Conceding first

Welbeckham

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Mar 16, 2013
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We have conceded the first goal 8 times in our 16 matches this season, which is an abysmal record for a team that is supposed to be top four level.

We’ve also conceded a combined 13 goals in the first half alone in those 16 games.

We shouldn’t even be conceding so many goals in general, let alone in the first half, or first ten minutes (which has already occurred 5 times this season).

Conceding lots of opening goals and goals in the 1st half has been a long-standing issue for us. It seems largely a mental issue to me, as the other big teams don’t seemingly have similar problems. It is also endlessly frustrating as a fan as it often seems so avoidable.

Thoughts?
 
Our defence is shit, and when our forwards can’t take their chances to bail us out we tend to lose matches. They’re not that bad individually but as a unit they’re severely lacking in leadership and organisation.
 
We’ve been losing at some point in 9 of our 14 games in the league and CL this season. It’s all down to the persistent poor starts we have. We get outplayed in the first 20 minutes of nearly every game. Even when we score early (against Spurs) it happened.
 
Reminds me of Sir Alex's last season. It felt like we conceded first every game at the beginning of that season. Thankfully, we had a prime RvP to bail us out more often than not.
 
Never seem totally in control of a game, why did we not park the bus tonight and play 3 centre halves?

Going toe to toe with a PSG team with Neymar and Mbappe was blatantly naive.
 
We also have a very defensive RB and 2 DMs on the pitch. They are there so things like this dont happen.

It isnt all their fault because the whole team needs to help defend. But making it hard to play against us and uncommon to be scoring against us is why those players are there so we need better results from it
 
GledTheRed said:
Never seem totally in control of a game, why did we not park the bus tonight and play 3 centre halves?

Going toe to toe with a PSG team with Neymar and Mbappe was blatantly naive.
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I thought from their 1st to 2nd goals we absolutely controlled the game. Cant even remember de gea having to make a save apart from the save that got the corner they eventually scored from.

We should have been at least 3 1 up by that point.
 
We’ve done it since Fergie. Ole is just following the mould
 
The reason ole plays 2 dms is due to the fact he does not trust the defence. Its blatantly obvious snd he has not addressed it.

Again poor management.

setting up to counter attack is pure stupidity. PSG were there for the taking, but were happy to sit back one neymar got the first.

As for Martial.? He will never be a top striker. Ever
 
I thought people want to see open games? When we play open this is the risk, and of course people are moaning. When we play safe & coward, our fan base are moaning. I guess there is nothing to make our fan base happy.
 
GledTheRed said:
Never seem totally in control of a game, why did we not park the bus tonight and play 3 centre halves?

Going toe to toe with a PSG team with Neymar and Mbappe was blatantly naive.
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arnie_ni said:
I thought from their 1st to 2nd goals we absolutely controlled the game. Cant even remember de gea having to make a save apart from the save that got the corner they eventually scored from.

We should have been at least 3 1 up by that point.
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Parking the bus was exactly why we went 1-0 down in the first place. First 10 minutes we just sat off and gave them the ball. The best way to beat PSG is outwork them and we did that for 80% of the game.

the reason we lost was because we missed 4 clear goal scoring chances, then they got an absolute fluke goal and a red card.

Unfortunately this is football and sometimes things happen, but id much rather take it to them and try our best than sit back and hope. We were the better team no doubts.
 
UNITED ACADEMY said:
I thought people want to see open games? When we play open this is the risk, and of course people are moaning. When we play safe & coward, our fan base are moaning. I guess there is nothing to make our fan base happy.
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Getting a proper DM in would have helped this though, instead of the mish mash of Matic decent but too slow, Fred and McTom quicker but poorer in the role. 4-1-4-1 defending and 4-1-2-3 when attacking could have been used then and covers both aspect of play. Instead its 4-2-3-1virtually every game.
 
Our defence is not shit, it’s decent. But yes it could be better. The problem is we don’t take chances, if we score first then we can control the game. It forces the opposition to open up in order to get back in, which would play in to our hands. If we were more clinical we’d be absolutely fine, we’d have a better defensive record too, because the complexion of the game would change and we wouldn’t be under constant pressure all the time. Any team that keeps missing sitters is going to have it come back and bite them in the arse.
 
wolvored said:
Getting a proper DM in would have helped this though, instead of the mish mash of Matic decent but too slow, Fred and McTom quicker but poorer in the role. 4-1-4-1 defending and 4-1-2-3 when attacking could have been used then and covers both aspect of play. Instead its 4-2-3-1virtually every game.
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We play 4-2-3-1 every game? We played 5-3-2 in some game, 4-4-2 diamond in some games.

We played DM and Pogba at the start of the season, DM and Donny for a few games.

Football is all about balance and knowing your opposition, you cannot leave yourself open with the likes of Mbappe, Neymar.
 
Instead of taking charge of games like Man City and Liverpool do, we are too focused on the opposition. Very Norwegian, we respect the other team too much and «feel» how they are doing before taking them on. This is Man Utd, we should go out full steam and kill them before they get the confidence. Seldom do we see United start in lightning fashion and grabbing teams by the neck, which is also the reason why we seldom score 4-5 goals like City do. If we score big, it’s down to counters and teams giving up in the end. What we see against Soton in the second half is what we should see in the first half, taking them on and pushing them backwards.

Naturally, we always need a gameplan and smart tactics to beat the opposition, but never should this talented group of players be pushed back every single first half. We play like an underdog, even at home to Brighton and away to Barcelona so to speak. Of course we will win lots of games, look at our team, but we should be winning more - and better!
 
Outside the fact that we have started to concede from set pieces, we also press in a very strange and ineffective way. The gap between our attack and defense is so big and any decent side can take advantage of that.

Also the way our full backs cut inside when we defend leaves huge spaces for the opposition wingers to exploit from the wing. That is a trademark for our defending. Our wingers workrate is also bad, whether it's Martial, Rashford or Greenwood they roam the midfield position without any intent for helping the defence.
Cavani and Bruno make a lot of effort in tracking back, our wingers not so much.

Many attacking players, the same from above, lack aggression, how many times have you seen Rashford, Martial, Greenwood or James, steal the ball from opposing players ?
 
Welbeckham said:
We have conceded the first goal 8 times in our 16 matches this season, which is an abysmal record for a team that is supposed to be top four level.

We’ve also conceded a combined 13 goals in the first half alone in those 16 games.

We shouldn’t even be conceding so many goals in general, let alone in the first half, or first ten minutes (which has already occurred 5 times this season).

Conceding lots of opening goals and goals in the 1st half has been a long-standing issue for us. It seems largely a mental issue to me, as the other big teams don’t seemingly have similar problems. It is also endlessly frustrating as a fan as it often seems so avoidable.

Thoughts?
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How many times have we come back from loosing positions
 
Ekeke said:
We also have a very defensive RB and 2 DMs on the pitch. They are there so things like this dont happen.

It isnt all their fault because the whole team needs to help defend. But making it hard to play against us and uncommon to be scoring against us is why those players are there so we need better results from it
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It's very strange. We aren't really a very attacking team but have somehow gone from a solid defensive team to a poor one.
 
wolvored said:
Getting a proper DM in would have helped this though, instead of the mish mash of Matic decent but too slow, Fred and McTom quicker but poorer in the role. 4-1-4-1 defending and 4-1-2-3 when attacking could have been used then and covers both aspect of play. Instead its 4-2-3-1virtually every game.
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Lot of top teams out there are being exposed defensively even with proper DM.
 
thesheriffjw said:
The reason ole plays 2 dms is due to the fact he does not trust the defence. Its blatantly obvious snd he has not addressed it.

Again poor management.

setting up to counter attack is pure stupidity. PSG were there for the taking, but were happy to sit back one neymar got the first.

As for Martial.? He will never be a top striker. Ever
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Except it wasnt pure stupidity because had our forwards buried easy chances and Fred not been stupid we'd have won and been top of the group.
 
thesheriffjw said:
The reason ole plays 2 dms is due to the fact he does not trust the defence. Its blatantly obvious snd he has not addressed it.

Again poor management.

setting up to counter attack is pure stupidity. PSG were there for the taking, but were happy to sit back one neymar got the first.

As for Martial.? He will never be a top striker. Ever
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No. The reason Ole plays two DMs is because he doesn't trust any other midfield options in that regard (defensive duties). Not taking Fred at half time is the best proof of that. We had a number of options on the bench.
 
charlenefan said:
How many times have we come back from loosing positions
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I counted four wins this season of the matches where we conceded first / were losing at some point. Brighton, Newcastle, Everton and Southampton. That’s good tbh, but on the other hand our players make things a bit too hard for themselves against inferior sides.
 
It's because more often than not we start games on the backfoot and takes a bit of time to get into the game, this gives other teams a chance to have a go at us and raises the possibility of conceding first.
 
arnie_ni said:
We need a CB and DM badly. Maybe even 2 CBs
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Spurs, Chelsea, Leicester, WHUM, Soton, Wolves, Villa, City, Newcastle, Arsenal, Palace, Brighton, Sheffield United have all conceded less or equal to us in the league this season. The solution is not just buying new players.
 
amolbhatia50k said:
It's very strange. We aren't really a very attacking team but have somehow gone from a solid defensive team to a poor one.
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We're trying to be an attacking team but with a defensive set up.
 
We don’t seem to be able to start games well in the majority of them.
 
One clear pattern that emerges (for games when we conceded early) is that in first 3 epl games we conceded goals from BIG chances (top 3 graphs). Since we've dropped Matic- Pogba duo, the situation is quite different. We concede from very low quality chances (bottom 3 graphs).
4gQICMN.png


Other than those 6 matches:
  • Martial own goal (PSG)
  • 2x counter (Besiktas)
  • 1x freekick
  • 1x penalty
  • last night 3 goals
We might assign some of those goals to bad luck, but I think we need to start a serious discussion about De Gea (19th in ranking of %of shots stopped this season in EPL). Also, I don't see anything that suppots the claim we tend to start games on the backfoot, or we need better DMs/CBs.
 
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Welbeckham said:
I counted four wins this season of the matches where we conceded first / were losing at some point. Brighton, Newcastle, Everton and Southampton. That’s good tbh, but on the other hand our players make things a bit too hard for themselves against inferior sides.
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I'd prefer to look at it from that perspective, whilst I personally still do we shouldn't be worried about being down and out as soon as we concede

Even last night we came from a goal down and should have won
 
I don't think we start games badly, more that we start OK, don't take our chances and then lose intensity and let the opposition gain encouragement.

Our back 5 is always going to concede soft goals tbf.
- DDG and Lindelof are too soft in the air, which I think we try to offset by crowding the box with zonal marking.
- Not enough recovery pace, if you can drag Maguire or Lindelof out wide it almost ends in chaos
- FBs are good defenders generally but lose concentration and don't track runners well.
- General lack of intensity / leadership in there.
 
We always seem to take awhile to wake up. I do think a defensive midfielder would be good, along with another defender.
 
thesheriffjw said:
The reason ole plays 2 dms is due to the fact he does not trust the defence. Its blatantly obvious snd he has not addressed it.

Again poor management.

setting up to counter attack is pure stupidity. PSG were there for the taking, but were happy to sit back one neymar got the first.

As for Martial.? He will never be a top striker. Ever
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Absolutely spot on and quite clear he has a blind spot over this one
 
Eugenius said:
I don't think we start games badly, more that we start OK, don't take our chances and then lose intensity and let the opposition gain encouragement.

Our back 5 is always going to concede soft goals tbf.
- DDG and Lindelof are too soft in the air, which I think we try to offset by crowding the box with zonal marking.
- Not enough recovery pace, if you can drag Maguire or Lindelof out wide it almost ends in chaos
- FBs are good defenders generally but lose concentration and don't track runners well.
- General lack of intensity / leadership in there.
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Yeah we quite clearly haven't learnt from not taking our chances against Sevilla last season and you are spot on about us starting games just OK, believe me if this happens again on Sat then that pocket of West Ham fans will get behind them and our intensity will drop again letting them back in the game and probably lead to them scoring.
 
Adam-Utd said:
Parking the bus was exactly why we went 1-0 down in the first place. First 10 minutes we just sat off and gave them the ball. The best way to beat PSG is outwork them and we did that for 80% of the game.

the reason we lost was because we missed 4 clear goal scoring chances, then they got an absolute fluke goal and a red card.

Unfortunately this is football and sometimes things happen, but id much rather take it to them and try our best than sit back and hope. We were the better team no doubts.
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Exactly, it's fine margins. If we took our chances in that 15 minute spell after HT then we could have made changes and saw out the game from there.

Compare this match to the 2-0 loss in 2018. We still lost by two goals, but we never even layed a glove on PSG in that match. This game was a game of two good teams just going for it, and we came out on the wrong side of the result tonight. It's happened before, it will happen again, but it's a much better attitude to have if you want to win football matches consistently.

This result doesn't define our season. It's the games against Istanbul away, Crystal Palace, Brighton, West Brom etc. We need to find a way to routinely win these games.
 
eire-red said:
Exactly, it's fine margins. If we took our chances in that 15 minute spell after HT then we could have made changes and saw out the game from there.

Compare this match to the 2-0 loss in 2018. We still lost by two goals, but we never even layed a glove on PSG in that match. This game was a game of two good teams just going for it, and we came out on the wrong side of the result tonight. It's happened before, it will happen again, but it's a much better attitude to have if you want to win football matches consistently.

This result doesn't define our season. It's the games against Istanbul away, Crystal Palace, Brighton, West Brom etc. We need to find a way to routinely win these games.
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Was exactly my thinking, they dominated us that night, we looked the better team this time - that shows we've definitely improved.

I'd much rather win by giving it our 100% best all match than just sitting there and trying to defend our way to nicking a 1-0 win. Playing that way is so short term and will never improve us in the future, which is exactly why Jose had to go.

We lost through our own mistakes, rather than PSG being better, we only have our selves to blame which in a strange way is a positive thing.
 
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