Originally Posted by Brownie
There's nothing especially clever about how they play at Anfield though, really. They just sit back and soak up the pressure and then hit us on the break or score a set piece. I really don't see the tactically mastery of that at all because if I was a manager, i'd do exactly the same at Anfield.
Their back line just starts about twenty yards deeper than usual and they let us beat ourselves.
I agree with Section totally - the key in the Premiership is twatting the average sides by just going out with the belief that you're miles better than them. I'm not saying it's as simple as just turning up and winning, of course it isn't but I think a lot of it is down to motivation and confidence.
If my manager was telling me to watch the late runs that some average player makes in an upcoming game with relegation fodder it would affect me a bit, because why should I have to worry about him when i'm miles better than him?
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I'd agree with what you are saying about giving the players confidence and I agree that a lot of it is motivation too. What I'm also saying though, Brownie, is that the facts don't bear out what you're saying about beating the fodder. Utd have lost and drawn to a lot of the fodder but they've picked up significantly more points than us in the big games; without doing the figures I'd say that the amount of points more than us they got from the games featuring the big four is probably around the same as the gap between us. Beating the fodder sounds simple but nobody is really doing it much better than us.
All managers address tactical issues on the micro and macro level, from Ferguson changing the approach of his whole attack or sending his team out to defend in tough games down to Grant getting Drogba to man-mark Alonso whenever he could in our Champions league semi-final there's always work going on.
Like I said earlier, Ferguson mentioned on a few occasions that the average team coming up had dangers he would be taking into account and I think too much is made of Benitez's supposed tactical overloading. If you're playing Kevin Davies then selecting Sami Hyppia makes sense, the same applies to other areas of the team.
I'm not getting into an argument about AC Milan being relevant in this discussion; they aren't. They very often play cagey Italian football and will happily sit on a 1-0 as much as the next cattenacio merchants.