Again, another good performance, but keeps highlighting this teams actual issues.
Our attack is very poor, and unless given acres of space or a tap in opportunity usually can't craft out chances or score goals. They rely way to heavily on Bruno for innovation. This is also made worse by the fact that neither AWB or Dalot are great attacking full backs, whilst Shaw is taking on more defensive spaces.
The effect of this is that we can dominate teams in our home games due to the strength of the midfield and defence, but despite the dominance we can hardly score more than 2 goals in these games. In away games, where teams need to rely more on fire power, our attack can't provide any invention. So we struggle to win, even if we control large portions of those games.
Rashford, Antony and Garnacho are the only somewhat threatening attackers that we have. Antony is pretty poor with is decision making in the final third, but he at least has intensity, makes the right runs and can combine. His lack of creativity is a problem though, especially if he isn't converting chances. Amad potentially coming back would be a huge boost, so he can compete with Antony ( whilst Antony works on improving his game this summer). However, we NEED a striker. Most teams don't have to put it on a plate for their attackers for them to actually score. Their attackers have the agility, balance, intensity, decisonmaking and technique to craft and score chances. Their midfielders simply put it into the right spaces so they can attack. At the moment, we are consistently getting the ball to the right spaces, but our forwards aren't doing much with it. People will be truly surprised how free flowing our scoring would be by actually adding a real striker. Martial isn't one. His body positioning in the box is off, he's not predatory, he doesn't have agility on both sides, he's not really an aerial threat and doesn't make good runs often.
Getting a striker and bringing Amad back should be the priorities this summer. We should also sell Sancho and Martial IMO. We do need a CM because in bigger, more intense games, Eriksen doesn't have the legs plus we have no back up for Casemiro. Eriksen needs to move to rotation. We need a right back because we need consistent attacking impetus on the right hand side from that position. But the no.9 is what we need the most.
Our attack is very poor, and unless given acres of space or a tap in opportunity usually can't craft out chances or score goals. They rely way to heavily on Bruno for innovation. This is also made worse by the fact that neither AWB or Dalot are great attacking full backs, whilst Shaw is taking on more defensive spaces.
The effect of this is that we can dominate teams in our home games due to the strength of the midfield and defence, but despite the dominance we can hardly score more than 2 goals in these games. In away games, where teams need to rely more on fire power, our attack can't provide any invention. So we struggle to win, even if we control large portions of those games.
Rashford, Antony and Garnacho are the only somewhat threatening attackers that we have. Antony is pretty poor with is decision making in the final third, but he at least has intensity, makes the right runs and can combine. His lack of creativity is a problem though, especially if he isn't converting chances. Amad potentially coming back would be a huge boost, so he can compete with Antony ( whilst Antony works on improving his game this summer). However, we NEED a striker. Most teams don't have to put it on a plate for their attackers for them to actually score. Their attackers have the agility, balance, intensity, decisonmaking and technique to craft and score chances. Their midfielders simply put it into the right spaces so they can attack. At the moment, we are consistently getting the ball to the right spaces, but our forwards aren't doing much with it. People will be truly surprised how free flowing our scoring would be by actually adding a real striker. Martial isn't one. His body positioning in the box is off, he's not predatory, he doesn't have agility on both sides, he's not really an aerial threat and doesn't make good runs often.
Getting a striker and bringing Amad back should be the priorities this summer. We should also sell Sancho and Martial IMO. We do need a CM because in bigger, more intense games, Eriksen doesn't have the legs plus we have no back up for Casemiro. Eriksen needs to move to rotation. We need a right back because we need consistent attacking impetus on the right hand side from that position. But the no.9 is what we need the most.
