Why we failed so badly - listen to Benjii

[The Kraken]

5 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

THB maybe but I can’t see there being many willing to pay the £25m+ we’d want for him. Even Dibling is only a maybe, the way he’s played recently.

Disagree with THB. £25m is nothing these days for a young CB who has represented England setups for many years and graduated with a first team bow. I’d even be surprised if he hasn’t already got a move lined up.

Dibling will hinge on price but I imagine many clubs will be sympathetic to how much of a shambles our season is, and that he’s only recently turned 19. Saying that, I’d like to see him do a Grealish and give us a season at Championship level.

We shall see.

Edited 8 hours ago by The Kraken

[aintforever]

12 hours ago, benjii said:

We got promoted with reliance on a highly ingrained, intensively coached system based on the side of football where you have the ball.

Despite the success of getting promoted, we were crap off the ball and conceded an embarrassingly high number of goals.

If you want to succeed in PL and don't have the top players, you make your success largely by what you do when you DON'T have the ball. Poch showed us this. And Ralph, before it ground him down. Bournemouth did this season. And Forest. Forest play very basic football in possession.

[I don't mention Koeman, because we had Pelle, Mane and Tadic - three of the best players in Europe at the time.... those were the days.]

You organise and press aggressively, and fight for everything, giving the opponent no time. Or you sit off, pack the defence and focus on rapid counters.

We haven't had a coherent strategy out of possession since Ralph left. It's extremely important at top level, where the other side won't just surrender you the ball or mess up their attacking positions.

Agree with this. Surely if a club our size is going to copy a playing style it should look at the Leicester side that won the league as an example of how to punch above your weight in this league. They never had a lot of possession and were strong on the counter attack.

We were the perfect storm of shit players playing an open style, probably made worse by the fact that all the other clubs have spent years facing Man City so when we try and do the same thing with Smallbone n co, playing against us was the easiest thing in the world.