspective that we desperately need. Yeah we’ll drop points, but hopefully means we have more players ready for the first time so when we do get injuries then we can easily replace with someone who’s already up to speed. 

O'Neill also got a promotion from this league and did well for several years with a side expected to struggle - two things Pep has never done, and precisely what Maresca is expected to do now. We don't have anything like Pep's resources, even relative to the league we're in, so it makes sense for people to look at our last two 'ultimately successful' promotions to the top flight, in 1996 and 2014, for guidance.

 

Of course the game has changed a lot since then, and I understand the need for a fair degree of rotation. But six changes resulting in a line-up with three CBs and three wingers in essentially a 4-5-1 variant, with a young player who's looked out of sorts for much of the season in an entirely rejigged midfield, seems excessive and poorly thought-through to me.

[AKCJ]

When is his press conference for tomorrow's game?

[Dusty]

47 minutes ago, inckley fox said:

O'Neill also got a promotion from this league and did well for several years with a side expected to struggle - two things Pep has never done, and precisely what Maresca is expected to do now. We don't have anything like Pep's resources, even relative to the league we're in, so it makes sense for people to look at our last two 'ultimately successful' promotions to the top flight, in 1996 and 2014, for guidance.

 

Of course the game has changed a lot since then, and I understand the need for a fair degree of rotation. But six changes resulting in a line-up with three CBs and three wingers in essentially a 4-5-1 variant, with a young player who's looked out of sorts for much of the season in an entirely rejigged midfield, seems excessive and poorly thought-through to me.

Easy to say in hindsight that it didn’t work but we’ve rotated heavily several times this season and still won. We’ve also been on a bad run of form so I think changing it up and trying new things was probably a good call too. It was also against the worst team in the division and the players on the pitch were good enough to win.

[inckley fox]

1 hour ago, Dusty said:

Easy to say in hindsight that it didn’t work but we’ve rotated heavily several times this season and still won. We’ve also been on a bad run of form so I think changing it up and trying new things was probably a good call too. It was also against the worst team in the division and the players on the pitch were good enough to win.

Perhaps part of the problem was that he too thought 'they're the worst side in this league and we can do them with a half-strength side.' I understand the need for rotation but felt at the time that six changes was excessive, that the 8s would struggle, and that the opposition would be begging for us to show just enough in the way of lack of purpose for them to stay in the game. It hardly came as a surprise when it panned out that way, especially given recent form, and how sides are proving increasingly efficient at stifling us.

 

And we won our previous game after back-to-back losses, so clearly the reason for shaking things up wasn't the poor form of the players who were up against Watford. If you consider those changes 'a good call' based on form, then you would never have had, for instance, Cesare coming in for KDH.

[Phube]

Ooooh, the ‘get it launched’ brigade aren’t going to like that press conference! 
 

It seems his main issue against SheffWed was we played too fast and not enough passes to slow the game down! 

[Chrysalis]

13 hours ago, Dusty said:

If he does this and players pick up injuries because they’re burnt out then he’s showing his inexperience by not rotating. As much as I like MoN, Pep regularly and constantly rotates his players and I trust him more than MoN.

 

We’ve got to rotate or we’ll get tonnes of injuries, after the few years we’ve had with constant serious injuries I think it’s a fresh perspective that we desperately need. Yeah we’ll drop points, but hopefully means we have more players ready for the first time so when we do get injuries then we can easily replace with someone who’s already up to speed. 

There is rotating and there is shuffling the pack, he shuffled the pack.

 

Can rotate without switching out 6 players.

Edited 2 December 2023 by Chrysalis

[Leeds Fox]

Didn’t feel like it needed a new topic. 
 

Has anyone won anything like we did; purely on the counter? 

[Chrysalis]

29 minutes ago, Leeds Fox said:

Didn’t feel like it needed a new topic. 
 

Has anyone won anything like we did; purely on the counter? 

Over an entire competition?  I have seen many finals and such won by counter's.

[Leeds Fox]

5 minutes ago, Chrysalis said:

Over an entire competition?  I have seen many finals and such won by counter's.

For the entirety of the campaign. I’m not the oldest (mid 30s). Don’t think I’ve seen it. That was staunch, it was nothing but counter attack for 38 games. More stubborn than Enzo. It just worked, amazingly well. 

[Mike Oxlong]

1 hour ago, Leeds Fox said:

Didn’t feel like it needed a new topic. 
 

Has anyone won anything like we did; purely on the counter? 

World Tiddlywinks Final 

[Leeds Fox]

6 hours ago, Mike Oxlong said:

World Tiddlywinks Final 

What a childish response!

 

 

 

 

I enjoyed that 

[Lillehamring]

On 30/11/2023 at 09:54, Basildon Fox said:

It depends which way you look at it. 

 

Have we improved since the start of the season? I would say we haven't. In fact I would say we look less assured now than from 4th game in.  We seem to be going backwards, which is also what happens when we have the ball for the first 60 minutes of most matches.

 

Have we been found out? Recent results suggest we have and there does not seem to be any alternative offered by the manager. Ric's point about taking more risks in the defensive third than the attacking third is both valid and a little perplexing. If it was balanced I could understand a little more but we break the press then go backwards again.

I think it's really hard to accurately gauge 'progress' with so many new elements in play - I think there was a certain amount of new manager bounce, new system bounce, new player bounce - and that pretty much relates to an increased sense of fearlessness and confidence - we seem to have now reached a stage where we're still playing the same system, but with out that confidence and fearlessness - we've come down to earth and now players are starting to overthink or rush or second guess and that's resulted in a downturn in performance quality - it was bound to happen at some point.

 

It's not that teams are suddenly knowing how to get results against us, it's that we've experienced a dip in the quality of our own play.

 

The way we're approaching games is the same as when we were winning, but the actual application of the game plan has become poor.

[Lillehamring]

On 30/11/2023 at 11:07, dmayne7 said:

Actually, half of those comments were directly related to style of play or comments replying to the those. Not every post has to be some meta analysis of tactics does it

Summarising the style of play or performance without referencing the tactical issues is something for the post-match thread, none of the posts raised a point, this thread is for tactical discussion, not simply expressing one's mood.

[Lillehamring]

On 30/11/2023 at 21:24, Chrysalis said:

The biggest problem that might be had is if one thinks the solution is to improve the execution of the style.

 

When I say lessons learned, I will be clear, the lesson is learning that the style will need to be changed up.

 

For some reason there is people who think Brighton and Pep play this way, they dont.

 

They play out the back, but once the ball is clear of danger, they then find a way to get it up the pitch and then carry on playing the ball in the opponents half, they dont do loads of backward passes in their own third.   Both teams will also counter on transition.

 

In modern football successful teams have to learn to play in different ways otherwise they get figured out, and without a gulf in quality of the players that cant be overcome.

 

In modern football 7 games is a long enough time to form an opinion of a pattern, the years where we go oh just give the guy a couple of seasons to figure it out are gone. A club could be bankrupted by that.

 

The pattern is we are being figured out, we either need to up the tempo consistently so we basically outplaying the other team, or if the players cant manage that be prepared to change up at points, move to a hybrid system or just change it when it isnt working in games, I dont think anyone is calling for radical wholesale changes, just pointing out we have been figured out and the chasing pack is closing.

 

The blistering start has kind of worked against Enzo, if we were stuck mid table and it was a clear transition season he would have time to experiment, allow off form players to bed in to the style etc. but as it has turned out we in a promotion battle which is not as comfortable as we thought it was going to be.  Results are now priority over the style.

 

However I do agree the problem may be down to the personel, he has become a bit of a tinkerer, I think coady's inclusion has upset the balance, we are missing doyle, dropping both KDH and ndidi at same time was madness as we lost all attacking capability, Kasey's injury has upset his goalscoring form and both our main strikers are too cold.

 

The play from the back has also changed, vesty barely went forward in the last game, and also did only safe passes, the players around him didnt get forward either, that seems a clear change of tact of heeding a caution first approach, I hope Enzo isnt falling into the same trap as rodgers did thinking about what the other team might do instead of setting his own up to be dangerous.

There's no real substance to this argument that we've been found out - if that were the case then you would expect there to be one solution to beating us - but there hasn't been: leeds, boro and sheffield all played completely differently against us - are you therefore suggesting that each of them had independently worked out three wildly different ways of beating us?  Not so - we simply didn't play well enough.

 

It's fair to say that a lot of teams have adopted a tactic of having a brief press early on before sitting deep and then going for it for the last 10-30 minutes, but so far only sheffield and perhaps boro have actually gained anything from doing that, and even then better game management from us should have kept sheffield out.  But that's an approach we've seen from day 1 - only a few teams have done anything different.  Sheffield didn't come in with some radical tactic they'd worked out to combat our system, they just parked the bus and, unlike earlier in the season, we didn't play well enough to break it down more than once.

 

As for changing the system - i refer you to my original post - you can't try to augment a system that you haven't even mastered.  Running before we can walk - unfortunately that 'blistering start' as you say has ended up causing a problem, for me that seems to be the perception from fans that we are the finished article and should already be expanding the options we have, tactically - the fact is we've simply moved out of the freedom of a new system into the reality of having to play that system every week.

[Gubbins]

16 minutes ago, Lillehamring said:

As for changing the system - i refer you to my original post - you can't try to augment a system that you haven't even mastered.  Running before we can walk - unfortunately that 'blistering start' as you say has ended up causing a problem, for me that seems to be the perception from fans that we are the finished article and should already be expanding the options we have, tactically - the fact is we've simply moved out of the freedom of a new system into the reality of having to play that system every week.

Is it possible for this group of players to 'master' this system (regular 85% possession each match, several hundred completed passes per centre back per game,  winning most games by 2 goals rather than 1?) bearing in mind it's only got another 30 odd games together as a team? If we go up the turnover of players will be huge and they will all have to learn how to master this system all whilst being pressed into oblivion by far far better sides. If we don't go up theyl still be a high player turnover and itl show that marescas all out possesion tactic is horribly flawed anyway.

Exclusively mastering this one way of playing is daft given wel just have to go through the whole process again next season regardless.

[dmayne7]

1 hour ago, Lillehamring said:

Summarising the style of play or performance without referencing the tactical issues is something for the post-match thread, none of the posts raised a point, this thread is for tactical discussion, not simply expressing one's mood.

Ok.

 

Stop posting in this thread if you're not referencing tactical issues.

 

Tactical issues. There you go, my post is allowed 

[tsintskaro]

Delete "Tactis" in the topic name, this guy has no tactic-s

[Lionator]

His mid game tweaks have made a massive difference today, brought Ndidi into the game more. Fair play. 

[JonnyBoy]

Absolute Joke tactics Marecsa. Take off our best player put on Casadei who offers nothing. No sign of Vardy or Cannon 

[Lionator]

18 minutes ago, Lionator said:

His mid game tweaks have made a massive difference today, brought Ndidi into the game more. Fair play. 

But then messed it up following the goal. 

[CosbehFox]

Like QPR, like Rotherham, like Wednesday

 

We have no answer to direct football. 

[CrispinLA in Texas]

Please let's play more counterattacking football