Your posts are superb mate , they really are , enjoying reading them whilst Juan is away , where is he by the way ?
Hehe. Maybe we can start an MOTD bingo/sweepstake, with bonus points for every time Linekar makes a pun or 'joke' that would make Keith Chegwin cringe with shame and make Timmy Mallet cry tears of embarrassment.
No idea where Juan is, as it happens, though he does evil and cynical a lot better and funnier than I do I must say.
I realise there are different tactics. But i am watching the same side make the same mistakes as they did last season. Granted the defending system has changed, but the general play (of most league games so far) is as static as it was in Rafa's last year. It's the same problems rolling into this year, with other problems of Roy's (such as the crosses coming in). It's just going to take a bit of time for Roy to get Rafa's tactics out of the players, and his own implemented.
Ah fair does, I get you now. What you've posted there is totally fair enough, I agree with that analysis almost completley.
Nothing to do with Rafa's tactics from last season ffs
No, it makes sense in terms of 'it takes time for players to stop doing what they would under the old system and embrace the new'. Rafa himself probably played to that a lot - it was a long time before we truly changed Houllier's shape, and the adjustment in tactics was very gradual. Far more gradual than Roy's attempting, from what I can see so far.
For example, I'm seeing Torres still trying to play as he did under Rafa - it worked in those tactics but under Roy's it's bordering on a liability to have a lone striker who can't/won't hold the ball up. It hugely exacerbates the inherent gap between midfield and attack. That may well be a case of Roy needing to 'get out' of Rafa's way of doing things, and getting him to buy into his approach - though I suspect it'll take some good results in the next few weeks for Torres to buy into anything, if that's where the problem is.
