[Albion] Dan Burn

surlyseagull said:

I dont think we realised how good he was for the team.
We miss him winning the balls in the air,like Murray.
You can see opposition players looking at him and thinking slow,cumbersome,no feet skills, is just here to take the ball out the air.
Then astounded when he runs past them after taking the ball down with his size 20 feet and going on a run with the odd shot thrown in.

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Razzoo said:

It's weird but him getting injured seemed to signal the start of our bad run.

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blue-shifted said:

In an improbable turn of events, Burn’s delivery and general attacking play has been better than Bernardo’s.

A mixed bag from Bernardo since his return, A great game at home to Villa, a real off day at Bournemouth.

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DarrenFreemansPerm said:

To me it’s seemed as though Bernardo is being expected to do more than Burn. When BDB was playing we would always deploy a MF somewhere near him to double up defensively and to help as an attacking outlet. Bernardo seems to be left out in the wilderness, not much defensive cover and going forward he has to turn defence into attack down his side almost in isolation.
The squad we have really screams of a back 5 system to me. Webster and Dunk to play the football, Duffy to own the air, both Bernardo and Montoya are blatantly wing backs, seeing as we insist on the narrowest midfield/attack known to man let them provide the width. Using attacking full backs in a back 4 is asking for trouble, and we keep getting the same answer to our question.

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blue-shifted said:

I agree that we should revert to 3 at the back. I actually don’t think Bernardo has the delivery to play wing back, but I can see him slotting in on the left side of a 3.

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DarrenFreemansPerm said:

For me delivery is not a must, we don’t have any particular presence in the box and always try to pass our way to goal, Bernardo is rapid and quite tricky on the ball so can provide an excellent outlet if he’s not going to be hung out defensively.

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blue-shifted said:

Errr, we're chronically short of goals. Delivery is a must

To me the point of playing wing backs, (or better, out and out wingers), is that we can get the ball in the box earlier. At the moment, every time we deliver the defence is set. Occasionally we can get a goal from a cross when the defence is in place, such as Burnley at home or Arsenal away, but because our strikers are shorter than me, this won't happen often.

All season, we've not scored a goal where the ball has been slid in behind the centre backs, (alright 1, Keane OG home to Everton), but this is why we're not our strikers haven't been threatening. Just imagine how much more we'd be playing into Connolly's hands if we were getting it out wide quick and firing it across the box, between defence and keeper first time. Surely that's what you need to do if you have strikers with a game based around movement. We're coming inside all the time and trying to shoot into a highly crowded area. It's not getting us the goals we need.

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