Today

[Lurker#3]

Had a quick nosey at the stats now my hangover has subsided.

Interesting reading.

We played the joint 5th lowest amount of passes into the final third of any game this season. We also had the most touches in our defensive third all season. This goes against the general feeling that Tony has "taken the shackles off" in general play and we were keeping safe possession for the most part.

What was interesting though that we made the joint 2nd highest number of entries into their penalty area this year. So whilst we didn't attack much, when we did we tried to impact the penalty area by either passing into or carrying into that space.

The other thing which I like is we played the 5th lowest number of crosses this season. Which shows he is trying to get our players to attack the penalty area rather than swing in aimless crosses which I don't like.

Will be interesting to see what patterns develop in the data over the coming weeks as we see ToMos philosophy get embedded.

One of the frustrations was how we used to so rarely see players making a run into the box, and if teams shut down our threat from wide positions we had no plan B. Nice to see we are proving the whole pitch.

We have generally been okay against unorganised wide open teams, and have always counter attacked well and in decent numbers.

The big thing I am interested in is when a team does what the majority have done against us, like Stoke couple weeks back, which is getting really narrow and compact, and get into a good shape which takes away all the space. 

I think the scoreline has papered over what was largely an average performance in terms of our approach, and hope ToMo gets some patterns of play into them this week. I just worry he's focussing more on making individuals "feel good" and "instilling confidence". If we want to change our approach play we still need it drilling into them.