Gary O'Neil - tactics

Only Liverpool (34) have completed more direct attacks in the Premier League this season than Wolves’ 33 — defined as attacks that begin in the defensive half and result in a shot or a touch inside the opposition penalty area within 15 seconds...

theathletic.com

A fit Pedro Neto gives Wolves the verticality that terrifies teams

Gary O'Neil's return to Bournemouth was successful - thanks to another superb performance from his Portuguese forward
theathletic.com theathletic.com
 

Touched on Gary's appearance on MNF, but a few other points to pick out too.

For those that missed MNF, here are a couple of great clips:

Gary was very insightful on other topics too so worth catching all of the analysis if you get a chance
 
Team O'Neil for me, probably the most underrated manager in the prem at the moment, fair play to Hobbs, I think he's found a true gem! Got a good feeling about him, keep it up Gary!
 
So two questions for me in the cold light of day....

Having seen it in the flesh, how is the RAN position working. Does this whole idea of different formations with and without the ball actually work, or does it mean that he gets caught up the pitch if we lose the ball? There was a shot from Longstaff (I think) early on which seemed to expose our vacant left side of defence, people waving their arms at RAN (Toti in particular, who had gone off somewhere with Almeiron). Didn't seem to happen again though.

As per the other thread, our main attacking threat has been Neto. Burn couldn't cope with him, and it pushed them right back having to cover for that. Once he went off we didn't have that threat any more and I was taking a point. Is there a fill in (bearing in mind this could be until January, or do we need to tweak the formation again?
 
Obviously Ten Hag did not watch GON on MNF, as for last night for Man U v City, he should have...
(1) man marked Harland in penalty area
(2) just before goal #3, not have 7 players in the City half, trying the high press
(3) seen where GON pointed at pictures on how City overload the left hand side...

...from a report on City destroying Manure last night...

"It is hard to see what Ten Haag's plan is. There is currently no structure and identity to United.....but also in-game management. Here, he failed to address a glaring overload on United's right-hand side that City exploited to devastating effect as Diogo Dalot was left brutally exposed.
 
Also, it seems our performance level is much more evenly balanced throughout the full 90 minutes. In contrast to starting sometime during Nunos last season, I think, when we would regularly have spells of 20 or minutes playing relegation contender football. As bad as anything we've seen from the likes of Luton, Norwich etc But then later on, would suddenly go up 3 gears, look a totally different team and turn it around with an excellent 20 or so minutes. We did this so many times, it was normal for us. Seen many comments here where people here have questioned why we just can't turn in a good performance for the full 90 minutes. I'd forgotten it was even possible.

But now, we've had a string of matches where the level has never dropped that much. Probably the first 25 minutes against Luton was the worst , recently, and GON said that was because Luton were not set up at all how we'd expected. He did change it and we'd edged back on top until that sending off. But other than that, we are looking generally organised at the back and creative up front, throughout the match.
 
Contrarian said:
Also, it seems our performance level is much more evenly balanced throughout the full 90 minutes. In contrast to starting sometime during Nunos last season, I think, when we would regularly have spells of 20 or minutes playing relegation contender football. As bad as anything we've seen from the likes of Luton, Norwich etc But then later on, would suddenly go up 3 gears, look a totally different team and turn it around with an excellent 20 or so minutes. We did this so many times, it was normal for us. Seen many comments here where people here have questioned why we just can't turn in a good performance for the full 90 minutes. I'd forgotten it was even possible.

But now, we've had a string of matches where the level has never dropped that much. Probably the first 25 minutes against Luton was the worst , recently, and GON said that was because Luton were not set up at all how we'd expected. He did change it and we'd edged back on top until that sending off. But other than that, we are looking generally organised at the back and creative up front, throughout the match.
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Under Nuno we would regularly sit back in the first half and play the 2nd, particularly in the Europe League season. As fans we thought it was managing energy, which it might have been, but it did make create quite boring matches.

We are now playing almost the full 90. Some players are running out of steam still but it’s a lot more consistent and in a positive way. The danger could have been that we’d slow down to preserve energy whereas GON seems to have increased fitness.
 
WickedWolfie said:
But loads of Mixers say Cunha is a crap waste of money....
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Let’s see what tomorrow brings lol bournemouth he came up with the goods shocking first half though!

I think for 50m many of us was expecting an out and out goal scorer not a ball carrier attacking midfielder
 
Mugwump said:
Yeah, exactly what we need. Another stroppy player who downs tools when things dont go his way and who has only ever scored goals at a low level.
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www.france24.com

Greece's Giakoumakis, not Messi, named top MLS newcomer

Argentine World Cup hero Lionel Messi won his eighth Ballon d'Or on Monday and brought global attention to Major League Soccer, but settled for second-best on Thursday in voting for MLS Newcomer of the…
www.france24.com www.france24.com

Giorgos Giakoumakis | MLSsoccer.com

Official rosters for each MLS club - including player stats, roster status and category
www.mlssoccer.com www.mlssoccer.com

Or you can just keep trying to get a tune from Silva, how's that going?
 
So today a proper 442 for most of the game. No dropping into a 5, but Hwang quite wide right and Sasa leading the line. Tempting to say it didn't work, but trying to be objective, we were comfortably the better team first half, albeit with little cutting edge. Second half got absolutely taken apart, seemed more about individuals to me, but did Sheff U change anything at half time?
 
groundhogwolf said:
Would love him to go on MNF and explain that one and what we worked on pre game.
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Me too.

We need to workout if we want to use attacking wing backs or play through the middle.

If the forwards are getting no service we are wasting our time. The end product has to be better from the likes of Semedo

The transition in play yesterday was not good enough.

Even if we had Neto I don’t think we would of done much more than a draw
 
Thought we were comfortably on top first half, but the lack of a plan b in the second half was disappointing. Even after we scored, you’d think we’d have a bit of a boost and kick on looking for the winner, but we just continued to be awful.

That being said, despite them being on top second half, they created **** all really. Makes it all the more frustrating, I don’t think they’ll get many more wins this season.
 
Matt said:
Thought we were comfortably on top first half, but the lack of a plan b in the second half was disappointing. Even after we scored, you’d think we’d have a bit of a boost and kick on looking for the winner, but we just continued to be awful.

That being said, despite them being on top second half, they created **** all really. Makes it all the more frustrating, I don’t think they’ll get many more wins this season.
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Probably get one more win this season, wanna guess where it will be?!
 
Am I missing something, or is it just lazy scapegoating that across several threads I keep seeing people blaming Semedo? Do people actually think that a lack of attacking product from a fullback was our problem?

I'm still trying to work out what happened after a decent first half, but my general feeling was that with two sitting midfielders and Sasa, we completely changed our approach. Maybe the loss of Neto made that inevitable, but we didn't really hurt them when we were on top and after half time we were all over the place.
 
nomadwolf said:
Any doubters, who still sitting on the fence, read and repent...

www.premierleague.com

How O'Neil has added bite back into Wolves' play

Adrian Clarke on how head coach has reverted Old Gold back to familiar tactics that's made them tough to beat
www.premierleague.com www.premierleague.com
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Thanks, there is much to love. For me the flexibility of RAN on the left playing as a WB or a wide left player according to the opposition has been key. Toti has been brilliant, although we do get caught between two stools a bit at times.

My worry about relying on these two is that with RAN possibly out for a while (let's hope not) and Hugo Bueno maybe not fit, Doc whatever attributes he still has, is a very poor option to replace RAN.
 
MIA just as many times as they are impressive. Lots of issues to sort still, many on show yesterday.
 
SingYourHeartsOut said:
Thanks, there is much to love. For me the flexibility of RAN on the left playing as a WB or a wide left player according to the opposition has been key. Toti has been brilliant, although we do get caught between two stools a bit at times.

My worry about relying on these two is that with RAN possibly out for a while (let's hope not) and Hugo Bueno maybe not fit, Doc whatever attributes he still has, is a very poor option to replace RAN.
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I agree completely. We did look short of options at times last night.

My hope is that with Neto back and Bellegarde potentially a great player. Plus getting more out of Sarabia and Cunha that he'll create a more all round attacking system that flexes when needed
 
Why did we go 352 and not 343 for the kill?? The line up and system was far too negative. Showed too much respect to fulham they wanted it more than us. It showed. Really annoying and frustrating how we just threw that game away. Lack of subs too. Blame the refs all we want the outset wasn’t good enough
 
nomadwolf said:
Any doubters, who still sitting on the fence, read and repent...

www.premierleague.com

How O'Neil has added bite back into Wolves' play

Adrian Clarke on how head coach has reverted Old Gold back to familiar tactics that's made them tough to beat
www.premierleague.com www.premierleague.com
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Great read, and hard to disagree, especially with those stats to back it up.
We've to keep reminding ourselves, that its early days still, both for O'Neil as a PL manager and for him as manager for us. The early signs however are very very good, and I can live perfectly well with the odd rookie mistakes, as long as the overall progress is good, which it certainly seems to be.
 
Mile End Wanderer said:
Why did we go 352 and not 343 for the kill?? The line up and system was far too negative. Showed too much respect to fulham they wanted it more than us. It showed. Really annoying and frustrating how we just threw that game away. Lack of subs too. Blame the refs all we want the outset wasn’t good enough
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To be fair, we didn’t have enough of the ball so we went for the extra man to get on it. The main issue there was that we had Sasa up front who has the mobility of a traffic cone so we had no movement ahead of the 3 man midfield. Dare I say is, Fabio would have been the better option on Monday night.
 
I'm a bit confused as to why he didn't bring Hugo on for RAN when he was injured and then Sarabia on for Bellegarde, when he was knackered, then Traore for Gomes who was walking a disciplinary tightrope then Kaladzic for Cunha, give Sarabia something to cross to, or even take off a centre half for Kaladzic and really go for it.

I'm all for simplicity and square pegs in square holes!!
 
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QB Wolf said:
I'm a bit confused as to why he didn't bring Hugo on for RAN when he was injured and then Sarabia on for Bellegarde, when he was knackered, then Traore for Gomes who was walking a defensive tightrope then Kaladzic for Cunha, give Sarabia something to cross to, or even take off a centre half for Kaladzic and really go for it.

I'm all for simplicity and square pegs in square holes!!
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I think because RAN went off so early that was probably more minutes than they planned for Hugo who is coming back from injury himself
 
Mile End Wanderer said:
Why did we go 352 and not 343 for the kill?? The line up and system was far too negative. Showed too much respect to fulham they wanted it more than us. It showed. Really annoying and frustrating how we just threw that game away. Lack of subs too. Blame the refs all we want the outset wasn’t good enough
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We played 4-4-2

Did people watch the same game?
 
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