Analysis of the goal conceded against Sunderland (12/2)


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Another battling win where we showed True Grit (like it?!) and determination. The goal we conceded was hard to take; with Gallas off the pitch to change his boots, Sandro filling in at centre back, Corluka nowhere near deep enough under the circumstances, and Gyan eventually afforded far too much room.

Redknapp explained the Gallas situation after the game:

“I was upset about it and I told William at half-time. He had had an injection in his ankle before the game and they bandaged his ankle maybe too tight and he was in a lot of pain. He felt his boots were too tight on him.”

Gyan’s goal

Sunderland launch an attack down their left through Bardsley, knowing that Gallas is off the pitch.

Kieran Richardson finds space beyond Pienaar and Corluka down the left flank, and the ball is played out to him.

Sandro, who was effectively filling in for Gallas, has to come out to Richardson (as Corluka is caught upfield), but Jenas has not dropped in, leaving Dawson with Gyan and Sessegnon to mark.

Gyan gets the ball instantly under control with a neat first touch, and swivels quickly to get his shot away.

The strike goes through Dawson’s legs and across Gomes into the far corner.

Little harsh for Redknapp to blame Gallas for the situation; if he was suffering, he needed to change boots, but we should have re-organised properly instead of reverting to a temporary three, with Pienaar and Corluka far too high up the pitch.

Incidentally, what a good player Gyan is – clearly well-suited to Premier League football, and he would have been an upgrade on our strikers last summer in my opinion.

Finally, I hope that we put in a better defensive performance tonight than we have in recent weeks, as there’s no doubt that if we allow the likes of Ibrahimovic and Pato that much space tonight, we will be punished. The (probable) enforced midfield pairing of Palacios and Sandro will give our defence extra protection, but it is vital that Gallas and Dawson to mark tightly.

Analysis of the goal conceded against Bolton Wanderers (5/2)


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We got there in the end!

Sturridge’s goal

Bolton launch a counter from well inside their own half – Assou-Ekotto and Palacios try to close Mark Davies, but he squeezes a pass towards Sturridge.

The pass doesn’t quite make it to it’s intended recipient, and instead it is diverted towards Dawson.

Reaching the pass, Dawson should be clearing this.

Instead, he attempts to keep possession, and nudges the ball forward into a congested centre circle. Davies picks up the ball again, and charges forward.

Davies drives at the heart of our defence. Sturridge pulls away to the right, totally unmarked, as Assou-Ekotto has been caught upfield. Gallas has to position himself centrally as there is a man between him and Corluka.

Davies gets a little fortunate with his pass to Sturridge, getting it through Dawson’s legs. The weight is perfect, though, and it doesn’t allow Palacios or Gallas to get close enough to Sturridge.

He gets his shot away, but it is not as he intended. He attempts to curl the ball into the far corner, but instead places it into the centre of the goal.

Unfortunately for Gomes, it somehow squirms under his body. A really poor piece of goalkeeping.

Dawson has been uncharacteristically poor in his last two appearances, making decisions to play out, when he has built a career on being a “safety first” type defender. I don’t think he has been helped by being moved to the left to accommodate Gallas, but then his mistakes against Fulham came when he was positioned on the right of the centre backs.

I’d like to think that Gomes and Dawson bought Kranjcar a lemonade on Saturday evening.

Analysis of the goals conceded against Fulham (30/01)


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A disasterous performance!

Murphy’s first goal.

Unfortunately the clips that I’ve managed to find don’t show the full passage of play in all of it’s hideous glory. For those that didn’t see it, Dawson plays a pass to Hutton without looking, and Dempsey nips in to take advantage. Hutton manages to shepherd him wide, and it seems like the danger has been averted.

Hutton then suddenly makes a tackle with his left foot (1. he should stay on his feet, and 2. why not his right?!), totally missing the ball, and instead tripping Dempsey. It’s unfortunately a nailed-on penalty.

Murphy is an excellent penalty taker, but this isn’t his finest effort. It still nestles in the corner, though.

Murphy’s second goal.

From bad to worse.

Dawson is in possession on the edge of the box, with Dembele (who is quite quick) pressing.

Inexplicably he tries a Cruyff turn to try to retain possession.

Dembele steals the ball, and bursts into the box.

Dawson makes a desperate grab for his shirt. Credit to Dembele – he plays on and gets a shot away. Phil Dowd however pulls play back, awards the penalty, and sends Dawson off. Some have argued that Bassong was coming round on the cover, and that a red card was harsh – I have to disagree. The fact that Dembele got a shot away unchallenged in spite of having his shirt pulled illustrates that this was a clear goal-scoring opportunity and, by the letter of the law, it was the correct decision.

Murphy passes this one into the other corner with ease.

 
Hangeland’s goal.

Another poor piece of defending, this time from a set piece. Clearly shaken by the events of the previous few minutes, our defence totally loses concentration. Duff’s corner to the near post is flicked on by, of all people, Andrew Johnson, who has easily lost Assou-Ekotto.

Bassong is marking the danger man, Hangeland.

But Bassong is watching the ball, and not paying close attention to what Hangeland is doing.

This leaves a painfully simple tap-in at the back post. Shambolic!

Dembele’s goal.

Bassong’s day doesn’t get much better, as he picks up from where Dawson left off.

He has followed Dembele to the halfway line (after Sandro was taken off, we had no dedicated holding midfield player as such, with Modric generally the deepest).

Dembele faces Bassong up – he can clearly see a huge space in behind him, and fancies his chances.

A slight shimmy is all it takes.

He’s round Bassong, and running at Gallas, who now has to leave his man and come across.

Watching the video shows how Bassong just ambles back – he’s totally given up on retrieving the situation. Gallas comes across, but doesn’t do enough to stop him getting the shot away.

Another slight sideways movement is enough to buy Dembele the space to unleash the shot, and he plants it in the bottom corner. Is Gomes at full stretch? Hard to blame him really, it’s pretty well struck. A very poor piece of decision-making from Bassong, and then a real lack of desire to get back and make the challenge.

Analysis of the goal conceded against Newcastle (22/01)


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Coloccini’s goal

A throw in is taken on the right. The eventual scorer, Coloccini, has stayed forward from a previous set piece, and is on the far side of the pitch. Lennon has tucked round, and Hutton is staying wide to keep an eye on Coloccini.

The ball is worked back to Guthrie, and we have maintained our shape.

Guthrie looks to angle a diagonal ball – Coloccini is alive to this, but Hutton isn’t, and now has a problem, with Coloccini on his shoulder.

As the ball drops, Hutton is in no-man’s land unless he has read the flight.

But he hasn’t, and Coloccini’s first touch on his chest takes him inside Hutton, giving him a yard of space to get a shot away. Gallas has read the danger, but can’t get across quickly enough due to the expert chest trap.

It’s a decent enough strike, but there’s no way that this should be going in.

Cudicini makes a total hash of the save, and it flies off his hands into the far corner.

Not a pretty goal to concede; although Guthrie’s well-flighted pass and Collocini’s chest trap were excellent, we defended it poorly. In fact, having had such a good game against Manchester United, Hutton had a poor one against Newcastle.

The United game, clean sheets, blunt strikers, and more general points


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We played well and dominated on Sunday, and crucially kept another clean sheet.

The return of Dawson has heralded a return to defensive form, whereby we have kept 4 clean sheets in 9 games albeit one against Charlton); 44.4%. We had previously kept 3 in 23; 13%. It is no coincidence, although I was a little disappointed that he once again started on the left of the centre back pairing to accommodate Gallas. I was liking the look of the Dawson/Kaboul partnership, which I see as a long-term pairing, and would like to see us go with these two (with Dawson able to revert to the right, as Kaboul is equally comfortable on either side).

The only disappointing element of the game was that, despite our dominance, we failed to score and to go on to win the game. We had a decent number of shots in the game (19), but only managed 2 on target. Crouch had 3 efforts, all off-target, van der Vaart had 6, with 1 on target, 3blocked and 2 off target. Crouch had arguably the best chance of the game when he beat Ferdinand to a fantastic Hutton cross (after a wonderful piece of play from Modric), but was unable to, as Andy Gray likes to say, “sort out his feet”, and directed the ball wide.

Crouch had a poor game, completing only 8 out of 23 passes. Indeed, Football 365 commented that “Peter Crouch’s pass completion rate of 32% [sic] v United was the worst of any Premier League starter this weekend”.

The Chalkboard below illustrates how lacking his hold up play was, with the red arrows showing incomplete passes. When he does successfully hold the ball up, he seems to do so by coming so deep (possibly to evade the centre back, knowing that he will be out-muscled?) that he eventually passes the ball back towards our own centre backs.

His aerial battles were also disappointing; again, the Chalkboard below illustrates this:

He won 2 out of 5 challenges in the box, with one of them shown below:

In this instance, he needs to nod the ball down to van der Vart to allow the shot, but he actually heads the ball directly up in the air under pressure from Vidic, a player over whom he has a 5 inch height advantage. The move ends when van der Vaart retrieves the ball and goes down in the corner of the box, appealing for a penalty.

Redknapp’s comments in the Evening Standard were frustrating to say the least.

“I said at half-time we had to try to keep playing as much as we can, play into Luka Modric and Rafa — that’s how we were looking to play — but when they close and press you sometimes, it’s not always easy.

You have got to be brave to play some balls — you will play a tight ball into Luka Modric with someone closing him but you might not play it to some other people for fear of losing the ball and then bang, it’s in the back of your net.

When you are a defender and you are looking to play a little ball into the middle of the park but your team-mates are getting closed down, your first instinct is to look long.

They are not an easy team to go long against because both centre-halves are fantastic in the air, especially with Vidic who heads it unbelievably well.

So it was a problem but you also have a problem though if you play two little strikers — if you play Van der Vaart with Defoe and they press you, how do you get out?

It is very difficult then to play through a top-class team.

You have got to play perfect football to get balls into Defoe or Van der Vaart when you have got two tiny guys up front for you. You need Crouch from set-plays, too.”

Whilst I don’t have a particular issue with Crouch, I have written on the subject of our strikers before – see my previous article ‘Why Pavlyuchenko should be first choice in the league (warning, stat alert!)‘. For many, Defoe was the logical choice yesterday – back in goal-scoring form after notching twice against Charlton, and able to stretch the United defenders with runs in behind. Vidic has been exploited in this manner before – notably against Torres. He is also prone to being beaten by good movement – indeed, van der Vaart showed this by beating him to a near post header after a clever run.

Whilst I can see the point that Redknapp is trying to make, based on yesterday’s game, I disagree. United stopped pressing our centre backs, instead intent on blocking space in midfield, almost encouraging the long ball to Crouch. They did this because they knew that Vidic had the beating of him in the air, and was dominating him when the ball came in to his feet. Thankfully, our centre backs chose to be patient, and were happy to keep possession by shuffling the ball across the back line before we were able to get it to Modric – as usual, he didn’t let us down – the Chalkboard below illustrates this well:

Modric dictated play far more than Carrick, who was often wasteful in possession, and ended up playing more as an auxiliary centre back.

Redknapp suggests that Crouch is a useful out ball but, in my opinion, we were dominating the game to an extent that an out ball wasn’t necessary – and in my opinion, a player to make a burst in behind and stretch the defence was.

Finally, the last disappointing element was Redknapp’s use of substitutes. Having seen how little impact the Crouch/van der Vaart partnership was making, it would have been wise to make a change at half-time, bringing on a forward to run into the channels, and in behind the centre backs. Instead, Redknapp waited until the 78th minute to bring on Defoe. After the game, Redknapp said:

“When a team goes down to 10 they’ve still got two banks of four, they’ve still got their shape about them. It’s not easy. We were open as a barn door with 15 minutes left, with Van der Vaart and Modric in the centre of midfield, two strikers and two wingers. A point is okay. Anyone taking points off Man United is doing well.”

I tend to disagree again – we were open, but not in a positive, attacking way. We had no holding midfield player, but neither did we have anyone willing to make a run from deep to get in behind the defenders. Van der Vaart looked lost when he dropped deeper, and Jenas may have been a better option – the injection of pace would have helped too.

Whilst it is notoriously difficult to play against 10 men (mainly due to psychology in my opinion), we barely tested Fletcher at right back, and we created very little. Defoe had so little time to get into the game, that he found it difficult, and Pavlyuchenko was left on the bench.