Dominating Possession (Away)

ZahaWilf

Full Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2013
Messages
226
So far against the bigger teams away from home, having played City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool we have only managed to dominate possession in 1 match (Away to Chelsea) and even then we only managed a 1-1 draw, with a last minute header. The next step in this teams development is being able to dominate possession in hostile atmospheres and being more ruthless in front of goal. There is no reason why it isn't possible to dominate a game away from home.

Today wasn't acceptable but I am sure it is just a blip and in some ways it is good we have a game coming up in the week, so the players can put it right asap.
 
It'll never happen regularly with players like Dalot/AWB, Fred, DDG and Bruno. Too careless or just not good enough with the ball.
 
For that you need players who are good on the ball. Bring de jong and we can do better.
 
Too many players who aren't suited to the way we'd ideally like to play.

Obviously we could improve RB and CM without anyone thinking twice. But even after that De Gea is an obvious weakness, Varane isn't particularly good on the ball, Casemiro isn't particularly strong under pressure or a retention-orientated passer and Bruno is Bruno.

In other words once we get past the overriding weakness that is our lack of a CF and the relatively low hanging fruit that is RB/CM, some tough calls would have to be made.

Because even with those improvement, I'm not sure how good a team with all of De Gea, Varane, Casemiro and Bruno running through its spine can be in this regard. Some of them are good enough that you happily accomodate that relative weakness, but I don't think you can do so for all four at once and still expect to be that possession-dominant.

We're just lucky ETH is pragmatic enough to compromise on his preferred way of playing this season. Because if he dogmatically tried to play as he did at Ajax we'd have been fecked.
 
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