So having watched a few games now, both friendly and League, I have noticed something that is creeping into our side. The Man city game showed this perfectly and was the reason why they scored more than we did. Simply put, we tried to hard and did not work as a team, I shall explain.
At the moment we seem to be a hurry, a hurry to show everyone that last season was not a fluke, as well as trying to make up for the loss of Saurez. The attack still seems to gel ok, but I would still like to see them just keep it simple sometimes. Too many players trying to hard to do it on their own, if a pass was made a few seconds earlier, even a fraction of a second earlier with a simple pass, it may have created a shot on goal but more likely retained possession. Against City, we saw this perfectly. City didn’t really try do us one on one, they know our defenders can mark you out the game, all they did was look for the space and knock the ball there with a simple pass. Where we on the other hand, were trying to run around one two many opponents, nearly every attack, when we did pass it, it was often in the heavily congested central area outside the box and most of the time we lost the ball.
I would just like to us to pass it around more, draw the opposition out if they have already got back and set. The time for beating opposition with skill is when you have the space to run at them (counter attack), back to goal and turn (see GOD against Villa).
Another thing that might help us retain the ball while attacking, would be the back four pushed further up and supporting, looking for clearances that can be rolled (not humped back in). When pushed up like this, you need pace to cover the initial counter, we have that now so close that gap between Defence and Midfield.
YNWA a promising start, calm down the glue will come!