Our first goal today is Ten Hag Ball personified

Gasolin said:
Fred could do it, he showed it a few times over time. Scott too. But again, people only remember missed passes or backward passes, not forward passes that lead to good action or goals.

We are just doing it better now but Fred helped a lot when we were under pressure with his counter pressing role ahead of the midfield, and it led to a huge chance for Bruno.
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For Fred not after over 200 tries and in the cases where he gets it correct, is probably due to luck. This video is obviously low lights but the amount of mistakes in here, you can go through the whole career of Fletcher (good not great midfielder) and you will not find such utter crap. What some don't see is the compounding effect such passes and errors have on the entire team. You bust a lung to get into position and he does one of these. Whoever bought him should be stopped from making player acquisition decision going forward. Watch the reaction when he fecks up simple passes. Fred was a weapon for the opposition.
 
Beautifully built-up goal. I am curious whose spot in the starting XI would de Jong have taken and where he’d have been involved in the play?
 
2 key elements to that goal, the pass from Eriksen and Gabriel going to ground when he did not have to.
 
championo said:
For Fred not after over 200 tries and in the cases where he gets it correct, is probably due to luck. This video is obviously low lights but the amount of mistakes in here, you can go through the whole career of Fletcher (good not great midfielder) and you will not find such utter crap. What some don't see is the compounding effect such passes and errors have on the entire team. You bust a lung to get into position and he does one of these. Whoever bought him should be stopped from making player acquisition decision going forward. Watch the reaction when he fecks up simple passes. Fred was a weapon for the opposition.
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Frankly I disagree, again people just want to remember bad passes but he has plenty of forward passes that open up games. Most of our forwards didn't run enough to give options so we couldn't do that but this new team seems ready to run so he will have options, and his ability to use his left foot for those forward passes is going to be useful.

Also he's world class in counter pressing right away and getting the ball pretty high up on the pitch.

The only weakness I see is really just the shooting as he's not good enough at that even for a midfielder, but really, to label him as someone getting correct forward passes as luck is insane. He saved us in many games, and he has done some crazy passes, but only a few were converted to goals. If all our forwards converted their chances, we would be having a very different conversation.

And I don't even rate the guy that much, but he's certainly way better than what people think.
 
Adamsk7 said:
He’s come to us at the right time. When we were in for him before he was a pure 10 and would have been rotated with Bruno (or maybe we wouldn’t even have bought Bruno). He’s had to adapt his game and we’ve benefited from him having a full season at Brentford playing deeper
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I actually think we have to thank Conte for it. It was him who did the hard work of teaching Eriksen to play the deeper role. That is also why some people argue Eriksen was bad during his spell at Inter. He was learning the new role because that was where Conte saw him in the future.
 
Big thing on social media about Ramsdale diving to the right, does seem weird watching it back.
 
The quick passing is pretty impressive, though it was notable how the initial attack broke down when Sancho (I think) slowed it up. That said, very well worked to stretch that opening for Antony.
 
Can we start calling this Hagball?

Let's all do that from here on in.
 
The second ball (counter attack) is also worth the mentioning. See our structure especially the vertical zone
Lynty said:
Oppo fans were texting me during the match saying we were getting dominated.

I disagreed because we were moving the ball with far more purpose than Arsenal. Some of the passing between Eriksen, Bruno, Sancho and Malacia in those first 15mins was world class.
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We were indeed dominated in terms of possession and some degree of dictation. ETH said there are rooms to improve, referring to the situation of their cancelled goal which took away what we would like to do, ie, the first fifteen mins.
But I agree with you that Arsenal basically created almost nothing. Our structure and composures had never been compromised in the game. They were destined to the lost.
 
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DavelinaJolie said:
The quick passing is pretty impressive, though it was notable how the initial attack broke down when Sancho (I think) slowed it up. That said, very well worked to stretch that opening for Antony.
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Yeah good to see quick incisive passing
 
avgp_1 said:
Yeah he tried something strange to create a new overload on the left with Zinchenko off and Odegaard off and use Smith-Rowe as left sided AM with a back 3.

Back fired massively as they all converged to close down Bruno who found Eriksen making that run through all that space through the middle. It was some naive work by Arteta
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I think that’s about it. The game plan was Eriksen followed Odegaard and therefore Odegaard would take care of Eriksen as well. The substitution left Eriksen unchecked for whatever reason.
By the way we also changed the position, Eriksen pushed upper.
 
RC89 said:
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic...
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I should have italicised counterattacking. Listening to the ‘journalists’/‘pundits’ you’d have thought Antony’s goal came from a De Gea punt over their back line.

Beautiful goal.
NLunited said:
18 moves and every player touched it including De Gea. Yeah that is some counter attack.
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As I said. The best counter ever.
 
Michael Cox wrote an article in the athletic extolling the virtues of the back pass to reset and break down tight defensive lines, using this goal as an example.
 
championo said:
For Fred not after over 200 tries and in the cases where he gets it correct, is probably due to luck. This video is obviously low lights but the amount of mistakes in here, you can go through the whole career of Fletcher (good not great midfielder) and you will not find such utter crap. What some don't see is the compounding effect such passes and errors have on the entire team. You bust a lung to get into position and he does one of these. Whoever bought him should be stopped from making player acquisition decision going forward. Watch the reaction when he fecks up simple passes. Fred was a weapon for
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It’s mind boggling how much of the fanbase doesn’t understand the compounding effect such passes have on our overall buildup play. On top of that he has a critical error in him almost every game that leads to a goal scoring opportunity.

Sure he can do well in games where we don’t have the ball and he can run like a headless chicken harrying the opposition.

Needs replacing. Asap.

P.S. just in the last game against Arsenal, he had an amazing chance to play the simplest of balls to Ronaldo to put him through on goal 1 v 1 vs Ramsdale. Instead he played a shocking ball and his cross went straight to Ramsdale. I mean Ronaldo scoring would have been so much better for the overall team. Would have allowed Ronaldo to blow off some steam. Helps when each of your CF’s are scoring. Instead Ronaldo was just left frustrated. Another one in the countless examples of how detrimental Fred is. Like a Lingard in midfield.
 
Dominos said:
I have to admit I sighed when the ball was played all the way back to the keeper, but it encouraged Arsenal to push higher up the pitch which then gave us the space to create a chance.
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It's a learning experience for us fans as well, but we need to encouraging. Especially the match going fans need to be careful not to sigh when it goes back to the keeper.
 
The fact that all 11 players had a touch of the ball leading up to Antony’s goal is amazing! Could hear some fans cheering when martinez went all the way back to de gea, think it was arsenals fans. Now that’s ten Hag ball. Going back sometimes makes the opposition push further up which creates space for you. Patience is all that’s needed
 
Kramer said:
It’s mind boggling how much of the fanbase doesn’t understand the compounding effect such passes have on our overall buildup play. On top of that he has a critical error in him almost every game that leads to a goal scoring opportunity.

Sure he can do well in games where we don’t have the ball and he can run like a headless chicken harrying the opposition.

Needs replacing. Asap.

P.S. just in the last game against Arsenal, he had an amazing chance to play the simplest of balls to Ronaldo to put him through on goal 1 v 1 vs Ramsdale. Instead he played a shocking ball and his cross went straight to Ramsdale. I mean Ronaldo scoring would have been so much better for the overall team. Would have allowed Ronaldo to blow off some steam. Helps when each of your CF’s are scoring. Instead Ronaldo was just left frustrated. Another one in the countless examples of how detrimental Fred is. Like a Lingard in midfield.
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How about the time he won the ball near their penalty area? Just a shame he's so bad, he infected the other players and they couldn't score. That Fred's a terrible player.
 
alexthelion said:
How about the time he won the ball near their penalty area? Just a shame he's so bad, he infected the other players and they couldn't score. That Fred's a terrible player.
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Sigh. We’ve been so crap for so long that the standards in terms of what we expect from players have fallen so low.

I’m not saying he can’t do anything right on a football pitch. Sure, he’ll have some good moments within games and some great games too (generally against better teams when we don’t have the ball and he can use his energy and athleticism).

But if we want to be challenging for top honours again, he is nowhere near good enough in terms of the consistency of his output.
 
DJ_21 said:
The fact that all 11 players had a touch of the ball leading up to Antony’s goal is amazing! Could hear some fans cheering when martinez went all the way back to de gea, think it was arsenals fans. Now that’s ten Hag ball. Going back sometimes makes the opposition push further up which creates space for you. Patience is all that’s needed
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This is also why it's vital we find a top class distribution keeper. You can't play this way as often if your keeper panics under pressure and prefers to go long. It won't work. DDG does do a good job here releasing the ball quickly to Martinez instead of dallying on it inviting pressure though.
 
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