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.
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