Chilli D wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2023 1:21 pm
Fair comment but there was quite a few times where a promising passage of play broke down due to a poor pass or a pass to the wrong player who was then put under pressure and lost possession.
But
for the most part we were fairly comfortable.
On to Sunderland.
I think that's the key comment and has been made by others. We kept them at arms length. Yes every team is gonna get a chance or two but they weren't great chances, not sure what the xg for the match was but it would probably suggest their chances weren't high probability ones. We definitely could play better in terms of passing not being great but that can happens regardless of anything, no one intentionally looks to play a bad pass.
By inviting Blackburn to attack us in a normal way (as opposed to on the counter) it meant they committed more men forward which plays in to our hands. If I recall correctly they committed a lot of men forward when we got our first goal. Archie won a tackle and we quickly moved the ball up the pitch. We sort of played them at their own game in the knowledge that with them being the home team they would have to attack us more than they would have liked to. If it had been at Elland Road then I could see the game being the opposite in terms of tactics as the onus would have been on us to attack. We have seen in our last two matches that we have started off very attack minded yet both matches been behind very quickly, if we'd done that yesterday then the game is set up perfectly for Blackburn.
I feel Farke is confident that this team can play in different ways. He has the confidence that we can go toe to toe with teams in this division and create more chances and hopefully score more goals - like we did spectacularly v Ipswich. He has then also shown that we can be more cautious and still win like we did v Leicester and yesterday against Blackburn. The key for me boils down to just 3 players being asked to play differently and those players are Kamara and the full backs. They either have license to go forward without the worry of having to get back or they are told to play more conservatively and keep shape.
I think that he has been able to implement this quite quickly as he has the benefit of a number of these players having had the influence of playing under Bielsa where we would do both the above tactics in much the same manner. We saw it, especially at championship level, that we would apply both these tactics in matches, we'd go toe to toe and steamroller the opposition stats wise but then usually only be at best a goal up. The opposition would then try to attack us more, late on in the match, as they founf themselves only a goal down and we would soak up the pressure and then hit teams on the break. Having players like Ayling, Cooper, Dallas etc around has likely helped in this despite their limited game time. It is probably like having a few coaches helping out who are all on the same wavelength. They can give tips to the other players without stepping on the manager's toes or giving them different instructions.
I see a lot of similarity between this side and the Bielsa promotion sides but do feel that this side is a lot stronger going forward than the Bielsa side was. The Bielsa side was probably better defensively but not by much.
