It's a tricky one Scottie, and of course you are absolutely spot on about our full backs. Funnily enough we were much harder to shut out like West Brom did for long periods of today when we had Glen Johnson at right back. Given the room they gave Clyne he would have come inside and hit it all day long. I'm not saying I don't think Clyne is a better player because he clearly is these days (one of my favourites in our team infact), but it's about the type of threat they provide. Equally, now Gerrard isn't around anymore we don't really possess a player who represents a threat at hitting it from outside the area. You could argue that Coutinho does, but it's with nothing like the regularity that Gerrard did in his pomp.
The bi-product of all that is teams can sit right in against us and not even really bother pressing the ball too much. They'll reason that nobody is going to hit it from distance and damage them, neither of the full backs is going to either zip down the wing and ping a cross over or come inside and shoot, and as long as they get enough bodies around Benteke or Origi to nullify the "knock down" option, they can defend on their own penalty spot. Funnily enough we demonstrated perfectly the best way to get round the system with our first goal. You need a ball into someone other than the heavily marked front man, a simple knock down and a second phase runner ready to sweep it in. Unfortunately that's another area we lack in, that was an unusually penetrating and threatening run from Henderson. Mostly our midfielders don't get into goalscoring positions.
So how do we improve it? Well we do have the option of not playing a Benteke or an Origi at all as many have suggested, trying to pass and fiddle our way through the gaps. I personally don't think this is the answer, but I suppose we could give it a go. The other option is to do exactly what we did for the first goal today, only more regularly and with a couple of add ons. Firstly I'd have the lads out practicing shooting from range. Firmino looks to me like he can dig it, and I'd like to see us working on some patterns where he loops in behind the man with his back to goal in possession, ready for the roll back and first time hit. He only needs to score a couple or get close to doing it and the defence will begin to close him down, that's good though as it draws one or two of them out the line at least. I'd like to see us properly overlap with fullbacks and cross on the run, get the ball flying accross the box at various heights. Lastly I'd like to see us do what we did today for the first goal, get midfielders arriving in the box looking for scraps.
Every action in football has a positive and a negative reaction. At the moment we're letting teams defend ridiculously deep against us and reap all the positives which it offers. We aren't though inflicting any of the negatives, play a bit smarter and they'll think twice about defending on the edge of their own box all the time.
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