school boy defending

Status
Not open for further replies.
T

toffeebhoy

Player Valuation: £1m
whats the story with our defending this season ?????????

im totally baffled to the level it has dropped to......how many weak clearance have led to goals .....in the last few seasons we may hav not been associated with flair but we have grit and determation at the back ....as good as lescoot is i hav never been sure of his partnership with yobo for me we had to hav stubbs at the back and lescott at LB......

but then we drop baines in that situation and lose an attackin edge .....

its totally frustrating to watch as we havnt the "excuse" that we are good going forward that we leave ourselves open at the back and add in "weaker" teams (imho) are benefiting from it as well its not just the top teams
 

Ive just seen the goals from yesterday and to be fair the defending was embarrassing. Ossies clearance for Emres goal was woeful- he actually had time to take it down and smash it up to the half way line. Yobo was caught napping for Owens header and that is simply not good enough.

I think Yobo needs to be dropped- who knows it may give him a kick up the ass he needs to get him back to his consistent performances.
 
I would be interested to know whose responsibility Owen was (both Carsley (?) and Yobo were hanging around there) and who organises the defence in this situation.

In fact, if you look at it again on the OS, immediately before the kick, Carsley motions Yobo and Lescott to cover the two later runners off to the right, then Owen gets a push-off on Carsley who fails to follow him in any way. Leaving Joey to struggle back across and look as though he is at fault.
 
I think its due to many factors:

New arrivals, Baines, Jagielka might have unsettled the defence training.
Yobos confidence is shot again (anybodys guess as to why).
Midfield are so poor there is no cover for the defence.
The strikers arnt scoring, therefore putting more pressure on the defence to keep a clean sheet.
Maybe all the compliments Lescott has received recently have made him take his eye off the ball a bit (so to speak)

Or

Maybe they just got fluky last season...
 
Heavens Sim is there anything good about the performances this year?:lol:

For me the real problem is the midfield, too easily knocked out of the way. Our midfielders seem to be incapable of getting hold of the Middle and controlling it, and therin IMO lies our problem.

As for giving the ball away by poor passing or being caught this happens far to often. Amongst the worst for this is Neville, Osman, and Hibbert and the other hoofball speciailists.
 

I'm a big fan of Lescott, but even he'd caught the bug yesterday. His 'clearance' for the first goal was shocking! He kind of just scooped it up, put your foot through it man!

We really need to tighten up at the back. If you took away all the goals conceeded from awful defending this season, ie all of the goals yesterday, then we'd be much higher up the league. Got to be a top priority, hopefully the international break will give Moyes enough time to work on it (y)
 
I think our horrid defence is down to a few reasons..

1. When Stubbs isn't playing there is no leader in the backline. Yobo or Lescott have to step up at that point and take charge... I'd prefer it if Lescott managed to do that.

2. We have two defensive midfielders that looks to get in the way for eachother and similar to Yobo-Lescott not really know who have what responsibility... therefore they fall too far back on the pitch and we loose ground, giving the opponents space and time to either shoot from a distance or place crosses into the box. And those times they do take a step up, a FK to the opponents will be soo much nearer our goal than it should be.

Don't agree with Sim about the strikers though.. we score more goals this season than before and our strikers do their share. The defenders should know that their job is to keep a clean sheet. That was even more a must in previous seasons than it is now. If you look at our last 5 games we've scored 2 goals or more in each of them (Bolton, Sheffield, Boro, Kharkiv, Newcastle) so our defenders should know that we can score.. I'd go so far as to say it's teh opposite.. The defenders know we can score and therefore they might relax a bit too much.

But all in all, when you compare our games to the same games last season. We're 1 point behind so it's not the end of the world. We just need to get our defence back into order, especially in the first half.
 
The defence, imo is bad becasue now the full backs are pushing up alot more that last year. Baines is a more attackign full back and will lie to get up into the oppositions area/ corner falg and put hte passes and crosses in. Same on the right. This means there is two central defenders in the centre which have to spread out in the absence of the full backs. A solution to this is play a 5-3-2 formation, with 3 centre backs, and the two full backs pushing up the wings even more than they do now, allowing more freedom in the defence. Suggestion when all is fit:

- - - - - - - - - Howard- - - - - - - - - -

- - - - -Yobo - Stubbs - Lescott - - - - -

Hibbert - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Baines

- - - - - - - Arteta - Gravesen - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - Cahill - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - Anichebe - Yakubu/Mcfadden


This enables a good defence, but still a good attacking force, also with playing five at the back you dont really need to play a defensive mid. This enables gravesen and arteta to play in the centre which is best for them, and cahill to play aswell. Becasue arteta is in the centre with gravesen the delivery to the attackers will be improved.

Problem Solved :)
 
What I like about that line up is even though I'm a fan of Carsley and the work he's done for us, it's quite a bit more attacking. Get a lead, bring on Carsley later to shore things up.
 

exactly, even though there is five in the defence, it is more attacking , because the midfield is all attacking, also the midfield are all great passes, and can easily fead yakubu/johnson/vaughan/anichebe/mcfadden without hoofing it
 
sounds great but theres space behind baines and neville. yobo doesnt fit into RM. so cover there is an issue. i like this setup, but it will take a monumental effort to implement and iron out the teething problems in time for any real change of approach in actual top flight games.
 
Moyes won't start a lineup like this against any team with attackers with pace or creativity. Don't even think you'll see it agin liverpool
 
The problem with that formation is our best player at the moment couldn't slot into it. (Pienaar)
 
but with arteta, gravesen and cahill in the midfield wuold you watn to play him? keep him as a squad player, subtitue in this formation...and kick osman out all together...

...and yes youre right, moyes woud never try a formation like this anyway...would love it if he did though
 

Status
Not open for further replies.

Welcome

Join Grand Old Team to get involved in the Everton discussion. Signing up is quick, easy, and completely free.

Register

Shop

Back
Top