Our Defence on Saturday

[It's Character Forming 1,099]

Ignoring all the Sheffield thuggery and petulance for a moment, I''m interested in what people think about a couple of aspects of our defending on Saturday.

 

First, as shown well in the 10 minute highlights on the Sheff Utd website, there were quite a few passages of play where Sheff U had possession in/around our penalty area for some time.  In all cases, I think they had shots which were blocked so none of them ended up with Gunn actually having to make a save (aside from smothering a couple of relatively tame crosses and I''m not thinking here of the superb early save after their attacker nutmegged Klose).

 

I can''t remember seeing a City defence block so many shots in a game, so I''m guessing it must be something we''ve been working with in practice ?  Which is great, but I worry whether we''d get away with it against a team with some better quality among their strikers ?

 

But second, we did defend very deep for some parts of the game - especially (from memory) after we''d scored, and during the middle of the second half.  This invited them on to us and was part of the reason we had to defend so much in the box, as above.  By this I''m meaning that (in these spells in the game) when they had possession, we backed off and didn''t start to close them down until they were a good 20 yards inside our half.  This always worries me because when we start defending that deep, the attackers only need to play one good pass or have an attacker beat one man and suddenly we''re defending on the edge of our box (and normally conceding a goal sooner or later).  I always think of losing at Spurs early in Hughton''s last season, when we lost 2-0 but defended so deep they really could have got a rugby score if they hadn''t eased off completely because they were so much in control.

 

Don''t get me wrong, it was an excellent defensive performance on Saturday and we looked in much better shape than earlier in the season.  But defending so deep does worry me.

[The gut 0]

We can defend a lot deeper. Take the Burton game for example, there was a moment when Gunny ran it along his goal line. He could easily have dropped back another 6 inches.

[Mr Angry 1,336]

I remember we blocked quite a few against Bayern Munich 😜

[westcoastcanary 173]

@ICF

"I can''t remember seeing a City defence block so many shots in a game, so I''m guessing it must be something we''ve been working with in practice ?  Which is great, but I worry whether we''d get away with it against a team with some better quality among their strikers ?"

Getting the necessary numbers of bodies in the box was a feature of our play notably absent under Alex Neil, apart from one occasion, Man City away, October 2015, which in the end we lost because the final "block" was by Russ Martin''s hand. Even top quality strikers don''t find it easy against that sort of defending, as for example, Arsenal, have often found to their cost.