- Jun 26, 2012
- 2,512
- 4,630
Saturday game was a real eye opener for me, I finally was able to notice just how far behind we still are in terms of our own development as a team that expects to challenge for important things in the near future.
I was (and still am) under the impression that under Poch our aim would be to play pretty much like Arsenal did against us this past weekend: high pressing, quick little tiky-taka passing style game on 90% of the pitch to maintain possession and incisive passes once we reached the oppositions gaol keeping area. We showed some of that against Rangers, but against Arsenal we practically did none of that:
- Our pressing was mainly on our side of the field, barely doing it past the half line.
- Our passing game was virtually non existent, our players would retain the ball for way too much time before attempting a pass, which constantly lead them to attempt lots of low percentage dribbles instead.
The pressing thing may be explained by us sitting back and give Arsenal the ball as some claim we did (I didn't noticed much of that, I felt they simply wouldn't let us enjoy much of the ball), but what we did while we were in possession of the ball can only be explained by two things: either our own players aren't still feeling comfortable playing along each other against strong opponents or Pochetino's attacking approach is much different than I have originally imagined.
So what do you guys think? Is our lack of a dynamic passing game so far this season just a sign that our players still haven't been able to develop a strong enough chemistry between them to make such approach flourish or is it that Pochetino has a different attacking approach which isn't so passing dependent?
I was (and still am) under the impression that under Poch our aim would be to play pretty much like Arsenal did against us this past weekend: high pressing, quick little tiky-taka passing style game on 90% of the pitch to maintain possession and incisive passes once we reached the oppositions gaol keeping area. We showed some of that against Rangers, but against Arsenal we practically did none of that:
- Our pressing was mainly on our side of the field, barely doing it past the half line.
- Our passing game was virtually non existent, our players would retain the ball for way too much time before attempting a pass, which constantly lead them to attempt lots of low percentage dribbles instead.
The pressing thing may be explained by us sitting back and give Arsenal the ball as some claim we did (I didn't noticed much of that, I felt they simply wouldn't let us enjoy much of the ball), but what we did while we were in possession of the ball can only be explained by two things: either our own players aren't still feeling comfortable playing along each other against strong opponents or Pochetino's attacking approach is much different than I have originally imagined.
So what do you guys think? Is our lack of a dynamic passing game so far this season just a sign that our players still haven't been able to develop a strong enough chemistry between them to make such approach flourish or is it that Pochetino has a different attacking approach which isn't so passing dependent?