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Post by spitthedog on Mar 1, 2020 13:15:57 GMT
I can't understand why we changed our game plan so dramatically after 70 minutes yesterday in a game we were totally dominating and winning.
Why didn't we just stick to the game plan that was working against a team bottom of the table???
Up to then they had posed zero threat, yet we changed our plan which gave them the opportunity to push forward and believe that they could get something out of the game!!...disappointing especially against such poor opposition.
Any ideas?
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Post by trincostokie on Mar 1, 2020 13:23:22 GMT
Nope...although I don't agree with you that we were totally dominating until the 70th minute. I thought we were pretty shite for the entire second half  |
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Post by spitthedog on Mar 1, 2020 13:35:55 GMT
Nope...although I don't agree with you that we were totally dominating until the 70th minute. I thought we were pretty shite for the entire second half that's fair enough...but we were very comfortable I thought and they were posing very little threat. We were winning well because we pressed them and they couldn't handle it....so my question is...why wouldn't you do that until the end of the game??? |
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Post by trincostokie on Mar 1, 2020 16:33:39 GMT
Nope...although I don't agree with you that we were totally dominating until the 70th minute. I thought we were pretty shite for the entire second half that's fair enough...but we were very comfortable I thought and they were posing very little threat. We were winning well because we pressed them and they couldn't handle it....so my question is...why wouldn't you do that until the end of the game??? My "Nope" was in response to your any ideas why we changed things when what we had been doing had been so effective for the first 45...so I'm basically agreeing with you, except for your point about us being totally dominant until the 70th minute, as I thought we offered nothing offensively second half, couldn't string 2 passes together and the players looked more like they were playing with a feckin' hand grenade with the pin removed rather than a football, such was their haste to get rid of it... |
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Post by spitthedog on Mar 1, 2020 16:45:31 GMT
that's fair enough...but we were very comfortable I thought and they were posing very little threat. We were winning well because we pressed them and they couldn't handle it....so my question is...why wouldn't you do that until the end of the game??? My "Nope" was in response to your any ideas why we changed things when what we had been doing had been so effective for the first 45...so I'm basically agreeing with you, except for your point about us being totally dominant until the 70th minute, as I thought we offered nothing offensively second half, couldn't string 2 passes together and the players looked more like they were playing with a feckin' hand grenade with the pin removed rather than a football, such was their haste to get rid of it... I would say our tactics were effective, even though we weren't playing particularly well. Effective because they never looked like getting through us. They could only get through us at the end because we were prepared to retreat back to our goal-line and took out any offensive options. After we took off Powell and Ince (who were not playing well...but offered outlets moving forward) some of our players performances dropped notably (Allen had played well up until then and Cousins had nowhere to play the ball forward apart from their corner flag.) I just thought we self-destructed yesterday and changed a formation that was working and we lost control of the game needlessly. In the lead up the goal Cousins lost the ball for probably the first time in the game because there was nobody to pass it to ahead of him, they crowded him with numbers because they were allowed to push forward from the back and didn't need to mark anyone at the back only Gregory (what more to say!!!) I just watched Wolves winning 3-2 away at Spurs playing 2 up front until the final whistle, substituted a forward for a forward in the 91st minute!!!...so they could comfortably keep the ball in Spurs half. |
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Post by trincostokie on Mar 1, 2020 17:02:49 GMT
My "Nope" was in response to your any ideas why we changed things when what we had been doing had been so effective for the first 45...so I'm basically agreeing with you, except for your point about us being totally dominant until the 70th minute, as I thought we offered nothing offensively second half, couldn't string 2 passes together and the players looked more like they were playing with a feckin' hand grenade with the pin removed rather than a football, such was their haste to get rid of it... I would say our tactics were effective, even though we weren't playing particularly well. Effective because they never looked like getting through us. They could only get through us at the end because we were prepared to retreat back to our goal-line and took out any offensive options. After we took off Powell and Ince (who were not playing well...but offered outlets moving forward) some of our players performances dropped notably (Allen had played well up until then and Cousins had nowhere to play the ball forward apart from their corner flag.) I just thought we self-destructed yesterday and changed a formation that was working and we lost control of the game needlessly. In the lead up the goal Cousins lost the ball for probably the first time in the game because there was nobody to pass it to ahead of him, they crowded him with numbers because they were allowed to push forward from the back and didn't need to mark anyone at the back only Gregory (what more to say!!!) I just watched Wolves winning 3-2 away at Spurs playing 2 up front until the final whistle, substituted a forward for a forward in the 91st minute!!!...so they could comfortably keep the ball in Spurs half. Maybe it's just semantics then Spit, me old mucker...for me there's a world of difference between being defensively solid and being dominant...the latter suggests to me that the game was played almost exclusively in Luton's half, which it clearly wasn't in the second half...I agree with everything else though  |
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Post by onepara on Mar 1, 2020 18:02:47 GMT
The Manager has this negative side that clicks in about 20 mins from full time. He takes front men off & puts defenders on. He doesn't think that the team are good for the 90 mins. How many times has he changed things around & then the game has gone against us afterwards. He has no positive thinking towards the end of the games. Some of his choice of subs are very puzzling.
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Post by lawrieleslie on Mar 2, 2020 8:43:37 GMT
Holding on to one goal and sometimes two goal leads has been a contention since early days of PL. Perhaps one of our statistical gurus could run this through our results over last 12 years. .......i.e. in how many games have we lost the lead and gone on to lose or draw after being one or two goals up.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2020 9:13:38 GMT
O’Neill said the players looked really leggy second half. Considering the state of some of the players he inherited I have no reason to doubt that. This would be a contributing factor to being unable to stay on the front foot all game......
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2020 9:50:37 GMT
O'Neill wasn't comfortable with having Ince and Powell providing our first line of defence much longer, so he subbed them in order to have players more designed to defend.
But by doing so he also withdrew the two only options for holding on to the ball to take the pressure off the defence, not necessarily expecting those players to score, but to still represent danger to the Luton team, so they'd be keeping one or two players back.
By removing those two options, O'Neill also enabled Luton to push even further forward with more men, creating even more danger than before. So I'd say that O'Neill scored at least half an own goal by changing the game plan. Still it needed a moment of madness to be completed.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2020 10:54:37 GMT
O’Neill said the players looked really leggy second half. Considering the state of some of the players he inherited I have no reason to doubt that. This would be a contributing factor to being unable to stay on the front foot all game...... But he could still have sent Campbell on for 15 mins and OB to keep up the power balance. If you compare to the Barca-Real game yesterday - just to get our comparisons on the same level - what Zidane did was to send on another forward who then promptly scored. But he could have sat back once they went ahead, but knowing his own defence he knew that would invite trouble. Sadly O'Neill didn't know what he was doing, so he just made us Irish. |
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