Another slant on the defence

[Ashtonluke]

If this was a one-off, you'd put it down to just being one of those things but this is happening so often that people are right to question what is going wrong. There is something more fundamental than a bit of bad luck. We've only won 6 games this season in the league despite being the second highest scorers and having the league's joint top scorer. Our inability to control a game after taking the lead is the reason we are so drastically underachieving this season. My worry is that this has been going on for a good while now and nothing seems to be done to address it. We are just shooting ourselves in the foot time after time.

 

[duncs pigeon]

Noticed teams are playing and scoring goals agai st us by playing the long ball. Spurs, Stoke, Chelski on Sat and to some degree Citys goal in the Cup.

 

[Pabbers]

I make two dropped on Saturday as the only examples of us losing points due to not running the clock down.

Are there other instances of it happening this season?

You could say Bournemouth and Stoke

 

[Lanolin]

I love that our first goal was an own goal and third was a defensive shambles from Chelsea but they are evidence of our brilliant attacking play, while Chelsea's goals being due to a deflection and a mistake is pure luck.

There's no doubt we were screwed over by the late goal but we had 7 minutes to hold on to a lead and couldn't do it. If we'd conceded the third first you'd have thought we might get one opportunity to equalise, if we were lucky. In that 7 minutes though, they had 3-4 shots and a few corners. We were on the ropes constantly and just never got ourselves into a position to see it out on our terms, which is the really annoying thing for me.

 

[Eggs]

...I mentioned yesterday, but I'm almost certain that from one angle of their first goal you can see Oviedo near the corner flag in the Chelsea half when Fabrigas launches the pass. We are 2-0 up and our CBs are alone in our half. Sure the long ball should've been dealt with but it would have been so much easier if we had a game management strategy that meant our full backs stayed deep and didn't go beyond Lukaku when we are 2-0 up. Pretty basic really.

 

[andym78]

For their second goal when Fabregas had the ball outside the area Barry closed him down and he passed to Costa. Then Fabregas ran through to receive the return pass but Barry stood still watching the ball instead of following him.

Our marking seems to be letting us down, it's too easy for opposition players to find space in our area or get goal-side of our defence.

 

[sageyefc]

...I mentioned yesterday, but I'm almost certain that from one angle of their first goal you can see Oviedo near the corner flag in the Chelsea half when Fabrigas launches the pass. We are 2-0 up and our CBs are alone in our half. Sure the long ball should've been dealt with but it would have been so much easier if we had a game management strategy that meant our full backs stayed deep and didn't go beyond Lukaku when we are 2-0 up. Pretty basic really.

But chelsea looked utterly lost of hope resorting to hoofs, if anything we looked like getting a third. It was perfectly understandable why we didn't sit back, they were posing absolutely no threat

 

[Jags]

For their second goal when Fabregas had the ball outside the area Barry closed him down and he passed to Costa. Then Fabregas ran through to receive the return pass but Barry stood still watching the ball instead of following him.

Our marking seems to be letting us down, it's too easy for opposition players to find space in our area or get goal-side of our defence.

I stick by my opinion that Klopp's 'Gegenpressing' is just glorified 'closing down'. But at least they do that. We don't close down any shots or crosses which are outside of the box. Baines is one of the worst for it in my opinion. Great player offensively, even good in the tackle, but can be found guilty of standing off too much allowing space for the cross. Barry and Besic also do not close down the shots from the edge of the box enough. It's pretty simple stuff really.

 

[MACCA75]

Defence did their job for the third? We lost three consecutive headers in and around our box.

 

[davek]

Every Tom [Poor language removed] and Harry has questioned Evertons defending of late, where Martinez has been slated and can't organise a defence etc.

Let's look at the 3 goals conceded on sat.

1st goal Jags and Howard were to blame for that one, yes I know Howard bottled it.

2nd goal a wicked deflection, no blame there other than maybe getting out to the player quicker?

3rd goal defence done their job, all moved forward putting Terry in offside position.

As Martinez has said we won that game only for the bent ref saying otherwise, that performance deserved the 3pts, to see Terry and the rent boys celebrating like that shows how far the champions have fallen and how much we have grown.

Spot on.

 

[Ashtonian]

the fustration here probably a lot of us share is that we can be sat here and talk about bent officiating, and bad luck and what if's but it doesn't change the result sadly and it doesn't change a lot of other results either.

That is what is really fustrating me this year, take the palace game, hit woodwork 3 times, absolutely battered them and couldn't score more than one. No matter how well we play, or defend or how many we score, we are struggling to win games far too much through 100 different reasons.

Go back 12 months and we weren't winning because we were passing it around 30 yards from goal! Now we are scoring for fun in the same position as last year?!

 

[Khalekan]

You could say Bournemouth and Stoke

Indeed you could.

And you would be barking up the wrong tree on both occasions.

At Bournemouth we were level going into injury time and charging forward in search of a winning goal.

We thought that had duly arrived in the 95th minute.

They went straight up the other end and scored.....there was no opportunity to "run time down".

In fact, you could argue that Bobby did in fact try that tactic by making a totally needless substitution after the third goal.

Gibbo came on and that gave the ref the excuse to play added time on the added time and they equalised.

Stoke we went 3-2 up with what, 15 or 20 minutes to go?

You don't "run time down" with that long to go in a home game.

So no, we have not lost seven points through not running the clock down.

Two on Saturday.....at most.

 

[Khalekan]

But chelsea looked utterly lost of hope resorting to hoofs, if anything we looked like getting a third. It was perfectly understandable why we didn't sit back, they were posing absolutely no threat

Pre-flippin-cisely.

They were gone......we were "managing" the game perfectly well and I was fully expecting another goal at least.

They got lucky with a Hail Mary hoof that our two most experienced players screwed up between them.

Since Stoke there has been a quiet revolution in our defending which the knee jerk over the Chelsea game is masking.

The back door is being kept closed much better and that is going to make us a very firmidabke foe for teams in the latter half of the season.

 

[Lanolin]

Indeed you could.

And you would be barking up the wrong tree on both occasions.

At Bournemouth we were level going into injury time and charging forward in search of a winning goal.

We thought that had duly arrived in the 95th minute.

They went straight up the other end and scored.....there was no opportunity to "run time down".

In fact, you could argue that Bobby did in fact try that tactic by making a totally needless substitution after the third goal.

Gibbo came on and that gave the ref the excuse to play added time on the added time and they equalised.

Stoke we went 3-2 up with what, 15 or 20 minutes to go?

You don't "run time down" with that long to go in a home game.

So no, we have not lost seven points through not running the clock down.

Two on Saturday.....at most.

Depends on your definition really. Obviously with 10 minutes to go you don't head for the corner every time you get it or just start launching it into the stands, but there are ways of slowing the game down and taking the sting out of things that I don't think we do enough of. Sometimes you've got to give fouls away to break up the game and stop counters, sometimes you have to get men behind the ball and play keep ball for a bit. sometimes you play percentage balls down the channels to win throw ins or box a team in. On occasion I don't think we do enough of those things. There are times when we're rolling the ball out quickly after claiming a cross and ending up giving the ball away in our own half when we're trying to hold on to a lead, which is just amateurish, whether it leads to a goal or not.

 

[streeky]

...I mentioned yesterday, but I'm almost certain that from one angle of their first goal you can see Oviedo near the corner flag in the Chelsea half when Fabrigas launches the pass. We are 2-0 up and our CBs are alone in our half. Sure the long ball should've been dealt with but it would have been so much easier if we had a game management strategy that meant our full backs stayed deep and didn't go beyond Lukaku when we are 2-0 up. Pretty basic really.

Interesting post egg's, i was just speaking to The Esk about jag's lack of cover for the 1st goal. Seemed to me stones'y was about 20yds over almost covering rb instead of coming round on the cover for jags. What you say about Oviedo would go part of the way to explain it. We have got to start reinging in these fullbacks when we hit the front.