Defending not as well?

[mwake]

https://www.sportingnews.com/ca/soc...st-aston-villa-goal/1xmizipt5twr14obw1paxul8a


Just read Aston Villas Trezeuet saying that he was totally unmarked, then I watch Genk get a goal yesterday and same issue of being unmarked from a cross. Which reminded of the first game against Norwich early in the season where I remember VVD arguing with fellow defenders, i might be wrong but I got the feeling he was gesturing that they needed to be more aware and communicate more with each other.

Dont get me wrong we still have one of the best defences in Europe but compared to the standards we had last season it feels like not as good.

One thing we did well last season was shut down crosses into the box from the sides but I cant count the number of times I've seen Robertson and Trent failing to stop people cross into the box and then occasionally VVD/Lovren/Matip fail to mark the intended targets. Infact apart from the Kante and Kane goals it feels that weve let in a lot more goals this year form the wide areas. I cant wait til Matip comes back as I think thats part of the problem. Matip is very comfortable it seems with handling those pesky wide crosses into the box, infact Ive noticed MAtip has become far more aggressive in his general play which has contributed towards better performances... When he was at his worse I felt he was too much of a nice guy defender, which on another note is something Keita needs to develop.

 

[Mersey86]

We still are only 1 goal off having the best defensive record in the league, so not too worried. But we are not as solid at the back.

 

[binomial]

It's a bit worrying we've only kept 3 clean sheets in 19 games......and 1 of them was against MK Dons.

But bar the frenzy 15 mins against Salzburg and the Arsenal game, we've only conceded 1 a game.

 

[mark1975]

I don't know about the Villa goal so much, but the Genk goal was a symptom of zonal marking. Fabinho had him, then Samatta (sp?) moved away from him and Fabinho stayed marking the zone, the area he then went into was where he wasn't picked up, because everyone was watching the ball instead of what was behind them, assuming that they knew that Fabinho was doing his bit and they had no one in their zone to mark.

It happens, but we've definitely been sloppier. Which could be down to a number of things, like because of Matip's injury we're chopping and changing, we're also trying to rotate some players a bit at the back and different midfield setups, which means you have different levels of defensive ability per game that can dominate setpieces, ie Fabinho, Hendo and Gomez versus Trent, Keita and Ox. Sometimes we have that extra dominance and defensive know-how, sometimes less so.

We're not terrible, but in an ideal world we'd be playing less games and still challenging on all fronts, so we didn't have to rotate and disrupt. It's part and parcel of where we are, I guess.

 

[Hansern]

Dont think we’re that bad..


Premier League teams least shots on target faced:

Liverpool - 28
Leicester - 36
Chelsea - 36
Sheffield Utd - 38
Man City - 39
Everton - 41

 

[Squiggles]

Defence definitely isn't as tight as last year. Alison is still finding his form back, Matip is out, VVD isn't at his best and TAA is getting caught out of position all too often. It's still very good but it will have to improve if we're to land the title.