Short Goal Kicks

That's the way our manager prefers to play, simple as that.

 

Because MH has not accepted the difference between the PL and League two

 

It also annoys me how we bring every player back for a corner

 

And free kicks,
Last night there goalie took possession of the ball on the half way line after one of our corners. Can’t believe we don’t leave at least one player in the centre circle when defending any set pieces, it’s so bloody obvious that you should do this

 

The 2 bigger issues for me are that,

a) we don't leave a player on the edge so even if we win the first ball, unless the ball goes out of play it invariably comes straight back into the box for us to defend again.

b) we defend only across the 6 yard box so anything deeper is pretty much a free header back across or straight at goal. It happened 3 or 4 times against Stockport (as it has all season) and we were lucky not to concede.

 

Fear of losing the ball and it coming right back at us.

 

Shouldn't and do are two entirely different things

 

I have no issue playing it out from the back from a goal kick if there is a plan to progress the ball forward but considering we’ve done it all season we still look totally lost when the CB receives the ball.

when done correctly it can be effective, even at this level, but so far MH doesn’t seem to have drilled in any patterns of play for how to get the ball from the CBs into the opposition half. That’s the issue for me.

 

Because that's what you need to do for zonal marking, if we put players up then you sacrifice someone guarding the near or far post or one of the blockers which would make us very vulnerable from corners.

 

You don't think we're vulnerable from corners and set pieces?

 

So you have all 10 of your outfield players zonal marking 6/7 opposition players, how's that work?.

 

1 player on the front post area to cover the front post or short corner
4 players across the 6 yard box
1 player on the back post
4 blocking the runners

 

I wouldn't say we are any more vulnerable than other sides. Teams might win more headers but they tend to be in less dangerous positions

 

Been vulnerable to the 'short' corner. Conceded a couple and nearly conceded several other times.

 

Wow, no wonder nobody ever scores from corners

 

The thing is, up until the Leyton Orient game, we hadn’t conceded a goal from a corner. So as much as we didn’t like the strategy, you could at least say it worked. then we conceded back to back goals from corners against Leyton Orient an Northampton, an that basically showed us that there is no upside to defending that deep from a corner as the confidence has gone from the players to keep the ball out of the net

 

Maybe not but we'd be close in lots of games and multiple times I'd discussed with the group I go with that we'd been fortunate.

Not having a player or even two on the edge of the box is coaching suicide though imo. We have to defend at least 20 to 30% more crosses simply because we don't have anyone to either pick up, or at least pressurise second balls into the box

How many corners have we scored this year? Certainly less than we've conceded I'd guess?