I can understand all of the whining about our style of play, if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re missing our entire back four!
The defence is the bedrock, the foundation of any team, especially one that, as ETH wants, plays out from the back. The foundation they build gives the midfield more licence and the attackers more freedom to do what they’re best at.
ANY OTHER TEAM missing their entire first choice back four (and especially only having one fit FB) would struggle to play the style of football that ETH wants.
Now I’m not expecting the proverbial switch to flick ‘on’ when Shaw, Martinez, Varane and AWB are back, but that’s a back four that gives you a lot more of a chance to build up play with a solid foundation.
These posts are just insane when considering the literal fodder we were up against. Sheffield United are currently on course to be the worst team the PL has ever seen, after 9 games, not 1, 3 or 5.
An outright second string of ours has the quality to give them a beating and put on a display like we saw vs Palace in the league cup. There is no excuse for a performance like that with the players at our disposal. It is clear Sheffield are Championship team - it will take a miracle for them to stay up.
These complaints about squad depletion hold no weight when the team you can field obliterates the opposition in so many ways.
Our lack of our 1st team defence is not what is causing Bruno to blindly punt the ball, or have Rashford run into blind alleys, or have our midfield lose the midfield battle until Sheffield ran out of steam, nor have Antony play as badly as he did - our problems abound further up the pitch, clearly, not having our first choice backline compounds them, but it isn't the root cause.
There is nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade. We are in contention for playing the worst football in the league and we are heavily reliant on moments winning us games. That's fine and dandy until we face teams who ours are not categorically better than, at which point we get "exposed" more often than not because hero ball has an increasing likelihood of failing, or worse, making us look miles off the teams with their shit together.
There is nothing worse than watching us after watching our rivals for CL qualification this season. Each team serving up slick, coherent, team-centric football played at pace. Then we come along with our unforced errors and hurried, chaotic play that makes you wonder what we do each week in training - us going last today really exemplified this as it shines a light on our football.
I have been ten Hag in from the outset, but it is abundantly clear that he is not getting any kind of tune out of this team. He needs to make changes and swallow some pride or he'll not have a job before long, regardless. You do not need to be full strength to comfortably handle the teams we've been shocking against, and squad depletion as an excuse for what we're seeing actually shines the spotlight back on the manager rather than exonerating him - as bad as anyone might say any individual we had in our back is, they, to a man, are far and away better than Sheffield's personnel.
