Tactics Under Maresca

[sbfox]

2 hours ago, sylofox said:

Incredible to think in 15/16 we showed the world how to play without the ball. But ever since we've tried to play keep ball. Our best gams since have been when we've reverted to a counter attacking side. The game that suits Vardy and would have Daka, that was wasted money.

 

The rot that's appeared since 15/16 is from top to bottom. Rodgers just accelerated it all.

 

I personally have no interest in this style we have moved to. To me it's not entertaining with the quality of players we've had or got.

 

Watching paint dry springs to mind. I'd rather go down fighting than losing with tippy tappy football.

Which teams are going to dominate possession against us? We won't play counter attacking football for most of this year, because we don't have the quality of opposition playing against us. Unless you want us to sit back and let Rotherham dominate us for 90 minutes? 

[sylofox]

43 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

Just not sure how practical a counter attacking style is for us, in this league at the moment

 

6 minutes ago, sbfox said:

Which teams are going to dominate possession against us? We won't play counter attacking football for most of this year, because we don't have the quality of opposition playing against us. Unless you want us to sit back and let Rotherham dominate us for 90 minutes? 

I'm not so much saying this season. I was more talking of our demise under Rodgers.

 

Trying to play a way in the prem we clearly didn't have the quality of player for. The better sides where not bothered about us. The lesser sides sat back and hit us on the break.

 

You can't take a Man c on at there own game so why try.

 

This season we need to find that balance. Which I think is going to be hard at times. But something Enzo is going to have to sort out even on the day changing tac tics. But as I've said next season if we go up we need a different game altogether.

[Chelmofox]

1 hour ago, Dahnsouff said:

Just not sure how practical a counter attacking style is for us, in this league at the moment

I'm finding the breaking down low block argument frustrating right now to be honest, especially a few games in. I remembered Klopp and Pepp complaining lots of times that teams simply sit back against them and wait. Its how we only lost 1-0 to Man City last season (and it took a Worldie from KDB to beat us from a very dubious free kick) and how we got a point against Newcastle late last season.  Its going to be hard to beat teams doing this - because it took the best time to do it, and thats not a reason to give up. Sometimes teams are going to get lucky, and sometimes they are going to crumble if we are more clinical. But Maresca is setting us up to play as best we can against these systems, rather than playing 'hoof and hope'. As the season goes on, i am certain we will get more clinical, and the teams struggling in the league will start to take more risks when they need points. Remember that teams towards the bottom haven't started to get major jitters yet. When we play Sheffield Wednesday late November, if they are still bottom 2 then they will likely panic more, and be much lower on confidence. 

 

There are going to be draws and losses. In a way im glad that we've all stopped talking about going the whole season unbeaten as it was showing me that many of us see blitzing this league as a divine right. I think Fulham lost 10 games the year they won the Championship.  Its going to be a slog, and when the games come thick and fast there are going to be some absolute stinkers.

 

All I care about right now is getting out of the damn Championship.

Edited 5 September 2023 by Chelmofox

[CosbehFox]

If you want a good omen we will improve around the goal, the shots to goal ratio is around 12 % on average in the Championship. We are at 7% currently. 

[STUHILL]

I think that is the real positive to date. We really haven't played very well so far, but have won 4 out of 5, and actually Hull were lucky to hold on in the end. 

 

We should improve over the coming months and I don't think many Championship sides will be able to live with us when we hit our stride. 

There will be draws and losses along the way, but with the strength of our squad and Enzo, I think we will be right up there in the table. 

 

 

Edited 5 September 2023 by STUHILL

[honeybradger]

2 hours ago, StriderHiryu said:

What about Brighton? Would you say Billy Gilmour or Pascal Gross are "incredible?"

 

Without being facetious, the debate for using tactics that won't work at the top level or with the players we have is a good one. It could definitely turn out to be the case with Maresca's current setup. But he could always change his tactics later, both Pep and Klopp have done it. Klopp even changed Liverpool's style to being way more of a possession team than when he first took over. I find it amazing that people are already fully knives out for a guy that has been here for 3 months and saw the highest player turnover the club has seen in years. If it all turns out to be crap, we will call it out in this thread, but let's give the guy some time first.

 

There's something else to consider here though, outside of tactics. And that's the club's business model. Brighton, have made the best player sales in the Premier League, taking our crown in recent years. Why do teams want their players so much? It's because of the football they play. Caceido is worth 115M (supposedly) because he's a press resistant midfielder that can tackle, pass, turn, etc. It seems to me that our entire business model as a club is to develop talent from our catchment area / sign undervalued young players, develop them into top class ones and then sell them on. Do this enough times and eventually you might not need to sell and you can make a run at trophies and / or the Champions League. That's what we did on our last "cycle". So if that is our business model, does it not make sense to play the style of football Maresca plays even if the fans hate it? That's an interesting debate to have too!

 

For what it's worth, I care about Leicester winning trophies rather than Brighton's "net spend champions" award. But in order to compete with the Chelsea's of this world, you do need to do something innovative. For me, even if Maresca is a bust in the end, I rate the club for having the balls to try it.

 

 

 

 

I wouldnt say i have personally turned on Maresca as he seems to be good at what he's trying to implement. Under Rodgers our passing out from the back was calamitous and now it seems like a coherent system. Maresca also seems to have a clear vision for the style he wants to play and the mold of player he wants. In Arteta's position with talents like Saka, Martinelli, Partey and odegaard breaking through/coming in Maresca could very well establish himself in a similar way.

 

It's just that when you dont have players like Odegaard, Saka, Martinelli, De Bruyne etc it's so fustrating that we dont take a risk and punish teams when there's an opening and instead choose the more cautious route by passing it around safely to try and come up with a killer ball that we dont have the player quality to produce.

 

I get why we dont do it as the problem with clubs in our position is that we have to compromise. Winks is good at the possession style of football but not so much defensively and we have a slow defence so we cant take many risks in attack. In a more defensive counter attacking style we would be able to take more risks when we attack though.

 

Bit of a jumbled post, basically not sure where i am at in terms of my opinions on Maresca, basically think he has what it takes to be a good manager but not sure the style suits us this season or next season, maybe if given time it could bare fruits and turn us into a PL regular again.

 

[Drink Water]

Everyone needs to remember we are still in 1st gear, many aspects of our game are going to improve throughout the next couple of games. By November, we will see the fruits of all the hard work being done in training.

 

However, one flaw that really needs to be pointed out is composure around the opponent's penalty box. Many of you might have seen against hull and others, that our midfielders and defenders are wasting chances by shooting the ball from unfavourable angles and positions almost as if they want to recreate a prime Tielemans screamer. Whats worse is that many times other players are asking for the ball to be passed who are in better positions to shoot and actually score a goal. But certain players of ours really overrate their own shooting ability, which ended up costing us the possibility of easy goals and tap-ins last Saturday.

Edited 5 September 2023 by Drink Water

[CWLCFC]

7 games in. 6 wins, 1 loss and some of you have already turned on him because he doesn’t play hoof-ball.

 

Absolutely unbelievable.

 

 

[Dusty]

I think the points about us not being creative enough are entirely fair, I just think they have to be taken with perspective.
 

Realistically nobody thought we would win our first 6 games or have this many points yet. We all expected a pretty calamitous start to the season with the amount of preseason fixtures we had, the players we lost and the few players we’d brought in at the start of the season. All that with a very inexperienced manager and back room staff. 
 

Whilst I’d say 6 positions (GK, Defence, Winks) are relatively clear, the other 5 positions highest up the pitch we are still a way off knowing who are best players in this system are. KDH, Ndidi, Casedei, Praet, Mcateer, Wanya-Marcal, Albrighton, Yunus, Mavididi, Fatawu, Vardy and Kel have all played their parts so far this season but nobody has settled and we’ve not seen the best from any of them. There’s going to be a lot of changes before we get to that point and I think we have to be patient and understandable that we’re not going to be at our strongest attacking force just yet, but I fully expect us to get there and be very effective once it’s all sorted. 
 

New players, new manager, new tactics, new division. It was always going to take time, we’ve done very well so far, but there’s more to come.

[Dahnsouff]

2 hours ago, sylofox said:

 

I'm not so much saying this season. I was more talking of our demise under Rodgers.

 

Trying to play a way in the prem we clearly didn't have the quality of player for. The better sides where not bothered about us. The lesser sides sat back and hit us on the break.

 

You can't take a Man c on at there own game so why try.

 

This season we need to find that balance. Which I think is going to be hard at times. But something Enzo is going to have to sort out even on the day changing tac tics. But as I've said next season if we go up we need a different game altogether.

And that’s fair enough, I just don’t expect a wholly different system, more of a bunch of tweaks to this system to cope with a more complete opponent, so maybe

• Ricky stays RB more often
• KDH goes forward less, staying more with Winks
• Basically creating the overloads in different areas than we seek too now

[fuchsntf]

25 minutes ago, CWLCFC said:

7 games in. 6 wins, 1 loss and some of you have already turned on him because he doesn’t play hoof-ball.

 

Absolutely unbelievable.

 

 

You see..that's our present problem.!!

95% of the posters in this and every football club forum are just hardened brothers & sisters of Victor Meldrew..

They all think they see that failing link in their clubs system even when seasons not really yet started,and every single position is being reassessed with Brand new players to the system..

Fans are quite pathetic at trying to analyse,not single fan will have the same opinion...always falls 51% to 49% depending on the day..Players seen by some has the right peg,others the holes are scue-whiff..Not one agreeing concentious only nearly..sort of hitting the post....So all of it becomes to those more enlightened of us...

"I just don't believe it". Syndrom,the rest of us,thinking it ain't that bad & still feeling guilty about our thoughts. 

[James_lcfc]

34 minutes ago, CWLCFC said:

7 games in. 6 wins, 1 loss and some of you have already turned on him because he doesn’t play hoof-ball.

 

Absolutely unbelievable.

 

 

Great point - Best to just close the thread and not discuss anything. Everything is perfect.

 

We can reconvene when we're back in the PL, won't be long.

 

 

 

[jerry]

36 minutes ago, CWLCFC said:

7 games in. 6 wins, 1 loss and some of you have already turned on him because he doesn’t play hoof-ball.

 

Absolutely unbelievable.

 

 

The old adage - which do you prefer a good manager or a lucky one ? Feel we have used up a lot of good fortune in the first 4 league games and will be interesting to see if Pep mk 2 can establish a system going forward to suit the players at his disposal .

[Dames]

1 minute ago, jerry said:

The old adage - which do you prefer a good manager or a lucky one ? Feel we have used up a lot of good fortune in the first 4 league games and will be interesting to see if Pep mk 2 can establish a system going forward to suit the players at his disposal .

He’s going to have to change something at some point to suit the players, we can’t go the whole season relying on Ricardo without any cover. Theres no way JJ can play the DM role he’d be better suited to the CB role from the left as to better utilise his pace on recovery. 

[SuperMike]

5 hours ago, sylofox said:

Incredible to think in 15/16 we showed the world how to play without the ball. But ever since we've tried to play keep ball. Our best gams since have been when we've reverted to a counter attacking side. The game that suits Vardy and would have Daka, that was wasted money.

 

The rot that's appeared since 15/16 is from top to bottom. Rodgers just accelerated it all.

 

I personally have no interest in this style we have moved to. To me it's not entertaining with the quality of players we've had or got.

 

Watching paint dry springs to mind. I'd rather go down fighting than losing with tippy tappy football.

Goodness me - how true this is! 100% agree with every word!!

Yuno the title of the thread is 'tactics under Maresca' - but I can only see one 'tactic'. The tactic he has adopted is NOT football - it is 'Keepball' - and that is really what kindergarten teachers can coach.

Surely we should expect more football-related nuances and tactics from such a highly rated (and highly paid) coach?

I am sure that all you 'EXPERTS' on foxes talk will tell me I'm wrong and, hey, maybe I am.

The only thing I can see is that, when we are in possession, a full back moves into midfield. Well that is hardly revolutionary, and was Not invented by Pep -the-God. I remember a player called David Nish (later to become Britains most expensive transfer) played exactly that rôle back in 1969 and was (when we were in possession) our most potent attacking threat - striding through midfield and being a darned sight more effective than Ricardo has ever been!!

Anyway - hope the system clicks - hate to be bored sh**less by the team I have supported for so long!

[sishades]

2 hours ago, CosbehFox said:

the shots to goal ratio is around 12 % on average in the Championship. We are at 7% currently. 

Firstly this is bad news, secondly where is the evidence to suggest that this will improve. 

[jerry]

25 minutes ago, Dames said:

He’s going to have to change something at some point to suit the players, we can’t go the whole season relying on Ricardo without any cover. Theres no way JJ can play the DM role he’d be better suited to the CB role from the left as to better utilise his pace on recovery. 

Rodgers accused of not having a Plan B and feel Maresca is so set on his philosophy that it's unlikely he has the will or experience to change.

[sacreblueits442]

58 minutes ago, CWLCFC said:

7 games in. 6 wins, 1 loss and some of you have already turned on him because he doesn’t play hoof-ball.

 

Absolutely unbelievable.

 

 

...there will be a big percentage who do not want to play this style!!!

They would have been brought up on a more "up and at them" style of play, coming from watching games in the 70s and growing up with that philosophy having watched with their fathers and grandfathers.

  I personally prefer the Postecogglu style of play and would have loved to have picked him up, but we have Maresca and his style is what we play, we have no say in the matter.

  With this system, it should be evident to the players that it does not matter who scores, the system dictates the success, and the players need to understand what is needed from themselves to make this work. The more quality we have in this team the more potent we will be and getting back to the Premiership with this style of play will propel us to the top 8 as we will be able to bring in the players we sought to bring in before, but they felt coming to the Championship was a retrograde step.

  If we can get playing in the last third right, or 20% better, we are not going to struggle to get the results that we need, to get where we want to be.

[sbfox]

1 hour ago, Dahnsouff said:

And that’s fair enough, I just don’t expect a wholly different system, more of a bunch of tweaks to this system to cope with a more complete opponent, so maybe

• Ricky stays RB more often
• KDH goes forward less, staying more with Winks
• Basically creating the overloads in different areas than we seek too now

Where are the overloads coming from if the RB is staying with the back four and both central midfielders are playing holding roles? 

[sacreblueits442]

8 minutes ago, jerry said:

Rodgers accused of not having a Plan B and feel Maresca is so set on his philosophy that it's unlikely he has the will or experience to change.

...he doesn't need to change, it has only just begun, The team is not settled and his ideas have not been adhered to!!!

Too many poor decisions are being taken out there and it should be about trusting each other, taking too much on and ignoring obvious openings helps no one. We have to get the balance with the #8s, our wide players seem incapable of taking their defender to the byline and cutting the ball back. I would think playing in the half spaces would be better

for them, but their staying wide stretches the pitch and allows the #8s to take the half spaces and they too should be looking to hit the byeline as well.

[Dahnsouff]

21 minutes ago, sbfox said:

Where are the overloads coming from if the RB is staying with the back four and both central midfielders are playing holding roles? 

Presumably the overloads would come in more defensive positions to nullify the better opponent

[The_77]

1 hour ago, fuchsntf said:

You see..that's our present problem.!!

95% of the posters in this and every football club forum are just hardened brothers & sisters of Victor Meldrew..

They all think they see that failing link in their clubs system even when seasons not really yet started,and every single position is being reassessed with Brand new players to the system..

Fans are quite pathetic at trying to analyse,not single fan will have the same opinion...always falls 51% to 49% depending on the day..Players seen by some has the right peg,others the holes are scue-whiff..Not one agreeing concentious only nearly..sort of hitting the post....So all of it becomes to those more enlightened of us...

"I just don't believe it". Syndrom,the rest of us,thinking it ain't that bad & still feeling guilty about our thoughts. 

The other 5% of forums is filled with your constant sanctimony. 

Edited 5 September 2023 by The_77
Typo

[Ric Flair]

6 hours ago, sylofox said:

Incredible to think in 15/16 we showed the world how to play without the ball. But ever since we've tried to play keep ball. Our best gams since have been when we've reverted to a counter attacking side. The game that suits Vardy and would have Daka, that was wasted money.

 

The rot that's appeared since 15/16 is from top to bottom. Rodgers just accelerated it all.

 

I personally have no interest in this style we have moved to. To me it's not entertaining with the quality of players we've had or got.

 

Watching paint dry springs to mind. I'd rather go down fighting than losing with tippy tappy football.

I mean this is very dramatic, large parts of Rodgers era were very good and it wasn't just counter attacking football which were our best performances. Are you forgetting demolitions of Southampton, Villa, Newcastle, West Ham and many others where we will have dominated possession based on us being the stronger team, as opposed to the counter attacking approach Rodgers had to learn vs the top sides during 2020/21, when we beat them all at least once.

 

The nemesis for us and many is playing against the low block. Trying to go counter attack vs such teams is like trying to play chess with a cat. The difference between 2015/16 and future seasons were the way teams treated us, hence why we were an abomination in the league in 2016/17 under the same regime.

[Chelmofox]

6 hours ago, sylofox said:

Incredible to think in 15/16 we showed the world how to play without the ball. But ever since we've tried to play keep ball. Our best gams since have been when we've reverted to a counter attacking side. The game that suits Vardy and would have Daka, that was wasted money.

 

The rot that's appeared since 15/16 is from top to bottom. Rodgers just accelerated it all.

 

I personally have no interest in this style we have moved to. To me it's not entertaining with the quality of players we've had or got.

 

Watching paint dry springs to mind. I'd rather go down fighting than losing with tippy tappy football.

How would you have us setup in the Championship?

[cityfanlee23]

1 hour ago, sishades said:

Firstly this is bad news, secondly where is the evidence to suggest that this will improve. 

For me this is the part that I just don’t understand. 
I’ll start by saying there’s a part of me that does expect improvement will come, but it feels like right now none of our fans are able to actually point out why or how our system will come good, nobody seems able to really explain how our system works or how it’s supposed to unlock teams. 
 

Pretty much every positive argument I’ve seen is “when it clicks” or “when it comes good” instead of “if”. There’s absolutely no evidence that it’s going to click because it hasn’t yet, I’m very much In the believe it when I see it camp, right now I don’t have much to get excited about apart from the fact we have signed young potentially exciting players and we have a manager who seemingly wants to do something new. 
 

But so far we’ve rode our luck time and time again, this idea that we can only get better and eventually it will click is a very dangerous way to approach football imo. Especially since it took half of our fanbase 18+ months to see that Rodgers was destroying the club.