I've said it all along, you play 2nd rated players like Momo, JAR and DK, that's what you deserve at best. We only attack in the last 10 minutes, a common feature in our games lately. Doesn't Rafa learn, you can't win games with these kind of tactics agains lesser opponents. We can't even string together decent passes to threathen the oppositon goal, what he does in training is best left to imagination, shocking. Its clear to see that once we reached the opposition 4th quarter we're totally lost, we don't know what to do with the ball, and next you know JC is pumping the ball upfield. Again i need to stress that pumping the ball upwards is a coommon feature in our game lately and DK don't have the height to win these high balls. Immediate training to improve on passes must be done and tactical change, put more bite in the attack.
Yes, Rafa kept on saying we've dominated games, (i'm sick an tired of hearing that week in week out) but what's the point if you are not taking full advantage of it to score goals? We've played to the tune of Balckburn yesterday, they knew that we're solid in defence, so they allow us to dominate without the threat to score, so they create those few odd achences where 2 nearly went in. If it had we're done.
Compare ourselves against the top 3, their forwards/midfielders have a very good understanding among themselves on movement and positioning and they're far more superior than us, that's where that separates between us and them and it is clearly shown in the number of goals they have scored.
Rafa, you must know the strength and weaknesss of your players, you have to work to the strength of your players and not expose their weaknesses, eg. you can't ask DK to dribble pass defenders, create scorong chances and score because he doesn't have the skills and speed to do that. He needs to have that predator instinct to park himself at the right place and the right time to score, he's must very much like the Gary Lineker.
Next, we've Ryan Babel. Raw he may be, but he has the skills and speeed, but again Rafa can't ask him to dribble from the 3rd quarter to the 4th quarter and create scoring opportunitoes for himself or others, no opposition defender would be so generous to allow him to do that. He needs someone to feed him the ball at the last quarter of the opposition half , with the speed he possesses, go pass defender(s) from there.
Lastly, Rafa came blasting away and said, " ... yeah we should have won the game with the chances that we had". Learn from Arsenal, if you've create enough chances and yet you can't score, start to create more till you score. When we have the quality of strikers that we have at this mo. we are crying out loud for more chances.
Rafa needs to sit back and take a long and hard look at his tactics, training and strength/weakneses of his players and make swift changes, otherwise, it's going to be a long and hard season for all of us supporters.
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