mav_9me
Full Member
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2009
- Messages
- 12,832
I don't think those 3 coming in will change the overarching plan though, which is my point and the same reason I rolled my eyes at people using the injury excuse last season. It's not like I'm watching us constantly make individual errors where better personnel might have done differently. Sure it happens occassionally but not so consistently to be a pattern. I'm watching this gameplan consistently amount to us blowing our load of energy in the first hour of a game, and then when we struggle to score (due to having to play Mount in the first place to have this pressing shape come off properly), we throw caution to the wind and turn every match into a coinflip. It's utterly unsustainable unless you are rolling out prime CR7 and co in attack and know they'll be lethal enough to just win you games, but when instead you're rolling out young attackers still developing in the PL you need to be giving them the best platform possible to succeed, not just saying "hey you'll get 2 chances to bag us a goal in these isolated scenarios, but in return we'll be conceding chances on the other end so don't feck up!".
I've had the same complaint about Ten Hag since the start of last season: it never seems like he knows how exactly he wants his team to function. Half the time we are trying to be this high pressing unit playing technical, intricate stuff while the other half we are looking to play hyper direct and put teams to the sword within 4 or 5 passes end to end. The end result becomes a team that doesn't really excel in either game state and results are predictably hit or miss.
Now that's a much more valid criticism of ETH.