benali-shorts

Agree JWP could be sought after now he's demonstrated the ability to add bite and dynamism to his game, as well as being English and brilliant at set pieces. Wonder what sort of value on him now? £30m+? It would leave the club without an academy poster boy in the first team, so maybe we'll be reluctant to sell - it's a big ask to potentially replace JWP, PEH and Oriel so I would think (assuming there's some rationality left in the transfer committee) that only one would leave, plus Lemina.

Oh dear. This won’t end well.

Thank Christ for that.

I saw both. He's trying to force round pegs into square holes because we have such poor defensive options. RH isn't blameless to any degree, but the mediocrity of our CBs is in turn loading pressure on to the rest of the team, and as per Dusic's post, I think this is a much more pressing issue than whether JWP plays or not.

This. Our defence will be our downfall. That's not a coaching issue, it's simple ability.

He'll resign this weekend.

A penny for what he's thinking about Ross.....

"Can Mr Lemina come to the Manager's office please".

Charlie George

10 games = considered permanent hence solksjaer odds, and pochettino long odds.

Sweet Mother of God.

But tonight his errors were basic tracking, positioning in the box, turning his back, total lack of anticipation, cowardice, malcoordination, and managing to miss from 30cm. I honestly think my labrador would have been more useful. And she died in 2004.

It's amazing that we've managed to gather an entire collection of centre backs who, between them all, cover the entire spectrum of chronic failings in centre backs.

Many congratulations on a masterclass of utter incompetence at both ends of the pitch. Haven't seen anything like that since Alan Bennett or Ollie Lanca****e.

Find a good supplier of valium.

jesus. we watched elyanoussi 30 times before signing him. was stevie wonder scouting for us?

"fit" superfluous

Great. Big Tits is on.

targett's decision-making is utterly abysmal.

i hate yoshida

I think we were focused on Emery post Koeman, and Tuchel post Puel, to no avail (and slightly unrealistically too).

Agreed, what was considered 'well-organised' ten years ago has been superceded massively now and not sure coaches like Hughes have enough in their locker to compete these days. Pochettino was clearly superb at organising training, but also had a major impact in uniting staff (playing and otherwise) on and off the pitch. Koeman seemed more abrasive; Puel less influential off the pitch; Pellegrino seemed lost. Hasenhuttl clearly from Pochettino's style camp, which bodes well. Looking forward to his impact throughout the club.

The main crux of the article: A lot of preparation and careful attention to detail has gone into the training.He breaks down the main aims of his training while at RB Leipzig; the four aspects to their game that they always wanted to get better at – pressing, ball possession, positioning, and what to do when you lose the ball. “Every opposition needs to be played in a different way and the formation depends on the opposition’s strengths. But we trained [mostly] with 4-2-2-2, 4-4-3 and 3-4-3 because we could adapt that for most games.” “Leipzig playing against the ball is famous because of the perfect symmetry in their rows. It is a very intensive way to defend because we have a very high number of players to attack the ball, and [when they win the ball from the opposition] the whole team has to be prepared in where they have to be and how to attack. The team has to be perfectly aligned. The distance between the single players should create triangles and all across the pitch they have the option to pick and choose from these three angles to maybe force the opponent to lose the ball, “ he says. “To learn this takes a lot of automatism and [this] requires the most amount of time in training.” The trademark of his Leipzig, apart from their pace, was their dynamism and the resultant unpredictability. His players were well-drilled in playing between the lines and in the half-spaces between opposition players. “We created different levels when we had the ball, showing the players how and where to position themselves and how the lines need to be. We had a few principles: maximum height, minimum width; over-playing opponents; deep runs to get the ball behind the last line; as little contact, few touches as possible, try for no more than two. “The aim was to capture the ball, switch and quickly advance, in not more than 10 seconds. Of course, it depends on where on the pitch we win the ball. Lots of possibilities. We scored a lot of goals in this manner in their first season. Lots of early and intense pressing.” Then came the second season where more was expected from them because opponents knew how to play against them. “[in the second season] we often got the ball in the middle third or the last third. We needed new strategies. One of the biggest developments was us keeping possession for longer.” In time, they added a fifth aspect to their training programme. Dead balls. He points at the World Cup over the summer and talks about how it showed the relevance of having players adept in dead-ball situations, especially when both teams are evenly matched. “We have small players and sometimes we struggled.” All of this information went into a guidebook prepared by him and his team of trainers. It was updated with new information after every game. Careful, meticulous, intensive; just like Ralph Hasenhuettl.

Hasenhuttl on his training ands tactics: https://www.footballparadise.com/talking-ralph-hasenhuettl-leipzig-superhero-alps/

Profile in the Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2018/12/03/ralph-hasenhuttl-favourite-southampton-job-profiled/