Be positive not Negative

One of the biggest problems we have at this football club in terms of playing style is the lack of positive attitude. The only way to play quick exciting football is to play in a positive way, what does that mean? Well it involves a few different aspects of the way we play.

It all starts right at the beginning. Too many times we have seen us set up with the opposition in mind only. Yes you do have to do that to a certain extent but to set up with defensive minded players like Bertrand on the wing against teams like QPR and Brentford is just madness, understandable when there is a real threat to try and stifle like Messi, Ronaldo, Tevez ect.. but you are not going to get that same threat from the majority of teams we will play against.

It goes right back to the mentality aspect, of course you study your opposition and learn how they play and how to counteract them but against 99% of the teams we are playing against the main focus should be how we impose ourselves on the opposition to dominate play and give us the best opportunities to win the game, this it seems we do not do.

We have some of the best creative young talent in world football in our squad and to get the best out of them we need to play with a high tempo. You can see that when the pace of the game picks up and the ball moves with speed the ability from these players shines in particular Juan Mata. These players are so quick with what they are doing that they can take 3 or 4 players out the game with one quick move. Playing with a slow tempo however makes it so much harder for them, the ball gets passed around the 18 yard box for a while looking for an opening and when it comes that opening is so tight that the pass will not get where it was intended.

Just look at the second half against Man Utd to see how the quick play gets the best out of these players and look at most of the other games to see how a slow tempo game frustrates these players and makes it very difficult for them.

The final aspect is pressing. This is something that we very rarely do but the best teams have to do. When opposition teams have possession we always sit back and let them come at us with absolutely no pressure on the ball. Teams can just take their time to pick out the pass they want and make it and as for crosses well we just seem far to happy to let them come in and then deal with them. Again against United we was on them as soon as they got the ball and it caused them all sorts of problems. We want possession of the ball and we do not want them to have it. Barcelona are the masters at the pressing game and that is why their possession stats are always so high. We have got to stop making it so easy for teams to come at us, this is why we have struggles defensively because we invite the pressure and hope to deal with it.

This is not to say that the team has to play full tilt pressing and quick breaks every time. Jose's team had it right, they would break when they could but they also knew how to rest on the ball, keep possession while resting, we do not have the right balance to our play at the moment.

There are signs that we are finding our feet, last night there were periods where we would press and made quick chances but there was all too often where we would let them play and put pressure on ourselves. If we can up our tempo and be positive in our play then the rest of the season could be good again for us as fans to watch. 

A springboard to a positive end?

There has been a lot of talk following the game against Manchester United on Sunday, unfortunately a lot of the talk has been about whether Benitez should get the credit for the changes he made, personally i think the team selection was wrong from the outset but Benitez is not the topic of this blog post.

What we saw from the team on Sunday was a group of players really go for it, the pressure was put on Man Utd and this is something we have rarely done, the first half against Arsenal was another example of when we did this. All too often we are content to let the opposition have possession of the ball and allow them tons of space to come at us and we hope we can clear it from our defence, then we have a slow build up and try and break through a brick wall.

This time we put pressure on the United players, we harried them when they were on the ball and then we broke quickly to catch them out and we did on several occasions. This is the basis on what we need to work on for the rest of the season. We have hugely talented attacking players and we need to utilize them, we cannot expect them to beat 8 men every time, we need to give them opportunities to break at defenses with speed.

The managers biggest fault has been his refusal to play our only real defensive midfielder Mikel. Mikel needs to be playing every game for the rest of the season. When the substitutions were made on Sunday and the Chelsea fans were singing "you don't know what you're doing" i was surprised because the subs made sense. Personally i think it is because a lot of fans are a little precious when it comes to Frank Lampard, fact is that Frank does not always cut it in the formation that we play and this game was one of those. With Mikel alongside him Ramires is able to be at his devastating best. Mikel and Ramires is our best pairing and should be played together in the biggest games, Lampard and Ramires should be a combination played together, it just does not work and never has.

Ramires' runs from deep are what he is all about, even when played out wide his best work has been done on the break and running from deep, playing high up the pitch and trying to make things happen is not his best suit. Ramires is a bundle of energy, him breaking from deep with Mikel sitting causes problems for opposition defenses and he is able to make much more telling contributions. When played alongside Lampard he is the one expected to be more defensive minded and that is not his strong suit either, he can play well defensively, but positionally it is not comfortable for him.

Playing a high tempo pressing game suits the players we have and releases the pressure we put onto ourselves. We can play all 3 of Oscar, Mata and Hazard together and it will work very well, but the tempo of our play needs to be high for them to be as effective as they can be.

Can Benitez use what he saw on Sunday and take us comfortably to the end of the season without giving all supporters heart attacks? Or will his constant chopping and changing and random substitutions still continue? 

For me we showed ourselves the way to play, hopefully the players can realize this and galvanize themselves for a decent end to a disaster of a season. We have a very good team of players and we should be looking to finish the season comfortably in 4th place not hoping and praying for 4th place on the last day of the season.