Our long winless run is a soul-destroying experience, and it’s not that long since Ancelotti’s false dawn saw us top the table with some scintillating football. Why is the football now so dire?
Dyche will get blamed for hoofball tactics; others will point to the severely weakened playing staff after 3 years of negative investment and sales with the departures of key players. There are elements of truth in all of this. But I think there’s a fundamental issue with a squad that has had to be cobbled together on the cheap as we tread our financial tightrope.
At the top level, football is played by footballers of exceptional technique and ability. In the modern game, the centre-backs and even goalkeepers will ideally have the footballing ability of midfield players.
However, you can get away with having low-quality footballers if you have pace and athleticism, especially down the flanks and in the attack. Athletes can often outrun and overpower footballers of superior ability.
One glaring issue for us is that we are desperately short of anyone I would consider to be a real footballer. Only McNeil and Onana fall into that category in my book. And only McNeil plays in an area where you can use your talent to hurt the opposition and he’s not even that good. We are badly missing the likes of Digne, Gomes, Allan, Iwobi and Sigurdsson who were all actually good at football despite having their (justifiable) detractors.
Therefore, we must rely on our pace and athleticism. We certainly do have athletes – Godfrey, Gueye, Doucoure, Beto and Calvert-Lewin. I think it was Barry Rathbone who described them as appearing to fight with the ball, rather than control it. Good description. Although they have physical qualities, these are not natural footballers. Godfrey looks more like a rugby league player and Doucoure is an abysmal Number 10 despite the goals. Both terrible footballers.
Tellingly, none of our athletes play in the wide forward positions where other teams use pace to stretch the play and hurt the opposition. Harrison and McNeil are very slow indeed, an attacking hindrance which is exacerbated by our total lack of penetration from full-back. We are missing Gray and Townsend and haven’t seen enough of Danjuma (or arguably Dobbin). Bournemouth by comparison are very well stocked in this respect – with Kluivert, Sinisterra, Ouattara, Tavernier and Semenyo (five players who would transform us as an attacking team).
Making up the numbers are a bunch of players who are somewhere between the two, steady enough players who are neither technical nor dynamic: Tarkowski, Garner, Harrison, Mykolenko and Coleman. They are all good at digging in defensively, but these players have neither the ability nor athleticism to affect games in an attacking sense – or at least not without being surrounded by real footballers (especially on the flanks or at Number 10) or athletes (especially in attacking wide positions). Pickford and Branthwaite might be superior players but again they do not really affect the game in an attacking sense other than at set pieces so sort of fall into this category too.
This all combines to make it incredibly difficult to work the ball up the flanks or through the midfield in any constructive way. We have neither the speed and dynamism of, say, Brentford – nor the footballers of, say, Fulham.
What has changed since our run of wins pre-Christmas? Not a great deal really. We are playing much the same way. Indeed the defeat at Old Trafford was probably a better performance than the home win against Newcastle. And but for a lacklustre penalty shout and a bizarre own goal we’d have come away with at least a point yesterday.
It is, unfortunately, very difficult and there is no easy way out of it.