The bolded part is my worry. I don't remember Mount crossing middle line, him and Bruno are so detached from Casemiro and backline I don't see how this is going to work in serious games. Obviously it's preseason but that seems to be recurring pattern. Even when Eriksen replaced Mainoo, he played deep and Mount was in advanced position.
It’s very important that one of Mount and Bruno drops deep and take charge of the playmaking burden as Casmeiro has his limitations. That’s the only way the one 6 and two 10s thing works.
That is the idea. I don't see that happening though. I also have real doubts whether pushing Bruno deeper is the answer to any question as a "system solution". First of all, Bruno is not that good at keeping the ball under pressure, and he tends to go for high risk-high rewards passes too often. Secondly, Bruno is the best creator we have and a good finisher, I'd imagine we want him close to the goal.
I generally dont like Bruno dropping deep but last season he really improved in this regard so I think the idea is for that version of him with Mount, Shaw, Antony etc to all provide the creative engine.
When we have the ball I think the idea might be for Martinez to step up and take that role (with Onana then stepping up and basically taking the role that Martinez was taking last season), rather than one of the 8/10's dropping. Or at least to spread the duties between them anyway. More of the playmaking and control duties coming from the defensive line, allowing our midfield to then play higher up and create chances and overlaps closer to the box. Shaw is obviously good at it as well, with Varane being good when he has time on the ball and Dalot comfortable as well.
Thanks, great point. I don’t know why my mind skipped these possibilities.
Have you seen some of the results from other teams over in America this pre season?
Sancho was the best player on the pitch along with Onana and Eriksen IMO.
ETH doesn't choose our pre season opponents...pre season is always a bit of a shambles, LVG used to complain about it because he wanted to focus on coaching not traveling non stop, unfortunately it is the reality of a big club.
The first 60 minutes using the "B team" had them put in a very good performance where they fully dominated and played properly. A few dumb mistakes though between Williams, Maguire, McTominay and Lindelof where 2 got punished.
Antony played decently and also scored a goal as a substitute
Which would be fine, if the whole team would try to stay more compact alltogether. Thats the thing, that is worrying me a bit. Adding more firepower is good and well and proably will work handily in a few situations because it is easier to press when you are high up in numbers. But it doesn't work, if the whole team isn't pushing up. Add to that, that Bruno still has the tendency, to release a trough ball not later than 1.5 seconds after getting the ball and nobody has to wonder, why as a team, it looks frantic as feck. I genuinely hope that ETHs comments about the last 30minutes indicate, that he considers this as a problem.
Probably because there were nearly 15 subs all told around the 60th minute mark which completely disrupted the flow of the game?
I was saying it in the match thread. we were far too direct in our play with our first team.
