Why the Barca tactics aren't working for us

[davies1878]

To be fair Barcelona don't play like Barcelona after their Club doctor who was with them during their successful run left

 

[Matty_j1878]

Dead upset we didn't sign Samaras aren't you lad?

Just let it go Mikey, Let it go son. Its ok to cry.

 

[toffeejack]

Lille Sat there and just let us pass it because they knew that we weren't going to do anything. Teams know that if they if they stand off and keep sturdy at the back, we'll just pass it sideways and backwards before firing off a long ball, allowing them to have possession back

We need to mix it up tactically sometimes

it was a game we could afford to draw mikey. losing it would have left us in an awkward position in the group, they were hardly trying for the winner themselves oddly. we beat them at home and we're all but through. if we lost that game and beat them at home we'd still be in a tussle.

we've tightened it up a bit because of our defensive shakiness, we were scoring goals for fun early on though, we've scored 9 goals against chelsea, arsenal and wolfsberg - i'm fairly certain we don't have a problem here.

 

[Brennan]

It's really naive to say that we play like Barcelona just because we pass the ball a bit.

 

[Woolly Blue]

Nothing wrong with mixing it up and going long occassionally, but it has to be a long ball with a purpose which someone speedy can get on the end of. It's not really Lukaku or Eto'os game. and though it might be suited to one over the top for Mirallas or Coleman to chase occassionally, I'm not sure we have the players available at the moment to do that.

If teams press us it opens up space which, if we're good enough, we should be able to exploit. If they sit back then we need to have the guile to work through them at our own pace. For 90% of the teams we're going to play, we have players good enough to cope with either scenario.

Working out what to do against the really top teams might be more of an issue, but I'd rather we stick to our guns, keep the ball, and, if necessary, work the ball round them until someone dives in out of frustration and leaves us some space. Keeping the ball is the key though, what's happened this season too much is we've given it away.

 

[sageyefc]

Have you ever thought that maybe barca play like everton.








Boom, ive just blown your minds

 

[toffee matt]

Oh mikey..

 

[ah11984]

What the......

 

[johnnyW]

The man who wanted us to buy players like Charlie Austin, now in wanting us to play hoof ball shocker right here.

really can't belive am reading this tbh anyone with actual eye sockets can see our issue has been a string of individual defensive mistakes with a massively injury hit squad. If it wasn't for these two factors we would be right up where West ham are.

Our style of play is quality when our players aren't committing career suicide.

 

[tsubaki]

If it wasn't for these two factors we would be right up where West ham are.

Its a sad day when such a sentence can be proffered to make people feel better.

You are right that its mostly about the injuries, though the knock in confidence that came from Leicester away and (especially) Arsenal at home probably had a considerable impact.

 

[BoysInBlue]

Teams have sussed us out since then

Nonsense. We have lots of boss players & quite a lot of them have all been injured at the same time. Coupled with a very difficult run of fixtures, plus a few key players lost form at the same time.

Last few weeks we've been improving.

The Suss out stuff is silly. Doesn't take teams a full year to 'Suss someone out', and besides, it's a system that worked great for us & still does.

 

[Kiwi]

We don't play like Barcelona though. Just because Bobby wants us to be comfortable on the ball doesn't mean we're playing the Barcelona way, by any stretch of the imagination.

Did Arsenal suss us out before we conceded two silly late goals?
Or United suss out how to play our second XI , or did De Gea save them 3 points?
We haven't been sussed out, just a combination of ridiculous defensive errors and a perfect storm of injuries to our first XI means we haven't performed at our best.

 

[quasi modo]

Boooooooo

 

[marty mcfly]

1. We don't play like Barca, Barca don't even play like Barca anymore. We never pressed high and commited fouls to stop the counter. You can't even do that now as refs are far more likely to give yellows for those cynical fouls. It's the reason why Madrid tanked Bayern last season and Barca where beat today.

2. The great 2011 Barca team was mostly made up of La Masia graduates. It certainly wasn't expensively assembled.

Barca's style is basically offensively to pass to suck players in and make the space to then pass to. The great Barca team's movement off the ball was fantastic. Teams couldn't get near them.

We don't play the same way at all, we play two holding midfielders and a lop sided formation with the left being all about possession and the right being really direct and pacy. We play more like City especially when Dezko plays.

I don't think we have been found out at all, we've just made a lot of silly errors and been unlucky with injuries.

 

[marty mcfly]

Going straight up the pitch as quickly as possible. Knock it long before the opposing team can get their house in order as opposed to passing it in our own half for ages and THEN hitting it long

Press the opposition instead of hanging back and letting them play

So you want to go back to playing hoofball with no strikers that are particularly good at that?