Having watched the highlights

we had more chances than I remembered and on another day perhaps Jerome's early chance goes in and its a different game.

However defensively:

1. We get undone far, far too often from basic long balls in behind the centre backs. This is nothing to do with the full backs getting caught up the pitch, we just don't seem to be able to deal with them and there seems to be a huge gap between our centre backs; and

2. We consistently seem to leave opposition players unmarked from crosses and set pieces. I've watched their goal over and over again and I still can't work out what our players are trying to do. We have three men lined up on the edge of the six yard box, one of which (Olsson) has his back turned to the cross. We have three men getting in each others way at the near post where they have only one player. Meanwhile their man is 10 yards out and completely unmarked. Are we employing some kind of zonal marking system because if we are it does not work and has not worked for the last 2 years.

What's particularly frustrating about this is that I feel these should be issues that can be addressed on the training pitch and yet they just don't seem to be able to get them sorted. We are fortunate in that we have good enough players to get away with it most weeks but just imagine how more effective a side we would be if we could couple our natural attacking flair with being effective at set pieces (both attacking and defensive) and just a bit more defensive discipline. If we are not going to be able to do it then I would rather we just went hell for leather, play our attacking players like Pritchard and outscore the opposition.

Posted By: Jim, Oct 24, 10:57:03