Austin MacPhee

[Davkaus]

If that's referring to me, I'm not blaming him, as such. He's one member of the coaching team, and ultimately, Smith is responsible for who is in his coaching team, their priorities, and how he handles their input.

It's fairly concerning that we now have a specialist set peice coach but look much worse at both attacking and defending set peices though, isn't it.

[Ingram85]

15 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

If that's referring to me, I'm not blaming him, as such. He's one member of the coaching team, and ultimately, Smith is responsible for who is in his coaching team, their priorities, and how he handles their input.

It's fairly concerning that we now have a specialist set peice coach but look much worse at both attacking and defending set peices though, isn't it.

Wasn’t directed at you, just the recent general consensus. The players had notably improved set pieces under him until very recently so clearly they were doing what he wanted as we all saw the results. Set piece success has dropped coinciding with the massive downturn in form/results so if the players are now forgetting/ignoring those instructions intentionally or not than what can he do? It’s up to the players to listen or Smith to tell them to. I find it hard to believe he has changed anything the last few weeks, I strongly suspect the players just aren’t listening to him anymore, I also suspect they aren’t listening to Smith much either. 

[zenda]

His luscious locks seems to attract the camera, as I've noticed a few times that the tv pictures pan to him once we've taken a set-piece. I don't see coaches at other clubs get that level of attention. If it all ends in tears, he'll have an Instagram following out of it at least. 

[OutByEaster?]

I think it's easy to pick on the throw ins - the whole "we are Stoke" thing and the sort of "basic" feel to it - but it's hard to ignore that we are a threat from them, they create chaos and they're hard to defend. West Ham are big, organised and strong from set pieces and they looked really uncomfortable from our long throws yesterday. It might not be pretty or progressive or whatever, but it's a a big weapon for us.

 

[KentVillan]

15 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think it's easy to pick on the throw ins - the whole "we are Stoke" thing and the sort of "basic" feel to it - but it's hard to ignore that we are a threat from them, they create chaos and they're hard to defend. West Ham are big, organised and strong from set pieces and they looked really uncomfortable from our long throws yesterday. It might not be pretty or progressive or whatever, but it's a a big weapon for us.

The issue is we throw 2 CBs and a full back forward for them, slow down the play, and then leave ourselves open to being hit on the counter.

I don't really have a problem with them at all as an option, but if it's every time, you're just wasting far too much time, energy and mental bandwidth on a low percentage play (I think we've managed 1 goal so far off one of these?)

MacPhee is a good appointment, but I just worry he's doing his job "too" well and distracting everybody from the key priority, which is our shape and patterns of play in open play. That's on Smith and Shakespeare to get that balance right.

Since Shakespeare our only discernible pattern of play is drilling it down the channel to Watkins, then hoping we get a throw or free kick for a MacPhee routine. That seems completely counter to what Smith was trying to build before. I'm so confused by what's happened here.

[OutByEaster?]

1 minute ago, KentVillan said:

The issue is we throw 2 CBs and a full back forward for them, slow down the play, and then leave ourselves open to being hit on the counter.

I don't really have a problem with them at all as an option, but if it's every time, you're just wasting far too much time, energy and mental bandwidth on a low percentage play (I think we've managed 1 goal so far off one of these?)

Are you unhappy with us doing this for corners too?

Essentially that's what these are, they're bonus corners - and for me, we're more dangerous from them than we are from corners.

The stuff on shape generally I agree with, it's where we missed Luiz yesterday, he's our transition midfielder, the player that gets us out from the back.

[KentVillan]

31 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Are you unhappy with us doing this for corners too?

Essentially that's what these are, they're bonus corners - and for me, we're more dangerous from them than we are from corners.

The stuff on shape generally I agree with, it's where we missed Luiz yesterday, he's our transition midfielder, the player that gets us out from the back.

Good point, but the advantage with a corner is the variety. These throw ins are good when oppo aren't prepared for them, but our routine is pretty obvious now, and any well drilled side will be set up for it? As we've now seen with Spurs and West Ham.

It's not like a corner where you can do an outswinger, an inswinger, near post, far post, drilled low, pass out to edge of D, etc. and you don't have to keep throwing your long throw specialist forward to take it.

[Didiersix]

I think we overuse the long throw thing. And I think neither Bailey (in particular) nor Cash (less so) have particularly strong throw ins. We lose so much time when we go through this - centre halves lumbering up, players wiping the ball dry etc. I reckon it is a good 30-45 seconds if not more. For me, throw-ins should be timed to stop time wasting (10 seconds a throw would be enough I reckon), but that's another topic.

Edited November 1, 2021 by Didiersix
Missing character

[foreveryoung]

3 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think it's easy to pick on the throw ins - the whole "we are Stoke" thing and the sort of "basic" feel to it - but it's hard to ignore that we are a threat from them, they create chaos and they're hard to defend. West Ham are big, organised and strong from set pieces and they looked really uncomfortable from our long throws yesterday. It might not be pretty or progressive or whatever, but it's a a big weapon for us.

 

[zenda]

Bailey taking the throws was a real cringe-wince. Surprised West Ham didn't try and imitate us. I guess they didn't need to, they knew they had the beating of us at, like, "ground-football".

[Davkaus]

9 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think it's easy to pick on the throw ins - the whole "we are Stoke" thing and the sort of "basic" feel to it - but it's hard to ignore that we are a threat from them, they create chaos and they're hard to defend. West Ham are big, organised and strong from set pieces and they looked really uncomfortable from our long throws yesterday. It might not be pretty or progressive or whatever, but it's a a big weapon for us.

 

Haven't we only scored from one of them all season?

[tom_avfc]

22 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think it's easy to pick on the throw ins - the whole "we are Stoke" thing and the sort of "basic" feel to it - but it's hard to ignore that we are a threat from them, they create chaos and they're hard to defend. West Ham are big, organised and strong from set pieces and they looked really uncomfortable from our long throws yesterday. It might not be pretty or progressive or whatever, but it's a a big weapon for us.

 

Given that until this season we seemed to give the ball away from our throw ins a high proportion of the time I don't have much issue with a long throw into the box. It creates a problem for the oppositions defence. I've never really got the hatred for long throws as a tactic. Teams lump corners into the box every game and nobody bats an eyelid. If you you have a player who can reach the penalty area from throw ins I'm not sure its too dissimilar to corners.

Having said that, Bailey didn't seem to have the distance on his throws so I'm not sure why we don't just use Cash from both sides if we want to utilise long throws.

[rodders0223]

"Set piece coach"

 

Wait half hour for throw in taker. Lose all momentum and tempo. Dry ball. Load up box. Have Hause or Minga loiter near the touchline or slightly off the pitch if they can get away with it. Chuck ball and have Hause and Mings run towards out own goal, jump and head the ball on.

 

Such genius.

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

Clear to see the reason why he hasn't been picked up by a big club up until now, Danks too was part of the shambles at Anderlecht last season. Our recruitment of coaches has been poor.

[rbcuk]

Set pieces again tonight was a joke

[avfc1982am]

This dude and danks woulld be the first pair of plums out the door to be honest. Stealing a living out the club. 

[claretman]

Cash can’t even throw it that far.  He’s no Rory Delap.  

[AvfcRigo82]

9 hours ago, avfc1982am said:

This dude and danks woulld be the first pair of plums out the door to be honest. Stealing a living out the club. 

This.

Going from JT and RO'K to these two clowns.

Results and displays on the pitch don't lie, we've looked awful.

Between them and Shakespeare, I believe that is largely the reason what is wrong at B6.

[NoelVilla]

One thing that I might think is wrong with the squad is that we may have focused more on this technical and tactical things(which haven't even worked). Seems to lack fitness, stamina and strength which may explain number of injuries and low confidence.

[Jas10]

Get rid