I got to thinking this morning about our away matches principally, at top teams. In many ways, our performances have been remarkably similar and the games themselves have panned out in the same way. Given we've got away matches at Man City and Arsenal coming up very shortly, it might be time to look at our approach if we want to become a top team ourselves again.
So the games I'm on about are Man U away, Chelsea away and Tottenham away. Now to my mind, in all three we went into the matches with an inferiority complex and never did ourselves any kind of justice for the first hour. We confused keeping posession with controlling the game, and whats more our determination to do the former at all costs allowed the home teams to press us high and put us under pressure. In all three matches the approach was singularly unsuccessful, and we were left in a situation where we had to chase the game. Here's the rub though, in all three matches once we had to chase the game we looked like a much better side.
In the Chelsea match we only had to come back from one down thanks to some dodgy finishing from them. Most Chelsea fans I've talked to since reckon they were well and truly hanging onto a point at the end. At Spurs and Man U we got battered, but once we had a bit of a go towards the last third of the match we looked much the better team on view.
So my point is this. Lets go to the Emirtes and the Etihaad and lets have a go. Lets play Suarez AND Sturridge AND Borini, and lets see if teams are quite so willing then to press us so high up. Lets go into both games and genuinely try and win them, not just paying lip service to "lets win if we can". See, that's what big teams do. The Mancs of both colours go Away and try to win. Yes they'll defend, and defend properly when they have to, but when they've got the ball they'll flood forward in numbers. I've long thought that as a bunch of players and as a bunch of fans we're far more comfortable when we go for it than we are if we "hold what we have" and all that nonsense. Rafa's best season was when he "took off the shackles" and I think Brendan is going to have to realise it too.
If I was playing against us, I'd want us to try and sit in and defend. Why? Cos we ain't that good at it. Lets do what teams don't want us to do, front foot from now on please.
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