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Are we turning into the new Stoke?


supernova26

Is hoofball our game now?  

245 members have voted

  1. 1. Are we becoming the new Stoke?

    • No
      115
    • Yes
      24
    • I can't be arsed to even credit this question with an answer
      106


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Guzan has a very accurate kick, and Benteke wins flick ons or, better still, brings the ball down and holds it up 9 times out of 10. 

 

Sorry, but the only ratio I can think of which ends 9/10 is Benteke's flick-ons ending up to an opposing player! Far from being a guarantee it's a surrender:- "we can't play football, so we'll hoof it and see how you deal with it" sometimes it does come off but we surrender so much possession our defence will always be under pressure. 

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The reason we hit lots of long passes is that our movement off the ball is terrible. Look at how many players are in a position to receive a pass at any given time, usually it's not many.

 

We are good on the counter attack when we hit balls into space for players to run on to, but when in posession in normal play, we have poor movement and we aren't that good at passing and don't have a great first touch either.

 

Against teams that press us, we lose the ball frequently or end up having to pass back to a defender/keeper to hoof the ball up the park. We don't set out to play a long ball game, but are often reduced to it simply because we don't have options on the pitch. We don't move teams around much and struggle to get behind teams unless we are on the break.

 

Wish we had loaned Barry, as he always gives an option to receive a pass. But, ultimately, it is a team wide problem rather than something that would be fixed by 1 player. 

 

Except Benteke, we don't have many players with particularly good football intelligence. So as a team, we lack certain qualities and I don't see this changing without 2/3 high quality additions to the midfield and wide players. Otherwise, we will be limited to scoring most of our goals on the break.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I hate it when they play the ball back to Guzan so much and from so deep in the attacking zone too.

Is Guzan our best passer?

According to Whoscored he is the best long ball passer in the league, with 9 accurate long balls per game - matched only by Jagielka.

 

We don't feature in the "Passing Success" table until number 80 & 81 (El Ahmadi and Vlaar) so the tactic of passing it back to Guzan may not be so barking mad...

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I hate it when they play the ball back to Guzan so much and from so deep in the attacking zone too.

Is Guzan our best passer?

According to Whoscored he is the best long ball passer in the league, with 9 accurate long balls per game - matched only by Jagielka.

 

We don't feature in the "Passing Success" table until number 80 & 81 (El Ahmadi and Vlaar) so the tactic of passing it back to Guzan may not be so barking mad...

It's still infuriating at times. And embarrasing at others.

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  • 1 month later...

I too laughed at this thread...given how earlier in the season it popped up I only had to think back to the last 3 months of last season which we finished with a bit of style including a 3-1 win at Stoke where we played very well.

 

This season we have been horrible for about 90% I'm sad to say. First three games weren't too bad given the opposition and we've had a half here and there since like Everton but overall the football has declined significantly. It's a concern particularly as the fixtures on paper have become easier over the last few weeks.

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