[Albion] From really good to becoming champions?

[hughfromalice]

Love the way RDZ has us playing. What an amazing night against AEK Athens. But losing to them and West Ham makes me wonder what the next step in our evolution should be. It feels really frustrating when we play great football with so much possession yet still lose. Remember Fulham (H) last season! What are our next steps going to be from being really good to becoming champions or cup winners in the future? How are we going to up our response as more teams start to play a patient waiting game and lie flat against us? Your comments and ideas?

 

[hans kraay fan club]

We’re not. Hope this helps.

 

[Triggaaar]

How are we going to go from being really good to champions?

If you're talking about the league, we're not. If you're talking about a cup, we just need things to go our way. AEK got a bit lucky with their goals (their XG was 1.05) but for a lower ranked club they certainly did very well against us, and we need to improve our defence against the counter (having someone quick like Lamptey or Estupinan always ready to get back could help). As for scoring against teams that pack the box, I'm not sure we're too far off. It's difficult to complain about a lack of goals when we're the league's top scorers, and have gone on a record breaking run of consecutive games scoring.

 

[Hamilton]

Becoming champions? Whoa!

 

[Live by the sea]

Champions means being better than Man City - with all their resources it’s unlikely.

 

[Uh_huh_him]

No-one is going to worry about becoming champions.
Assuming this isn't some pathetic Palace bait, it is worth thinking about what is needed to consistently beat a low block.

Consistently competing for European places, is the best that any of "the other 14" can aspire to.
To achieve that, we need to have a very strong starting 11 ( we have that) and a near equally strong 2nd 11 ( We are getting closer to that)

AEK benefitted from the weaknesses in our 2nd 11.
West Ham exposed our weakness on the right hand side.

If Veltman and Dunk had been playing in Both of those games we would have won.
The fact Webster wasn't trusted to replace Dunk against AEK is concerning.

The club's progression is based on incrementally strengthening the squad.
We have recently improved the defensive cover, but it's still a long way short of where it needs to be to stay at the level we have just achieved

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

The meltdown on this board when our league position slips and starts to decline is going to be epic.

 

[banjo]

 

[Sea Cider]

Experience.

We've got some great old heads in the squad, but we need the unbelievably high-potential group of young players to get a couple of seasons of top end PL and Europe experience under their belt.

Trick will be, can we hold them together without having them constantly poached. Tough ask.

 

[Yes Chef]

There were individual errors in both the West Ham and AEK games, which can be difficult to account for. If we minimise them, we will be in a healthy position by the end of the season, but no one is thinking about becoming champions.

We might do well in a cup, but that can literally be down to the luck of the draw

 

[tigertim68]

Not picking Milner at full back would help

 

[Baldseagull]

Whether it makes us champions or not, we do need to find a way through low block defending done well, or at least be less vulnerable in the counter attack.

 

[Doonhamer7]

Apart from Man City all the other big clubs have bad days (Or in Chelsea’s case a good day). The problem we have is that the next step up is paying exponentially more money for <1% improvement in players abilities or skills, where before/now some money invested can get you 5-10% improvement

Europe is different - both us and Villa lost against teams worse than us on paper and Rangers beat a team better than them

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

Beating the low block requires different ways to score goals. 1. Be good at winning penalties. Pedro showed some promise there, both of his pens on Thursday were 'soft' , he went down when he felt contact. You have to be ruthless at doing that. 2. Free kicks and long shot specialists. When you can only shoot from distance, be good at it. We haven't been blessed with many. Enciso was starting to look like he could be that man. 3. Patience. Don't concede first. You need to score one before they have to come out of their block. If you have to score two, it's tough. Keep a normal number of defenders in normal positions.

 

[Cowfold Seagull]

Beating the low block requires different ways to score goals. 1. Be good at winning penalties. Pedro showed some promise there, both of his pens on Thursday were 'soft' , he went down when he felt contact. You have to be ruthless at doing that. 2. Free kicks and long shot specialists. When you can only shoot from distance, be good at it. We haven't been blessed with many. Enciso was starting to look like he could be that man. 3. Patience. Don't concede first. You need to score one before they have to come out of their block. If you have to score two, it's tough. Keep a normal number of defenders in normal positions.

Soft? the second one was one of the most blatant penalties l have ever seen, Joao Pedro was literally kicked to the ground.

Although last season was the most uccessful in the history of the club, we are still a thousand miles away from being crowned Champions, at least for as long as Manchester City are around, or the Premier League has been reformed.

 

[ConfusedGloryHunter]

We have gone through a few stages in the last few years:

Get promoted
Avoid relegation
Place in top 10
Get into Europe

Next step is get Champions League. Then we can think about winning the Premier league.

Simple, no?

Personally I am still stuck at avoid relegation until at least January every season.

As to how we do it, that is even simpler. Just leave it to Bloom, he seems to know what he is doing.

Or do you mean on the pitch? Tactics and whatnot? In which case I think maybe we are already doing it.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

Soft? the second one was one of the most blatant penalties l have ever seen, Joao Pedro was literally kicked to the ground.

Is that what it looked like? Ok, fair enough. Live it looked like nothing much from the east stand, i only saw the replay on the screens after the game, looked like he felt contact and went down.

The first one was stonewall from the east, but the tv angle from the refs view you could see why he booked him. Like the second one, there was a definite pause between the contact and going to ground.

 

[Psychobilly freakout]

Anything is obviously possible in the perfect storm, as Leicester proved and I would argue we have a better squad than they had when they won the league. We would have to maintain our position in the league and wait patiently, by which time RDZ would have left and probably the whole picked apart or retired. So in short, the day we win the league Satan will skate to work.

 

[Ike and Tina Burner]

The first stage of us winning the league is Man city, Arsenal, Liverpool and maybe Spurs being disqualified.

 

[Quebec Seagull]

Barney wonders, too...

Roberto De Zerbi brings beauty to Brighton, but where can elite football go next?

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