Much like our "pace goals", the goals we are forcing through counter-pressing count just as much as any other, doesn't matter if you think City's have more of a sense of inevitability about them.
Even if we ever beat City to the league, I'll bet we won't quite look as much as if it was a Playstation game during our campaign. What they're up to requires an oil state, it isn't natural.
There's no problem with forcing in the goals and they all count, just highlighting possible areas where we can still improve to score more. It's clear Abu Dhabi have more potential to score goals than us as they scored 106 and 95 in the last 2 seasons whereas we scored 84 and 89 and in both seasons they had higher XG at around +15. People might point to us having a better defence but we only beat them there by 1 goal last season and still had worse XG against.
Every area we can look towards to improve brings us closer just like the throw-ins coach we hired last season clearly helped our player's technique and our play around throw-ins.
Strengths/Weaknesses vs City:
+ Set piece and 2nd phase goals
+ Creativity from fullbacks
= Goals from pressing
- Goals from midfield
- Creativity from midfield
- Attacking depth
People will say our midfield does more work to cover our back 4 which also allows our fullbacks to go forward more which is true but at the end of the day City still create more in attack and their system still limits chances against them better than ours even if we have better defensive personnel. So what are the possible solutions for us to score more goals?
- Tactically playing higher line and having our midfielders making more forward runs - which has apparently been happening this season but leads to increased risk at the back.
- Hendo/Gini to improve their attacking output? So far this season not much evidence that this will happen.
- Ox/Keita/Lallana force their way into the team regularly (looking a bit unlikely at this stage as Hendo/Gini are locked in) to bridge the gap to the likes of KDB/Silvas/Gundogan.
- Front 3 improving their interplay to create even more chances (just my opinion they don't seem as fluid as the could be despite their already high output)
- Playing 4-2-3-1 to fit an extra attacking player in the system like we did last season when we struggled a bit with the 4-3-3 and gave Shaqiri more of a run (unlikely atm as it might disrupt our 4-3-3 system which is currently working well again)
- More goals from defenders: Matip and VVD have improved a bit with their attackers headers. Still yet to see goals from Trent and Robbo getting forward.
Solutions for future seasons:
- New personnel in attack e.g. Sancho to allow us to rotate the front 3 more effectively/cover for injury/stronger bench or to be able to play 4-2-3-1 more effectively with 4 high class attackers.
- New personnel in midfield that provide significantly more in attack/creativity but are also good in defence.
- Bonus: new personnel who would actually get game time (unlike Harry Wilson) and is better at direct free kicks than Trent.
So realistically do people think our front 3 can improve their decision making, passing, interplay and runs or do you think they have reached their peak? Because there might not be that much scope elsewhere to improve to score more goals this season unless we get some serious help from the midfield.
