Goals

No great insights here, but I thought it worth highlighting what happened defensively again last night.

Here’s the first Leicester goal: Kallio, who’s impressed me somewhat, isn’t the quickest, and here he got burned down the wing. I can’t remember the build up to this so it mightn’t have been his fault, but here we can see him chasing after a winger.

In frame 2 we see him not getting to said winger.

Frame 3 is where Frederik Stoor’s involvement is highlighted. That’s him at the far post. The cross got all the way to him, and sadly he diverted it back into the middle of the pitch to the edge of the six yard box, from where Dickov pounced. I thought Stoor did pretty well last night, but that was a mistake.

Moments later we conceded again. Not in these highlights, but I’m sure that Hangeland had been dispossessed on the far side of the box just before this incident. So mistake #1. In frame 1 we then see a Leicester player charge into two white shirts.

In frame 2 we see the ball emerge from this little conflict.

In frame 3 we gasp astounded as, despite having many men back, there’s nobody around to stop a clear shot, which promptly whizzes past Mark Schwarzer.

Back to my point earlier today: I don’t know how you avoid it, but look how deep our defence is for both goals. If you’re fighting for the ball in your own box you’re in deep trouble. The further up the pitch the ball’s being fought for the less danger, and the shorter the distance you have to travel with the ball to attack. I’m not wise enough to know how we might have avoided being so deep, but it strikes me as being an issue not unconnected with the absence of a tackler in the middle of the park. If we don’t win the ball in the midfield (and generally we don’t) we have to win it further back. And if we don’t win it tidily further back we get problems.

Not a new observation, but it’s been an issue in all three competitive games this year, and you wonder which side of this fine line we’ll end up on. It’s a dangerous game and I can see it making life quite hard for us this year.

But to end on a high note, here’s Bullard’s fantastic goal.

The instantaneousness of Davies’ play makes me think this was a practised move. Certainly this sort of ‘rebound’ pass is all over the coaching books I’ve been reading, as are many other “Roy” type ideas. But yeah, nicely worked. We see Bullard about to launch a long range drive, then instead dropping the ball through to Davies, who doesn’t hesitate before touching it on to Bullard, who hits it first time into the net. His first Fulham goal from open play. Great football.