My biggest concern - Too much space between midfield and defence

[Shack Attack 0]

In amongst all of the (justifiable) complaints about the referee today I feel that this one big problem is being ignored. We are far too open when we don''t have the ball and it is something that has been evident in most of our games so far. At times today there were 20-25 yards between our defence and midfield* and if we repeat that against better sides than West Brom then we will find ourselves on the end of a real drubbing before long. I can understand why our defence would want to drop deep against the pace of Odemwingie but you have to resist that temptation and try and make the pitch as small as possible when the opposition have the ball. Instead we were inviting West Brom to pop the ball in between the lines and turn and run at our defence. Luckily for us they did not have anyone clever enough to take advantage of the massive spaces in front of our back four. David Silva will be watching MOTD2 tonight with a massive erection.We seem to have lost the high intensity pressing that was a major feature of our game last season. I can understand why we might be a little more reticent about employing such a tactic against better players but we need to be brave. We need to move up and down the pitch as a unit rather than a disjointed bunch of individuals. It''s a strange thing to think about when discussing Wes Hoolahan but I almost feel that we miss his pressing as much as we do his creativity. He often led our defending high up the pitch from the tip of the diamond last season. The defence (and David Fox) seemed to follow him as if they were connected by an invisible rope.* I think Arigo Sacchi used to say that the ideal distance between defence and attack was thirty yards. Now I''m not suggesting we should take too much notice of this but clearly twenty yards between defence and midfield is far too much.