Muriel really looks a bit fat while warming up there… could do well for my local 5 a side team as a lone striker though.
Cartagena are too amateur-ish for anything to count and get the hopes up, but we’re playing well in overall. Happy that Geis is getting minutes and happy for Soria and his captain’s armband.
Also Ganso should start in every match vs. teams that are not in top 6 in La Liga.
Another assist from Ganso gives Muriel (with lots of work to do) the third goal, hardly celebrates, sad.
I looked at it more of being respectful than lack of enthusiasm, but yeah he’s eating too many croquettes in Sevilla.
I’d play Ganso every game, players that can pass divinely with either foot are few and far between.
Pizarro for Krohn-Delhi minute 59
Ha ha, or Cruzcampo.
So Are we really playing with 0 natural CBs? Navas on for Lenglet.
Or did i miss something?
Great to see us winning comfortably tonight! Vamos mi sevilla! We need that win to get confidence back. Then bring on legenes and Moscow. Huge games
We can do it though! We sevilla and never give up! We can reverse this and stil have a super season
It was pretty much a pair of Geis-Pizarro at CB by the end of the match, none of them CB by trade.
Good, but nothing special or highly remarkable. Let’s see if we can keep the morale up for the tough match vs. Leganes on Saturday. Also will be finally playing at home after a whole month of away games.
Great game for Corchia. Carole very solid. What worries me is the amount of offsides against Muriel, like Immobile, coming from Italian football they don’t seem to appreciate the Spanish game. Pizarro very average. Correa disappeared in the second half, Sarabia also faded out. Still no identity to the football, even against 2b side. But the victory will help.
Next game changed to 10:30 pm instead of 4:00 pm. Still lots of heat arounf now and again. At least they’re listening to us.
Why did WBY go off at half?
I would agree that Ganso should start every game, he may be the “invisible man” for 80% of the game, but when he actually does something it’s at times magical.
I’m still worried that even playing 4 at the back we leave ourselves wide open to counters down our left. Once Carole or whoever is playing in the LB pos gets forward Lenglet should move across to cover instead of standing around ball watching.A decent team would have punished us tonight. Another worry is who to play up front? Both our strikers don’t thrill me at the moment.
Overall it was a good confidence builder after the last 3 results, let’s hope we can carry it on to Saturday and get another win.
Talking about the kick off time change re game on Saturday it’s good & bad news for me. The good news is that I won’t fry in the 30+c heat but the bad news is that it will be well after 2am before I get home. Maybe a siesta in the afternoon before I leave for Sevilla will help
Nice to see we won for once, sure the opposition is 2b liga but anything to build up some momentum and morale is more than welcome, hell I’d arrange a senior vs atletico team matchup and let the latter be beaten 10-0 if that helps.
We’re stuck with the current roster till the winter window at the earliest so just play what we got, I like what Carole provides and we should look at when to make him a permanent signing, Corchia should also start more often. It’s also nice to see some of the other midfield players get some run-out. Interestingly, we have 5 wins and 1 draw in the 6 games Ganso has appeared in - the x-factor!
Reviewing the game turned up something surprising, a real problem with our crosses, not for their quality but the impossible task of connecting with another player in a goal scoring position. When they’re pulled back a little then there’s usually someone there, but too advanced or too far back. The alternative is a normal cross between penalty spot an goalkeeper, that is pointless, nobody there. Then there’s the deeper cross, similarly, none of our players arriving in time. It’s like our play is not designed for cross and header, if we get past the wingback to the byeline then we have to work it back and across the penalty box, it’s asking a lot, a very demanding and long-winded way to score.
It needs attending to.
Playing through the middle is much tighter but our touch is much more defined like with the Correa goal
The tackle on Ganso in minute 88 could put Ganso out for a while, it was a real shocker, even though he came back on, he might still need the medics on that.
Lenglet got left behind for pace twice by the Cartagena right winger.
Most observable though is the cavalier defensive rotations leaving nobody in charge and huge spaces everywhere.
Whatever is wrong, it can be fixed, but we need to be good at everything at Champions league level, we can’t afford to have weaknesses in free-kicks, corners, positional sense, goalkeeping or anything. It all has to be top quality.
Krychowiak is loaned out to West Brom by PSG, how I wish we could get him back alongside Nzonzi.
It was a week ago or so that I thought about the crossing issue. You analyzed it perfectly, but I was wondering in my head, what the hell is wrong that we’re not scoring any goals from the crosses.
Now of course Navas’s crosses were never too good, but now even Escudero’s crosses aren’t working, nor Sarabia’s… so something is definitely wrong. We’re also crap at set pieces, which used to be our strength with Emery, and the counter attack is definitely lost. Now Valencia are the counter attacking model to follow. We lost it with Sampaoli and can’t seem to get it back. I miss the counter attacking days under Emery… especially the ones that involved Vidal in the right flank.
If we don’t play the counter then wingers have lost half their usefulness, and set-pieces are a great way to find chances in the liga but we keep letting muriel take them for some reason.
Ganso’s two flicks directly led to the goals, he should start on Saturday if he could make it.
I came to the conclusion that crosses were not the way forward in football, they were useless if you needed a quick goal because most crosses are eaten up by the central defenders or goalkeeper. Using Barca as a reference however it’s another story, six or seven years ago they only used the wings as temporary storage of possession, the play would inevitably come back inside and Messi would then go through the middle and score. But now, they are using the wings much more and get to the byeline, pull the ball back and whether it’s the left side or right side, you can guarantee Messi is there and will usually score (well sometimes it’s Messi pulling the ball back for Suarez).
I guess it’s using the players you’ve got, WBY doesn’t have much presence even when he’s there ready and waiting but he’s usually out of position working in the build up.
In summary, I prefer to see the ball go through the centre with Ganso, Vazquez and Correa involved, and I don’t mind the occasional route 1 goalkeeper to centre forward long ball. But we’re about five years behind Barcelona with their wing play.