We are an averagely coached team

At this stage, as it's so early. It's just about getting the right blueprints to build the team. I hate to say it but there'll be some false dawns before we really get up there.

However, what's encouraging is you can the increase in pressing, better performances from the wide-forwards, build up from the back and transition to attack is all starting to look so much better. The early signs are good, recruitment will be so important in the next windows - I feel we've got it very right this summer.
 
spiriticon said:
haha, I still stand by it tbh. I don't think a pro footie team goes out there to have 30% possession as part of an intentional game plan. If it happens, somethings gone wrong with the original plan.
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Football isn't designed to have one game plan for 90 minutes. If you execute it correctly and go up 1-0, naturally the other team will over-commit and you'll have less of the ball and you're forced to soak up pressure and counter. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we're doing everything right, but we're definitely having some great spells in these big games - and that's down to the coaching.
 
Let's see how she goes, but so far things are looking a lot more positive than the seasons we wandered in the wilderness.
 
We look a lot better coached defensively, I dont mean versus last season which was just a circus, but probably in ten years.

Going forward we still rely on the same things, bit of pace and bit of magic that we have in the squad. In games like Leicester this amounts to nearly nothing, in games like today when Arsenal had a lot of the ball there can be more space to work it.
 
Crashoutcassius said:
We look a lot better coached defensively, I dont mean versus last season which was just a circus, but probably in ten years.

Going forward we still rely on the same things, bit of pace and bit of magic that we have in the squad. In games like Leicester this amounts to nearly nothing, in games like today when Arsenal had a lot of the ball there can be more space to work it.
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I think most of our goals this season have been very well worked.
 
Its a work in progress that is getting results. TH football and how he wants to play is the same as Arsenal played today, or City when we are up and running fully.
 
It's coming along nicely and I see clear improvement in some areas. As i said in another thread the kind of passes that Martinez and Eriksen fire in between the lines is quite different to what we're used to in the past and really works in moving the ball quicker. 100% a work in progress though.

As good as we were at times against Liverpool and Arsenal I feel the first half against Leicester is probably more of what ten Hag wants from his side in terms of control and domination of the game...just with more chances and goals. It's nice that we can mix it up a bit though.
 
OverratedOpinion said:
I think most of our goals this season have been very well worked.
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we scored some sensational goals the year before last too. similar goals is my argument - breaking from deep, 2-3 passes and in on goal. we found it harder then and still find it harder now when teams sit deeper. it will be ten hags biggest challenge just as it was peps
 
OverratedOpinion said:
I think most of our goals this season have been very well worked.
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Yes, but the point being made in the post below is goals after transition are easier which are how we scored the 2nd goal against Liv, against Leicester, all 3 against Arsenal.

Crashoutcassius said:
we scored some sensational goals the year before last too. similar goals is my argument - breaking from deep, 2-3 passes and in on goal. we found it harder then and still find it harder now when teams sit deeper. it will be ten hags biggest challenge just as it was peps
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Tbf the first goal against Liverpool was well worked against a set defense and also against Southampton. So it's already an improvement from the last few yrs.
 
spiriticon said:
haha, I still stand by it tbh. I don't think a pro footie team goes out there to have 30% possession as part of an intentional game plan. If it happens, somethings gone wrong with the original plan.
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"What is counter-attacking football?" the post;
This is the plan. Its not optimal but its what we're suited to at present as a result of circumstances and the fact Solksjaer wanted to play it. Bruno and Rashford in particular are massively suited to it - quick transitions, dont think too much about ball retention - its highly effective even if its not en vogue in todays gegenpress, high-line, control possession and recycle the ball stuff.
 
mav_9me said:
Yes, but the point being made in the post below is goals after transition are easier which are how we scored the 2nd goal against Liv, against Leicester, all 3 against Arsenal.



Tbf the first goal against Liverpool was well worked against a set defense and also against Southampton. So it's already an improvement from the last few yrs.
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This. Its now VERY clear finally that the work that is being done on the training ground is translating to the pitch. It might not be optimal - but there is at least evidence of coaching. For so many years now we've just looked like a bunch of 11 individuals put out on the pitch. No pattern of play, no techniques, no routines, very few set play goals. Just garbage coaching. Whatever weaknesses we may have, we are now well coached at least.
 
Ricardo de la Vega said:
"What is counter-attacking football?" the post;
This is the plan. Its not optimal but its what we're suited to at present as a result of circumstances and the fact Solksjaer wanted to play it. Bruno and Rashford in particular are massively suited to it - quick transitions, dont think too much about ball retention - its highly effective even if its not en vogue in todays gegenpress, high-line, control possession and recycle the ball stuff.
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You're spot on, and it's given us a solid base to work on. Clearly possession-based is the ideal goal because that's what his Ajax teams were built on, but there's clearly a process and ge wants us hard to beat to begin with.
 
I'm starting to think this whole 'have a full time manager (not Ragnick) who has had success at the highest level (not Ole) and isn't self-destructive (not Jose)' thing might catch on.
 
Why do people think of counter attacking football? It's just fast transition. We had 14 touches on the ball going from a a throw in on our half to the opposition box and bringing it back to De Gea to Dalot until Eriksen passed to Bruno. From there, Bruno to Sanchez, Rashford and goal by Antony.

If you think 18 passes with back and fourth from a throw in on our half to the opposition box to ours and bringing it back to their opposition box again is counter attacking football, sure, we can play counter attacking football all day long.

It's just the same kind of football Ole also wanted to play for me. But this time, players are better drilled defensively, and there are more warriors. But when we have the ball, we like being clinical, cutting through, being brave and trying to find the guys in the axis.
 
Still a journey and we are laying foundations down, but we look lightyears away from being able to play the sort of football Arsenal played against us, who I felt taught us something of a footballing lesson and it wasn’t nice viewing for the most part. If we can add that level of pass and move then we could actually win this league, but only so far we are going to get with a strategy of 3 chances created every game.
 
Rozay said:
Still a journey and we are laying foundations down, but we look lightyears away from being able to play the sort of football Arsenal played against us, who I felt taught us something of a footballing lesson and it wasn’t nice viewing for the most part. If we can add that level of pass and move then we could actually win this league, but only so far we are going to get with a strategy of 3 chances created every game.
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Fergie used to do them the same way. Let them play their philosophy and beat them 3-1, 4-1, 8-2.
 
tenpoless said:
Fergie used to do them the same way. Let them play their philosophy and beat them 3-1, 4-1, 8-2.
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Yea because they played better football than we could. Nothing wrong with it in certain games, but in most of the other games, we could steamroll teams. That said, the Leicester game on Thursday was a bigger indication of our level of ability on the ball. We were totally dominant against a useless team and barely managed to create a shot on goal. There’s no other top team like that.
 
Rozay said:
Still a journey and we are laying foundations down, but we look lightyears away from being able to play the sort of football Arsenal played against us, who I felt taught us something of a footballing lesson and it wasn’t nice viewing for the most part. If we can add that level of pass and move then we could actually win this league, but only so far we are going to get with a strategy of 3 chances created every game.
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Arsenal have been teaching us “footballing lessons” for 26 years, we did alright most of the time.
 
CarbonStoolBites said:
Arsenal have been teaching us “footballing lessons” for 26 years, we did alright most of the time.
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For large parts of that period, yes they have. They have had other issues though. But they have outplayed us plenty.
 
I just love the fact ten Hag still knows he and the team have so much more work to do.
 
yeah I'll take the 3-1 win over the "footballing lesson" every day and twice on Sunday, thanks.

We have a lot of room for improvement in a lot of areas, obviously. But I wouldn't look at Arsenal, who have been experts in dying in beauty for such a long time now. Nice football is kind of wasted if you don't get the results.
 
Infestissumam said:
yeah I'll take the 3-1 win over the "footballing lesson" every day and twice on Sunday, thanks.
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Because that is really the choice or even the point of this thread. How about being top of the league?
 
Rozay said:
Yea because they played better football than we could. Nothing wrong with it in certain games, but in most of the other games, we could steamroll teams. That said, the Leicester game on Thursday was a bigger indication of our level of ability on the ball. We were totally dominant against a useless team and barely managed to create a shot on goal. There’s no other top team like that.
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Give it time. Even in Peps first season he barely managed 4th. Learning how to break down a team sitting back is very hard, the players have to learn all the automations needed to move opposition players out of position and then exploit that space. It needs to be practised over and over again. We should use this season as a learning curve, then next season we should expect more.
 
3KDré said:
Give it time. Even in Peps first season he barely managed 4th. Learning how to break down a team sitting back is very hard, the players have to learn all the automations needed to move opposition players out of position and then exploit that space. It needs to be practised over and over again. We should use this season as a learning curve, then next season we should expect more.
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I agree. Often people get very defensive in these types of conversations but this is an acknowledgment of where we need to improve is all. But that is the difference between us and the very top teams presently. The ability to create multiple chances and score multiple goals, and our best football is currently reactive.

I think we will play much better stuff once Martial comes back for a start, but I agree that hopefully by next season we can play some of the sort of stuff Arse played today. I felt they moved the ball from back to front quite easily over and over. They hit a wall when they got to our box, but they got to it far more frequently than we got to theirs. At Old Trafford especially, we would want that to change in the coming months/years.
 
That first 10 minutes has been the best I have seen in a dominant way after probably LVG at anfield (the juanfield game).

That was encouraging. You could see what ETH wants us to play like.
 
Rozay said:
Because that is really the choice or even the point of this thread. How about being top of the league?
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That's if they even manage to beat Everton in the next game once their bubble they thought "invincible" burst today. Maybe, maybe not.
 
Rozay said:
I agree. Often people get very defensive in these types of conversations but this is an acknowledgment of where we need to improve is all. But that is the difference between us and the very top teams presently. The ability to create multiple chances and score multiple goals, and our best football is currently reactive.

I think we will play much better stuff once Martial comes back for a start, but I agree that hopefully by next season we can play some of the sort of stuff Arse played today. I felt they moved the ball from back to front quite easily over and over. They hit a wall when they got to our box, but they got to it far more frequently than we got to theirs. At Old Trafford especially, we would want that to change in the coming months/years.
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We don't even have to wait for him, as soon as Dalot and Antony keep stretching the opposition team on the right while we overload the left side as we did today, we are going to begin seing some interesting situation for us. But Martial will also bring something different.
 
Remember when we had to downplay organised football to justify dinosaur managers.
 
Rozay said:
Still a journey and we are laying foundations down, but we look lightyears away from being able to play the sort of football Arsenal played against us, who I felt taught us something of a footballing lesson and it wasn’t nice viewing for the most part. If we can add that level of pass and move then we could actually win this league, but only so far we are going to get with a strategy of 3 chances created every game.
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They did move the ball better, but it didn't really amount to better chance creation.

Our xG was higher in every xG metric I saw today.

But I do agree that there's ways to go. And I think ETH recognizes that from his post-match pressers.

The first 15-20 minutes of today was fairly encouraging. Hopefully in 3-6 months, we see greater improvement in ball retention and keeping a stranglehold on the game.
 
Honestly we seem to start the games well. The issue is we don't keep it up especially when we go up. We still have the mindset of just kicking it away especially from around the edge of our box when we could play our way out. Hopefully that changes with more practice and confidence.
 
I completely agree with the tweet below. And if we can add a creative #8 who has the agility/mobility to a ball playing keeper, then we'll look a very different team. Ramsdale for Arsenal is very important in the build up phase and it was one of the reasons they were much better than us in the build up phase.

 
spiriticon said:
haha, I still stand by it tbh. I don't think a pro footie team goes out there to have 30% possession as part of an intentional game plan. If it happens, somethings gone wrong with the original plan.
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Did you not watch EtH’s post match interviews?
 
spiriticon said:
haha, I still stand by it tbh. I don't think a pro footie team goes out there to have 30% possession as part of an intentional game plan. If it happens, somethings gone wrong with the original plan.
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Nobody goes out there aiming to get a certain percentage of possession. They go out to hope to move the ball around, be comfortable in possession and try to create chances. And we did that. Yeah they had more possession control for some phases but they didn't create all that much. Us on the other hand, were much more potent and decisive when we had the ball. That is absolutely what a manager wants. That's what Arteta was crying out for after the game in the presser - the need to be brave on the ball and make those pin point passes like Bruno, Eriksen, and Rashford made.

Obviously when they're chasing a game they become a lot more ponderous on the ball and try to keep possession more and we let them because we were in a comfortable shape, but that doesn't not mean it wasn't out plan.
 
Adnan said:
I completely agree with the tweet below. And if we can add a creative #8 who has the agility/mobility to a ball playing keeper, then we'll look a very different team. Ramsdale for Arsenal is very important in the build up phase and it was one of the reasons they were much better than us in the build up phase.

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Yeah De Gea is a huge problem. It's likely that ETH doesn't trust him to play short as well, but there's so many instances where De Gea aimlessly punts it up the field.

It's hard to play out from the back when your GK isn't great at doing so. It starts from him. Same thing with pressing on the front foot. If your striker(usually the first line of pressing) doesn't commit to it, the entire system collapses.

Once we replace De Gea with a modern sweeper keeper and add in another midfielder that's a good ball carrier/playing between the lines, we'll improve tremendously.
 
Rozay said:
Still a journey and we are laying foundations down, but we look lightyears away from being able to play the sort of football Arsenal played against us, who I felt taught us something of a footballing lesson and it wasn’t nice viewing for the most part. If we can add that level of pass and move then we could actually win this league, but only so far we are going to get with a strategy of 3 chances created every game.
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It's too early in ETHs tenure for it to be any other way. That we fought for every inch, were defensively organized (bar some individual brain farts) and absolutely slaughtered Arsenal on the counter, is absolutely brilliant. ETH will obviously not want to play this way three years from now.

Light-years is a bit much. It was a much closer game than that. If we keep the ball well this would be lopsided in our favour as we have much greater cutting edge than them.
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
Yeah De Gea is a huge problem. It's likely that ETH doesn't trust him to play short as well, but there's so many instances where De Gea aimlessly punts it up the field.

It's hard to play out from the back when your GK isn't great at doing so. It starts from him. Same thing with pressing on the front foot. If your striker(usually the first line of pressing) doesn't commit to it, the entire system collapses.

Once we replace De Gea with a modern sweeper keeper and add in another midfielder that's a good ball carrier/playing between the lines, we'll improve tremendously.
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I think its mostly as a response to the Brentford game that he's asked de Gea to stop playing out from the back. I don't think its just a de Gea issue either, I think our entire defense and midfield isn't particularly press resistant yet. I think it'll come with time, in the meantime - why keep risking conceding when you don't have to?
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
Yeah De Gea is a huge problem. It's likely that ETH doesn't trust him to play short as well, but there's so many instances where De Gea aimlessly punts it up the field.

It's hard to play out from the back when your GK isn't great at doing so. It starts from him. Same thing with pressing on the front foot. If your striker(usually the first line of pressing) doesn't commit to it, the entire system collapses.

Once we replace De Gea with a modern sweeper keeper and add in another midfielder that's a good ball carrier/playing between the lines, we'll improve tremendously.
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The spine.
Ball playing GK
Midfield playmaker
Am who can retain and link play
CF who can combine and hold up the ball
 
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