Not convinced in Koeman's narrative around confidence.
We were playing Apollon Limassol, and Koeman is saying on the back of two wins - the issue was we lacked confidence to get the result?
The team wasn't prepared for the season (board/whoever handles transfers), and are being fundamentally setup to fail (Koeman).
I thought he was more alluding to the fact that individual players lacked the confidence to bring the ball forward, and they were instead just taking easy options passing backwards. We've seen this more and more in games, we get a free kick in their half and it ends up back with Pickford. This is not how he wants us to play, cos he's very vocal on the sidelines telling them about it!
For me this is a massive issue with the side. If you take Rooney for example, he comes deep gets the ball in to feet and then lays it off for someone else, so the play hasn't advanced at all, all we've done is move our forward back to the midfield, crowding that area, and now the guy he layed it off to, has fewer options. It's not just Rooney the whole play seems to be like this. And how is he using Gueye? Do we need 2 holding players in midfield at home, even if you are trying to force one to play further forward and get on the ball.
It was marginally better in the second half when he made the subs last night, because Vlasic was prepared to move off the ball and commit players when he had it, and it created more space for Schneiderlin to come out with the ball and go forward. Possibly also to do with them having to deal with Vlasic and DCL's running, so they dropped a little deeper at times.
When we have no pace, teams can 'cheat' on us and push forward or press, knowing we're never getting behind them. He needs to be brave himself and stop relying on the experienced players who keep letting us down and play some genuine movement and players prepared to move and want the ball.
