We just can’t get the ball from the defence, to the forwards quick enough without a long ball. Whether that’s the lack of movement or the lack of a dynamic midfielder sitting alongside Neves.
We still take too long playing it out and across the back line that we allow teams to get into shape. We NEVER have sides under sustained pressure where we have 10-15mins periods of thinking we could score at any time. Whether it’s the Portuguese way but we would rather slow it down and go backwards to keep the ball, when we slow it down the opponents get into shape and that’s that.
We only looked like scoring from breaks yesterday which simply can’t be the case when playing at home.
So many times we slow our attacks down, when attacking at pace would yield results.
Yesterday was yet another example of "get the ball to the final third, then pass back to the CBs to tap it about".
No urgency in the pass. Several players looked for runs yesterday like MGW, you'd have thought it was an alien concept to some of the lads.
"Wait, we can pass for players to run onto the ball? MADNESS"