Milanic said almost the same thing toady - the players don't really know how to cope in those situations. We have a young squad, and once it started to go down hill they weren't able to shore up. We need to be able to dominate games and know when to slow them down (eg. the second half on Friday).weasel wrote:For me this was simply a case of us having too many players that weren't used to playing against long ball tactics. We have a lot of new players that have come in from abroad and likely wouldn't have faced this tactic, likewise our youngsters, Mowatt and Cook have probably not come up against it as generally youth teams are always encouraged to play football rather than hoofball. As such it is a lesson learnt for all of them that they need to keep their composure and carry on playing their way and simply starve the opposition by keeping hold of the ball.
We panicked, simple. I have played in a team where we were 5-1 up with 20 minutes to go. Suddenly the opposition just launched long ball after long ball. Every time we cleared it it came straight back, we simply couldn't keep possession. Every loose ball seemed to fall for them, every time we got it clear our strikers tried to run with the ball and simply gave possession away (like Doukara did) instead of keeping hold of the ball. We lost the game 6-5. Once panic sets in you forget to do the basics, forget to do what brought you earlier success. You feel like it is just wave after wave of attack coming at you. These players will learn from it and will deal with it better next time.
We are still showing the type of football we want to play, even if we can't keep it up for 90 minutes yet. The win will come though, and I'm sure that once it does we'll go on a nice little run. Hopefully against Norwich's style we'll have more luck.