Why don't we just play mode one?
How could it be worse than our hopeless efforts at mode two?
28 Dec 2025
160
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Firstly because it's not what the big man wants. But also because the last third of last season shows that it doesn't really work when the opposition sits in and lets us have the ball.
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Unfortunately a large section of the division have adopted old fashioned football values. Which is what saw us to success last season, and is the managers superpower. It's going to be a scrap when many of these teams have equivalent or better squads than us.
If teams defend properly, they are hard to break down. Was always true, will always be true. There's no one size fits all magic bullet that cures that. Apart from peps have the best squad, all of the ball, and attrition the opposition to death.
The more tired you make a team, the more quick decisions you get them to make, the more opportunities you create. We just don't, to my eyes, have enough power and quality to attrition to death most teams in this division. So your choices are catch them on the break - which you can't do if they are defending properly, or get the ball into areas where a mistake leads to chances - all the crosses we are seeing.
Of course we have to defend properly to come out on top of that. For me Hutchinson (without the ball) is a Maine fucking problem. Which I presume is why neco (our only functional wide defender) was moved to that side.
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How are Sunderland and Leeds playing? I thought they relied on the counter? Or are they at the bit more grit stage as just promoted?
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When I’ve seen them, they’ve tended to sit deep and play long. Be interesting to see what happens to Sunderland, in particular, if teams decide a point there is a good result. They also look to have more goals - the premier league scoring rates of all our attacking players, aside from Wood, is abysmal.
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I get the strategy now.
Get relegated then in the champ we may just have enough quality to be the Man City of that division and attrition our way to some victories.
We sure as shit don't have the quality to do it in the Prem.
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I read that more as Dyche anticipating Everton digging in and wanting to accommodate Zinchenko, given I'm told his strength is his range of passing.
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Seems obvious. Unless we are to believe that Dyche was more worried about the Dwight McNeill than Man City’s left sided attack.
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Excellent use of "I'm told"
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I know stats aren't big on these boards, but Sunderland have scored 20, only us (18) and Wolves (11) have scored fewer.
They have only conceded 18 though. Only Arsenal and Man City have conceded fewer.
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Fair enough - I thought Isador had scored more than 4. But we only have three goals from our four strikers and two of them were scored by Wood, who it looks like we won’t see again this season.
