Rowley87, on 22 January 2012 - 11:46 AM, said:
I've officially gone off AVB. I'm not calling for him to be sacked, but the only time he's impressed me this season were his tactics against Valencia at home.
The subs he makes are strange, and are always left too late to make any real impact. He seems to make the changes at the 75th minute mark. I think we can all agree that yesterdays game needed changes at half time, or at least the 60th minute. But when he finally made the change, it was a petty irrational like for like change because of Torres' missed chance. Daniel Sturridge had to be the the player to come off, he was absent all game.
The wingers don't run to the bylines anymore. You can tell they've been instructed this way. Bosingwa had so many chances to run the ball down there, but it was like there was some invisible shield stopping him. I think we went down there twice the whole game, the first time led to that Torres chance, the second time was that Lukaku run. It's obvious to me, that things happen when we're allowed to run down there. Chelsea struggle to defend crosses from the byline, so why isn't it obvious to AVB that this is a good form of attack? Use it!
Why wasn't Cahill playing? surely he's match fit, he was playing for Bolton last weekend. Why buy a player if you don't know where to put him? again, i scratch my head.
Then at the end of the game I find out that the team are now catching a flight to Spain for a team building exercise. What on earth is going on in the camp? I'm not expecting a good return against QPR next weekend.
I don't think it is a specific instruction not to get to the by-line. On the right, we have Sturridge who's about as confident crossing the ball with right foot (which he'd have to do from that position) as I am crossing with my left testicle. So it's a position he doesn't want to get into. Bosingwa is a defender and getting that far forward is a bad idea for defenders in general as you get caught that far up, you have no chance of getting back. Against certain sides that's not too much of an issue, like yesterday it wouldn't have been too much of a problem, but it tends to be something that Defenders don't like doing (Notable exceptions being Alves and Cole on our other side, but I'll get to that in a minute). The times that Bos was willing to get to the by-line, he had Sturridge or Ramires behind him to cover, so it was an option.
On the other wing, we have Mata who doesn't stay there very often, but when he does is certainly willing to try and get there, but he isn't there often enough for it to be a main route of attack. Cole has to provide the width, but a lot of the time he's all we have on that side. So he's usually got two men to beat to get to the by-line or failing that he'll at least have no cover which makes it a big risk for the counter.
Cahill wasn't playing for two reasons. One, he's going to have to adjust to our system. Two, he wasn't going to be needed today. We were always likely to have a spare man at the back, so why not have a more attacking centre back to take advantage of that. Incidentally Luiz was excellent today.
On to the subs, in general they have been lacking in terms of invention, but today he was forced into making one early on which changed his options and meant rolling the dice too early could leave us down to 10 men if we had another injury. I don't think his timing of substitutions in general is an issue at all and the actual subs he makes is limited by the options he has, although this is compounded by him not trusting Kalou and Malouda, but plenty on here would agree with his assessment there.
Spiller86, on 22 January 2012 - 12:08 PM, said:
To be fair to bosingwa, he did get one cross in. The one Torres missed from.
We really didn't play that badly. Replay is kinder to us. We just didn't finish well enough.
Wasn't that one deflected off a defender?
Also, are you saying I was right in what I said about the game at the time?
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