This may sound like a kneejerk after some posts I made yesterday but here it goes.
I'm still probably more Ole in than out and some, many things he has done in and around the club have been great. Club is in a lot better shape than in what it was when he took the job, from recruiting to the general atmosphere in and around the club. And I wont take the PE teaches stuff, we did get 3rd and 2nd in the league and EL final and it wasnt all thanks to the players cause that would mean we have players who are beyond brilliant cause they can play all by themselves. Sure it could have been better maybe but the results still stand.
Problem is some problems still repeat themselves time and time again. I get it, we were man down but instead of putting 2 defensive players instead of a midfielder and a winger you just take out for instance Sancho and put Dalot in or Varane with Lindelof then playing a RB and that's it. By making changes he made yesterday he made a right mess, we had 2 midfielders on a paper but in reality it was just Fred or better yet we didnt have a midfield at all. VDB was ok yesterday and could have been ok for ball retaining and keeping us in the game in midfield, instead we went for a 3 at the back for god knows what reason. And even with that formation we seem to have decided to sit back and invite pressure and wait for the game to finish. Bonkers all around. I get it when you go man down you go defensive a bit but not so defensive to play with 9 players in your half and you dont get a sniff of their box let alone making a chance or 2. You play with 4 mids for instance and hit them on the counter or press them and dominate the game or if anything try to score a 2nd and close the game. Instead we were defending for our lives agains Young Boys with all due respect for them.
Sure we have 5 more games but wins in our home games are not given cause Villareal and Atalanta are really good teams. Atalanta playing an open game every time will suit us at OT but in away games anything can happen especially if the plan is to nick a goal and wait for the final whistle. I guess that was the plan yesterday 2 and red complicated things to the extent that Ole didnt exactly know what to do and how to do it. Taking Ronaldo of for Jesse, why? What could have Jesse offered. And from last season when he was barely playing he's now a player who comes in in i CL tie for what, steadying the middle or something. I just hope he isnt playing cause Ole wants to convince him to sign a new contract.Taking Bruno of was icing on the cake. We decided to go ultra defensive against a solid Suisse team by throwing defensive players left right and centre instead of trying to control the game and midfield by every means possible, calm their pressure down and try to score in the other end. Painful, painful watch. I think I'm repeating myself here...
Ole can prepare a team which can batter teams every now and then but when our team is pressed and is on the back foot he sometimes, often doesnt know how to change things on the pitch and it's a recurring theme unfortunately. Not only that but we tend to get dominated by average to poor teams too. We got dominated at Southamtpon, Wolves and yesterday. Against Leeds and Newcastle we were good but even against Newcastle we got carved open a few times like there's no midfield of ours of any sort.
I predict a similar season as yesterday, we'll win many games just by having so great firepower who can score from nothing but will get outdone in some games in which we should have won or in the dying minutes of some games cause our gameplan will collapse and it will be our outdoing when games like that mass. We will be near the top but will never really challenge for the title and will go good if we go through in our CL group. Sure you can say 5 more games but it will be tricky games especially if we'll play like yesterday.
I hate when I see that 'sackable offense' stuff 'round here but not going through in a group like that should be a sackable offense really no matter how we'll do in the league at the time group stages close.
Jury is still out regarding this season and we had a strong beginning in the league but that game yesterday. Ugh.
And his comments about doing good to earn a point in a difficult game. What is that? It means we consciously went so defensive in the 2nd half not cause they pinned us back. Whatever it was it was a horrible watch.