So, improving defensively to stay in the premier league. What do we need to do?

my mate and I were talking over the weekend about what we need to do to adapt next season. We both agreed that we don't really have any worries about the technical ability of our players or our ability to create and score goals. In my opinion our quality going forward is already premier league level although it may need to be supplemented by another quick wide option and a second striker.

The obvious conclusion, and one I think shared generally by everyone, is that we need to tighten up at the back and stop shipping in the soft goals. I think the encouraging thing when you look at the goals we tend to concede is that they SHOULD be capable of addressing with work on the training ground or minor tactical tweaks rather than requiring wholesale changes in personnel.

The biggest defensive issues we have by far in my view are marking from set peices/crosses and not closing down shots at the top of the box and I think in many cases the two are interlinked because the latter are coming from the second phase of play after the former. Some (forgive me I can;t recall who) posted a very telling stat the other day that 44% of our defensive set pieces result in the opposition having an attempt on goal which apparently was the worst in the division. This is not a surprise to me based on watching the games and I think is the biggest think Farke and his team need to work on defensivelythis summer. Too often we have all 11 of our players in our own box, goalside of the penalty spot and attacking players are still getting free headers or the ball is cleared to an unmarked player or players on the edge of the box who are able to have a shot. Premier league quality players will punish us if we do that. I very much hope, therefore, that Farke will be on the case.

Other than that what does everyine think? i assume we will not push the fullbacks on so much in certain games to give us more solidity (and in that respect our away record this season is encouraging as we have a good record in some of the more challenging away games), I can see us going three at the back occasionally as we did at Chelsea in the Cup. i also like the suggestion of sometimes playing Godfrey as a second holding midfielder and bringing in Klose who I think may feature more if he stays. On top of that I expect to see Leitner and Vrancic feature more as we look to up our ball retention nd beat the attacking press that some teams will play.

Of course we will be up against some seriously good players and we are going to concede but it seems to me that there are some fairly obvious areas that we should be able to improve even before we get into the transfer market.

On that note though it will be interesting to see if we sign a keeper. Krul has won me over to a degree in the second half of the season and watching his interviews after promotion you can;t help think he;s a great guy who is probably very important to have around the place with all our young players. I watched that interview and found myself thinking that yes we should give him a go again next season. You do, however, look at goals going in like that Blackburn goal on saturday and wonder whether Webber will be eying up a more athletic shot stopper gioven the amount of shots our keeper is likely to have to deal with in the premier league. We cannot keep letting teams back into games we are dominating like that.

Interestingly I think Shef U have entirely the opposite problem to us. they are good defensively which will give them half a chance but i donlt thin they have anything like the attacking quality or creativity we have so I can see them struggling to score and I think that may be harder/more expensive for them to address.

Posted By: Jim, Apr 30, 08:24:00