Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach
OK so yesterday was painful to watch -a culmination of all that has been bad about the Sherwood Era in one game. Sherwood has to take his fair share of the blame, as do the players.
Say what you might about AVB's style - it was too slow and methodical for this league. Sherwood must be applauded for trying to make the team more attack minded, albeit at the expense of being tight at the back.
Having proved you can succeed playing in an anti avb way, what I had hoped was we would get a bit more of a balanced approach from TS. I actually think in the 'wonky 442' we were playing initially we had the best formation to take us forward - one proper winger down one side, Erikssen down the other cutting in. what seems to have happened is that since Pauli has come back from injury, Tim has moved away from two in the centre to three to accommodate Pauli, Bentaleb and Capoue until he got injured.
I can't understand that central three - someone needs to sit in front of the def because time and again we have looked vulnerable there but Tim et al jsut can't accet this. Naturally that should be Sandro or Capoue. Dembele has to play in the centre for me driving forward as the box to box player - forget this mucking about on the wing. He and Sandro were are most effective CM partnership since Modric left, so let's get him back in there. Suck it up if you think you should be playing further forward - you've not proved anythin like as dangerous playing behind the striker, and others can play that role better than you.
If we have to accommodate Pauli then he has to be the one just behind the striker for me, though i would go with Eriksen to provide some spark of intelligence and mix it up. I don't see how Bentaleb fits in, except to play where Dembele should be playing - he's a great little passer / recycler of the ball but he doesn't have the physicality required of a pure holder/ destroyer that we are crying out for, or the playmaking ability to slice defences open with a cheeky wee pass.
I think this is the Sherwood 'nail in the coffin' - he did really well to bring him in and get the team passing quicker, but long term he is not yet the answer for a team pushing for CL qualification. Sherwood's trying to prove a point, and he has to a certain extent but he needs to go back to basics.
As a team we have never played well without some natural width being offered, so this insistence on our one proper winger, Lennon, cutting inside all the time, congesting the middle of the park is madness. AVB had this fixation as well, so it's not just Sherwoods issue, but we are definitely more dangerous when we can stretch teams.
What surprised me more than anything was that Tim did not go 442 yesterday against Norwich when he's already shown that 442 works. I don't buy that he was worried about the midfield being overrun - this is a Norwich team that have struggled for the last two months to get result - a well organised team I grant you - but we should have been putting them more on the back foot -Ade was lost most of the game without any effective support from anyone.
Crunch time for Tim now- we need to get a result againt Dnipro and then Cardiff otherwise we can pretty much say goodbye to the rest of the season - tall order for a not-so-experienced manager, with a team suffering from injuries and a lack of confidence / fight.
