Tactical decisions: Harry`s Achilles heal?

[lukespurs7]

I stopped there , this is just plain wrong .

Disagree, I'm sorry but up until 2-0 for the first 30minutes we had good spells of possession and I don't remember them testing Friedel. I did however think there would be more goals in the game because of how open both sides play and it being a Derby, after we let in the goal at 2-1 THEN holes started to really appear as they got confident, the passing and movement of the midfield and front 3 became slick and effective before that they really didn't pose much of a threat.

Then it just went from bad to worse however ironically the 2nd half which we lost 3-0 was when we played a 4-5-1-more defensive shape then problem with that as I went into more detail in a thread nearer the time was that we had nothing on the right side and Bale wasn't even sticking to the left, no width we got overloaded on the wings especially Walker and got destroyed as a result.

 

[mrlilywhite]

Once again Harry has proved how inept he is and has always been at getting tactics right and today against a resurgent Everton side he chose to go with a 4-4-2, Playing this formation with the players he played with led to an unbalanced and a totally disjointed side.

You can blame players all day long for not doing this or not doing that but at the end of the day it is plain and simple Harry sends his team out with his instructions so imo he has messed this up, I said in the pre-match thread that we would lose this one and we did and deserved to as well! He had opportunities in all 3 of our last league games to move away from his 4-4-2 and chose not to.

Let`s look at how the team lined up against the toffees, Disregarding the back four for a moment, You have a midfield of bale-parker-sandro-modric and a fwd line of adebayor-defoe and on paper that looks a very effective team and in it`s natural form it is, That is if you play Bale on the left and modric on the right, Now it may not be ideal and under normal circumstances you would want Modric in the middle, pulling the strings but today it was not probable that we could utilise him there, So instead of moving him to the right where I think he would have had more joy (mainly because he has better two footed ability than Bale) We put him on the left, Where once again his threat was nullified, His options were limited to sideways or backwards passing and I did not note anytime that he penetrated the Everton box. Had he been on the right he might of been more effective both on the outside and inside, An option we did not take.

Bale on the other hand would have had much more options on the left, Why oh why he was on the right only harry knows, Bale is defiantly a one footed player and when he gives us that option of playing on the left, He brings a whole new dimension to the way we play, Mentally he gives opposition defenders tough decisions to make all the time and today when he got on the left he showed me why he should of been there from the start. If you go with bale on the left and Modric on the right, You gain more than having them the other way around. Modric would be no more of a risk on the right as he would be on the left, That much I know!

From a midfield point of view both Sandro and parker did not do much wrong, Though one has to argue that from an attacking pov they offered very little and this was expected really, Harry wanted midfield solidity and got pretty much that, Though that was the frustrating bit really, As a braver manager in Harry`s position would of gone for the win and would of taken a chance on a more expressive formation. All season long most pundits in the media have spouted how great we are to watch when we are playing free-flowing football, Where has that gone? It has not just gone on it`s own accord, Harry has taken it away in favor of the 4-4-2, It does not matter how you dress it up, his tactical ideology has left us a shadow of our former self and we now have a fight on to re-establish 3rd or even Champions league football.

Today was a day to be a little more cavalier not necessarily open and attacking, Sometimes you need to be a little more adventurous and exploit different ways of going about things, True we are short in the wingers dept but we have two players that can play there and must be chomping at the bit, especially Gio but harry say`s no we do it my way and still lose, for fucks sake man take a chance with something different.

My two biggest fears honestly are that 1: We will miss out on CL football, Which would ultimately prove so costly it does`nt bare thinking about and 2: England would go with someone else because they can see right through him and ironically Levy will offer him a new 3yr contract .

I hope he sees the errors before it gets beyond salvageable, though what damage has been done to team morale now is any-ones guess.....COYS