LFW’s resident coach Neil Dejyothin is back for the new season with his chalkboard and critical eye to delve deeper into the tactics of the weekend’s action. A lovely 5-0 home defeat for QPR for him to start with.
First of all I think a poor selection of pre-season opposition contributed to what happened here. We looked ill-prepared.
The tour of Asia was for commercial purposes rather than footballing ones, and while I get the whole idea of playing weaker sides to allow your team to gel and give them time on the ball, an approach that Neil Warnock uses himself, you can only do that for one or two matches tops. In the matches we won at a canter we were literally walking the ball into the net and having two or three men in positions to roll the ball home.
That kind of workout doesn't do you any favours in defence or attack. It doesn't allow your team an opportunity to try and pry and work their way properly through a defence, nor does it give them a chance to turn that defence around and get behind them. It's just too easy.
Similarly for the defence, there's no real opportunity to work on team shape. You are barely pressed or put under any pressure and the opposition struggle to hold any decent possession of the ball. Even the Wycombe friendly saw very little pressure put on us as a team, so the complete collapse when Swansea were able to do those things and put us under pressure did not surprise me.
I knew Augsburg would cause us problems, because the Germans are so tactically efficient, but we struggled to even get into their half last week, and they exposed us really easily at the back. That was the first indication and I had a feeling and told many that I thought this was a really dangerous match for us and we'd find out very quickly where we were. I hoped what happened on Saturday wouldn't be the case, but deep down I had my suspicions.
I didn't think we had a lot of pattern play going forward. We did create some nice moments and hold possession well, but it wasn't very team based. It was all individuals reacting to what was in front of them.
From there, whenever we lost the ball, you could really see the problems. Our reaction to change over in possession, both when we'd won the ball back or lost it, was very slow and you could see most players didn't realise where they should be going or who they should be tracking. By contrast, Swansea's players each knew their roles and responsibilities both in defence and attack, as well as on the counter. Once they had us on the ropes it was really easy for them to finish us off and they did so beautifully. And despite the experience we’ve added to the squad, we were so naive.
In addition to that, we've played the ball on the deck all pre-season, but as soon as you saw correct pressure applied, or us face a team that knows how to hold its shape and reduce passing angles and choice, our players reverting to some aimless punts up the pitch.
We were very open and part of that problem was down to the way we tried to deal with Michel Vorm. Whenever he had possession of the ball in his hands, or from a goal kick, we moved and pressed high up against their defenders. Clearly the plan was to force them to go long and see if we could win it, but when Vorm decided not to go short, not only did we lose those battles, but we never contracted and retreated back into shape quickly enough and at times were incredibly spread out across the pitch.
Our recoveries were way too slow. The heat probably played a part, but it was the same story for every changeover of possession. When we got hit on the counter, we were too open and not determined enough to chase back and get back into position. Strangely this also affected us when we won the ball and had the opportunity to counter ourselves. Usually players have no hesitation in bombing forward, but we were always a bit too slow and therefore suffocated our own play before we got started.
Then we've had this situation with Robert Green. There's no hiding place for him right now because his mistake has cost us the match. The last thing you want to do is go behind to a cheap goal in that kind of heat, and unfortunately for Green he's had a bit of a nightmare start to his QPR career. He's looked nervous and jittery for most of the pre-season matches I've seen him play in and I can't work out why. There's no reason for him to be, or to lack confidence.
I am also concerned by his distribution. The way he throws the ball so forcefully at some of our players without paying respect to their body shape is alarming. He must be under instruction to do this, but if he continues, we’ll end up conceding possession in dangerous areas of the pitch. Right now it looks like he needs some experienced and commanding centre-backs in front of him, because otherwise he's going to put himself under an extraordinary amount of pressure so early on. I hope it's just a blip for him and as fans, we do need to try and get behind him and help him through.
Finally, Mark Hughe has to take responsibility for this massacre and reflect on his own decision making on the day. He highlighted how poor some of the decisions his players made on the pitch, but his announcement of the captain, team selection and substitutions all raised eyebrows for me.
Is it wise to name your captain one hour before kick off? If you really wanted it, and weren't chosen, or felt the man who got the nod wasn't the best choice, would you be aggrieved? It could have unsettled some players. It could have affected their focus.
I liked the look of the starting eleven on paper, but I didn't think it was fair that having missed a chunk of pre-season that Samba Diakité was put straight into the side. Player equality is important, so those who have done the work and played matches that didn't get the nod would have felt some unfairness about that. It also hints that Hughes doesn't have faith in some of those players.
And then there was the substitutions. None of them had any impact in a positive manner and in fact, it seemed to make us worse. Why did he play Shaun Wright-Phillips at right-back? I know the game was lost, but it just made a real mess of what was already a shambles and we were very fortunate not to lose by more than five. You can’t really complain that we were so gung-ho when you’ve made such a change and have Fabio out on the other side and Adel Taarabt in the middle.
I am concerned that after all this time, we still see these kind of performances and drubbings. It should not happen to you against sides of a similar stature, especially at home on your own turf and these kind of performances can't be a coincidence. We took some battering’s last year that I was bitter about, but considering the circumstances you could forgive and forget. But this one was pretty unforgivable given the amount of time we've had to prepare for it.
The performance was littered with structural problems, tactical problems, and individual problems and seeing players like Nedum Onuoha give the ball away in the manner he did for Swansea’s fifth was mind blowing - it was more like Sunday League standard.
You don’t see that kind of error at professional level that often. He’d made up his mind to pass infield into a dangerous area long before he actually performed the pass. That requires extra care, but he made the mistake of not thinking about how the picture might change between the time he turned on the ball to the time he decided to play it, and made the cardinal sin of also not looking before he passed and was caught cold, despite having plenty of time.
We seem to lack an identity at the moment and a personality on the pitch in terms of our style of play, but perhaps that's normal after yet another transfer window where we've added so many players.
If we look at our midfield and forward set up from the tail end of last season and place it against the Swansea set up from Saturday (first diagram), Taarabt still would have had space to operate in and get one on one with Rangel if we’d played in that shape again, even with De Guzman and Chico added to a new Swansea system. Instead we played him centrally and deep (second diagram) where he found traffic ahead of him when he had the ball, and Dyer and co willing to exploit is lack of tracking when he didn’t.
I didn't really understand why Taarabt played as a central midfield player. I actually thought he played okay in there, apart from not tracking back for Nathan Dyer's goal, which was really poor on his part, but you want Taarabt further up the pitch. You want him out wide on the left, in a one-on-one situation with Rangel or somewhere high up in and around the striker where he can be really dangerous and effective when he's on the ball.
Djibril Cissé was really isolated as a result and we never saw any player bursting beyond or alongside him. Therefore there was no opportunity to stretch the play and Cissé himself had no opportunity to play on the shoulder of his markers, and instead, had to come short with his back to goal and that's just not his game. Whenever Taarabt had the ball in midfield, every time he looked up and tried to make a pass, it almost looked like he was looking to pass to himself, to where you would expect him to be. We never played with this set-up at all in pre-season, much like we never played Shaun Wright-Phillips at right-back or even 4-5-1 in this way.
Just back to basics. After a performance like that, you've got to reboot and start over.
There's no reason to panic and the situation is more than recoverable. It's all about just trying to get at least a point on board going into the Manchester City and Chelsea games, because if we play anything like we did here against those two, we will be in serious trouble and see similar score lines. Those two tough matches will provide us with the perfect competitive opportunity to put team defensive work into practice, so we will improve on that account even if we are beaten and that will bode well in the future.
It will be a real blow to lose to Norwich though. That really would be a confidence drainer having seen them get thumped at the weekend as well, so let's start on solid ground and rely on our experience. I'd start Bosingwa at right-back, Ryan Nelsen in the centre with Anton Ferdinand and move Clint Hill to left-back. If we need a bit more pace or power, we can call on Nedum Onuoha or Fabio during the game. Of course, I wrote this before the news emerged that we’re trying to sign Michael Dawson and Ricardo Carvalho, so if any of those arrive, expect to see them shoved straight in there.
I'd also go for two up top here, Cissé and Bobby Zamora. They played together last season and that continuity is important. Andrew Johnson can stretch the play if needed, and we can either move Adel Taarabt to one of the wings at the expense of one of the wide men, or start him from the bench.
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