"Soft" early goals

"Soft" early goals

Not being particulalrly knowledgeable about football defence formations, can anyone amongst the cogniscenti enlighten me about why we let in early goals?

Are the opposition faster than us?
Do we have poor communication at the back?
Are our players caught out of position?
Are we ball watching instead of man-marking?
Is there any pattern to the problem?

Any thoughts?
 

I see Ricki has a log on to the YF forums

If thats the case looks like we can expect George/FM to get a start this week.
ballane2007-10-15 13:58:12

You seem to have an unhealthy obsession with George.

perhaps Ricki just does a really good half time speech - but not so flash pre game one

No not an obsession just get annoyed  when it comes to clowns continually talking him up when he has shown little to justify all the talk.Then others continually hijacking MOM polls to vote for him.

Get in now FM, by the end of this year won't it be 3?

One way to help stop the soft early goals is to get Cleberson out of right-back. He does well in central defence, but he's far to slow to be on the right.

We'll be right when Christies back

I think the Aussie commentators touched on it during the game, playing people out of position at full back is fraught with danger as it's such an important position. Most centre backs lack the pace to play full back effectively, and most wide midfielders lack the defensive awareness. Once a weakness at fullback is revealed you can bet your house that they will keep puitting balls in behind or running at them.

Bring back Noah Hickey, I liked him back there, he had the pace to foot it

Not really, there are a lot of centre backs with decent pace. Neither Dodd nor O'Dor are slow, for example. The biggest problem when switching from centre back to full back is staying wide. Most natural centre backs tend to tuck into the middle too much and leave a lot of the flank unguarded. They also don't tend to look to push forward as much as a natural full back would do, so you lose a bit on the attack as well.

apparently he one of the quicker in the team. he just cant turn around.

yeah needs acceleratiion practice...tie a bobsled to him and make him run up steep hills at training

or tie i bungy cord to the goal posts so wen he goes diving in and beaten he can just fall over and get slung back quickly and hel be tucked in perfect

Well, if that's the case Ricki should threaten to dock his pay if he doesn't face his own goal, then whenever somebody comes he can tackle them/take them out.

Cleberson reminded me of Jonah Lomu in his prime as a rugby player. Quick going forward, but knock the ball in behind him and you've got him every time. Didn't take Griffiths long to realise that on Sunday.

I thought Elrich shored things up a bit in the 2nd half on the right side though. Cleberson looked out of breath quite early in the 2nd half, and was lazy getting up to play people offside. Surely he would be used to the heat, so it can't be from that.

or else set big dogs onto him in a small oval track so he has to run and turn quickly over and over to avoid being turned into jam

they probably wouldn't do it though, training these days is so pc...
Cosimo2007-10-15 22:41:17

Forget Cleberson - whether he's playing or not the goals are still flying in with monotonous regularity. And simply having Christie back is not going to solve things either. As the guy who started this topic said, "What is the problem back there?".

but he was like a black hole on Sunday in the 1st half

As an ex-fullback (though not blessed with pace, tactical nous, or any attacking ability) I think the problem is often the assistance offered by the midfield.  Ideally one of the central midfielders will be patrolling in front of the defence to provide another option to close down an attacker.  The goals I recall being let in have occurred when the central two have been left exposed by the central midfield.  May be an inevitable consequence of an attacking style of play.

Clebo has gone missing in a couple of games when he's been at right back, but I don't think is solely a problem with him. Even when he wasn't playing we were letting in early goals. Seems to me the issue lies at rioght back, whoever has played there goes missing in the early stages. Clebo certainly needs to work on his speed and getting back into position from attacking drives. Its a concern that we are constatnly playing catch up footy, would be nice to lead from the start.

The thing is, there is no clear area of weakness that's obviously at play (O'Dor's nightmare at Rb against CCM aside).
There have been sloppy individual mistakes, un-coordinated offside traps, dodgy set piece defending and some quality goals from the opposition. The answer is probably that our defensive line still needs a lot more time together to be as effective as we'd like it to be, and Phoenix's general attacking approach is also leaving them exposed at times. We are improving defensively though, the last two games were really lost in the midfield where we clearly struggled.