- Jan 14, 2004
- 15,105
- 9,122
- Staff
- #1
Scares the crap out of me.
This is not because of the individuals that we have as I'm pretty sure we have as solid a group of defenders as we've had in a really long time (loving the early impressions from Toby, Wimmer and Trippier).
What scares me is the formation/organization (fucking American auto correct) of the back line. Yesterday we started with Toby and Jan in central defence and I was looking forward to seeing the partnership between the two since they've obviously played quite a lot of football together. However we saw almost immediately that this:
I get that we want to have our full backs bombing on and giving us width to since we lack any sort of width or penetration from our 3 behind the striker but the amount of split that happens from out center back partnership to cover the gap left behind was pretty alarming. It was almost as though they were forcing it to allow Dier to drop back in and make a 3 man defence but it just left us all at sea. We did it last season but at times last night it was just taking it beyond the extreme.
Dier's role also was a complete muddle. He tried to help cover centrally but was behind the play when the opposition attacked and then didn't really offer anything going the other way. He's not able to transition play from deep and didn't really look like he was comfortable with the defensive side of the game from that role either.
Fazio and Wimmer played tighter together and it looked more natural also in part because we played with midfielders in front of them who looked like midfielders and we weren't trying to force a defensive positioning that looked awkward.
I hope it was simply an experiment but I worry about us getting exposed by long balls through the middle again.
This is not because of the individuals that we have as I'm pretty sure we have as solid a group of defenders as we've had in a really long time (loving the early impressions from Toby, Wimmer and Trippier).
What scares me is the formation/organization (fucking American auto correct) of the back line. Yesterday we started with Toby and Jan in central defence and I was looking forward to seeing the partnership between the two since they've obviously played quite a lot of football together. However we saw almost immediately that this:
Vorm
Walker Alderweireld Vertonghen Davies
Dier Bentaleb
Dembele Eriksen Chadli
Kane
Turned into this:Walker Alderweireld Vertonghen Davies
Dier Bentaleb
Dembele Eriksen Chadli
Kane
Vorm
Alderweireld-----------------------------------------------------------Vertonghen
Dier
Bentaleb
------------------------------DeErChmbikadelselilen--------------- Davies
Kane
Walker--------------------------------------------------------------
The centre backs split so far they were almost positioned as fullbacks, Dier (the experiment which hopefully isn't ever repeated) sort of dropped in to cover the central gap but sort of held his midfield position and was basically in no mans land from a defensive positioning point of view. Vertonghen looked clearly shaky not having his partner closer and it nearly exposed us twice in the opening minute as his mistakes had no cover. A bit more powerful team would have buried us really early in that game.Alderweireld-----------------------------------------------------------Vertonghen
Dier
Bentaleb
------------------------------DeErChmbikadelselilen--------------- Davies
Kane
Walker--------------------------------------------------------------
I get that we want to have our full backs bombing on and giving us width to since we lack any sort of width or penetration from our 3 behind the striker but the amount of split that happens from out center back partnership to cover the gap left behind was pretty alarming. It was almost as though they were forcing it to allow Dier to drop back in and make a 3 man defence but it just left us all at sea. We did it last season but at times last night it was just taking it beyond the extreme.
Dier's role also was a complete muddle. He tried to help cover centrally but was behind the play when the opposition attacked and then didn't really offer anything going the other way. He's not able to transition play from deep and didn't really look like he was comfortable with the defensive side of the game from that role either.
Fazio and Wimmer played tighter together and it looked more natural also in part because we played with midfielders in front of them who looked like midfielders and we weren't trying to force a defensive positioning that looked awkward.
I hope it was simply an experiment but I worry about us getting exposed by long balls through the middle again.