I mean look at how many people call it "Brexitball" and all that nonsense, despite the fact that we're playing a 4-3-2-1 or 4-3-3 most weeks and we don't even lump it because there's no one up top. Even all that aside as well I think most of us love, or at least should love, this kind of football. Suits the squad, gets us stuck in and gets the fans more up for it too.
We'll have games like Arsenal where we get battered but that's down to sheer quality of player more than anything. I don't understand anyone who watches this Sean Dyche team and isn't satisfied given some of the slop we've been served up in the past 2 decades. A ruthlessly effective manager getting the absolute last drop out of this bunch, you'd swear we went back to Allardyce going 5 games without a shot on target or whatever that record was.
Hilarious that if we actually had a centre forward from when Dyche came in we'd be blowing some teams away, we clearly create the chances now, where we didn't before. Again, anyone with eyes and without bias can see the improvement and what a good job Dyche has done so far, playing exactly the type of football we'd love.
There’s zero comparison between Dyche’s football and Allardyce’s, absolutely zero. Like you said there were games we didn’t even have a shot under Allardyce and he had a whole array of expensive players at his disposal. We’ve carried a threat under Dyche every single game and it’s been from open play as well as set pieces. He’s maximising the strength of every player we have to be effective.
It’s ironic when you consider that one of the biggest proponents of long balls to a big man is Thomas Frank, a favourite of some on here, some were even suggesting we should copy the goalkick to a big man flick on routine they scored from. One of the teams who do the most aimless crossing in the league is Liverpool, their whole game is either a direct counter attack or more often than not now playing it outwide for the fullback to lash into the box as many times as possible. City and Liverpool both score more goals from a keeper lashing it down the pitch to their striker than anyone else.
Yet this doesn’t bother people because the media don’t label this direct football whereas Dyche gets labelled with this even though he’s hardly doing any of these things. Coleman and Myko are barely crossing the ball, we’re not going long to Gray at all in open play or goal kicks, and we certainly don’t build our attacks from a big man holding it up.
It just reminds me of when we were playing our best stuff under
Moyes, Arteta Pienaar Osman Cahill Yakubu Baines, barely a bloke over 6ft in there, lovely interplay between midfield schemers to open teams up. Yet all you’d hear from fans is how Everton were a direct long ball team, very physical, and Baines was a threat from set pieces. Just lazy lazy coverage especially as half the time that team was getting undone by some massive grock Chelsea or Liverpool team playing long ball all game and scoring set pieces on us.
