Sean_Nile wrote: ↑Mon Sep 04, 2023 2:43 pm
In the original post I said
Counterattacks: Exploit transitions when the opposing team commits players forward, quickly transitioning to attack before they can regroup defensively.
and I think that clip precisely illustrates that principle.
Even a team set up to park the bus must attack sometimes.
But regardless of whether they were back in 2 banks of four, I hope you can find some joy in the finesse of that goal.
Trouble is it doesn't. I don't know the score at that point of that match or whether the opposition needed to attack, i.e. their league position meant they were going for a win. As such the clip in isolation is just a good example of a coutner attack not a way of beating a low block.
Sheff Wed hardly looked to attack us at all until they grew in confidence due to the fact we weren't 2 or 3 up. At that point we were going a bit more gung ho and throwing more people forward leaving us more vulnerable to the type of counter attack that we ironically saw in that video.
It was reminiscent of many Bielsa matches where we dominated matches. Now if we scored early in those matches suddenly we dominated less as the opposition could no longer simply stifle us. If we didn't score early we'd continue to dominate but as the match wore on the opposition would eventually get some openings. If the opposition scored first it would ismply be park the bus even more.
Some of our best football under Bielsa came with the score at 0-0 where the opposition simply allowed us to dictate play. We rarely won by more than a goal despite hugely dominant stats (or if we did it would be us getting a late goal or two to add gloss to the scoreline when the opposition gave it a go late on when they were behind and we hit them with counter attacks).
