The ambition of our purported system of play, which is very difficult to achieve, relies on our ability to hold the ball, our midfield doesn't consistently do it because we've not had a very consistent midfield formation, and a number of the members of that midfield are either not good, or are off form depending on how optimistic you are.
When we can't hold possession, our system of play will always put our defense under significant amounts of pressure. They are more exposed. Our defense isn't good enough to deal with this pressure. We've had MANY more times the instances where our defense has to make difficult split second decisions at pace. We spend too much time on this board wondering who was at fault for each of the instances, when the problem is one step previous in the causal chain. Of course, when it does come to those decisions they fail. They also fail on set pieces routinely, which is inexcusable.
If we get out of rhythm, and go a goal down, we look awful because it snowballs. When we go a goal up early against a bad team, it snowballs as well. We don't have consistency because our CM in particular doesn't manage highly contested games, and we aren't good enough and consequently confident enough, to force our style of play on teams that offer more resistance.
The good news is that we seem to have fixed one problem without significantly worsening any of the others. We're now scoring more goals, and are capable of putting shit teams to the sword.
