only very few teams are capable of doing that, I imagine that a few have come with that in mind but we dominate the game so much that they are just unable to do it.
It's not that - I'd imagine it's fairly easy to get players to man-mark and press high up if you're not worried about leaving blind spaces and tactical opportunities behind you when you push up. And, given that we struggle against *any* sort of pressing, I can't imagine that we'd make that much use out of those sorts of opportunities even if they were afforded to us by dint of over-enthusiastic opponents - we can't pull a City away every week.
It's more that Fulham were (and are) a side thoroughly used to having the majority of the ball in their games so far. Changing from *that* mentality to one where they have to press like crazy just to get flashes of possession (even if they're dangerous flashes) is what probably proved beyond them. In my eyes, it's easier to get a side used to sitting behind the ball to press higher up than it is to get a team used to a slow build-up and possession play to start pressing. The tactical fundamentals associated with the most common style of pressing today (quick transitions, ball covering large spaces quickly, players reacting to pressing cues in specific moments and situations) can also be found to an extent in defensively-oriented long ball systems - whereas they are largely alien to any approach which relies on slow build-ups and overlaps to construct play.
There's a style of pressing that works even with slow build-ups, but that style has only (imo) only ever been successfully implemented by Guardiola at Barca - where the passing triangles were short, considered and deliberate in the way that they slowly advanced the ball from one goal to the other. There, the build-up was designed to be completely de-risked - the ball would be carried in circulation from one box to the other, but *if* it were ever lost, then the team would suddenly press like a pack of starving wolves to get it back so they could resume the assured build-up that would (inevitably) lead to a goal.
That's the most brutally difficult type to implement, though - it requires the best of both worlds. Players able to keep possession with ease and keep the ball under pressure, but *also* able to mentally switch in an instant into pressing machines if they do lose the ball. If it works, it's unstoppable - *so* many teams complained about how impossible it was to play against Pep's Barca when they were masters of the system, because it's theoretically more capable of coming as close to footballing perfection than any other approach out there. But it requires world-class players, a world-class manager and a team thoroughly used to the idea of controlled risk and controlled build-up.
Needless to say, such an approach was beyond Fulham. Especially when (as per Jokanovic) we apparently treated them like Chelsea in the way we snuffed out any threat they could possibly think of posing while dominating them ourselves.
