Mr Burns
New member
The problem is if a team comes here "to do a job" like Birmingham and Ipswich did, we cannot and do not change the why we play to break them down.
If a team comes to attack and play football. 9 out of 10 we will beat them. If we get an early goal like against Barnsley or Sheffield Weds, the other team has to come out and attack, and 9 out of 10 will will beat them. Gus has built a team that if involved in an attacking match will beat most before them. That's plan A, and I'd give Gus ten out of ten for that.
Problem is when we ride high in the league, everyone pays more attention to you. And as happened in periods last season, in two spells, teams come to play us to "do a job", park the bus, get everyone behind the ball and challenge us to break them down....., and we can't. There were times in teh first half last night when El-Abd was walking the ball out of defence and stopped and didn't have a clue where to go and went back. Ipswich got everyone behind the ball, and the style we play there was no where to go, and in the end a very lucky goal recused a point, when by that time we could have been 2 or 3 down.
The problem is, Gus has a system that when it works we win, when it doesn't we dont. And when it doesn't, most of the time its not down to how we play, its down to how the oppositon let us play. I would imagine Derby will use the same tactics Saturday and sit right back and let us have the ball, and unless we scrore early, it will be another boring game like last night and like so many last season.
If every team played open football against us every week, we would win this division. But they don't, and they won't, and Gus really needs to come up with an alternative system that he can adapt during the game, and until he does that we are going to be in for some very long boring games at Falmer this season, as we have seen in the last two games.
If KLL scored in the first minute last night, I think we would have gone on to win 4 or 5 nil. If we had scored in teh first minute against Birmingham we would have done the same.
But let teams settle and "park the bus", we won't win games home or away.
There were times last night that the players looked completely lost at what to do. And just as many times Gus was standing in the dug out, arms folded starring at the pitch, seemingly at a loss as to what to do. He spent more time last night monaing at the ref/4th official, and talking and waving his arms towards the bench then he did passing information onto the pitch.
If Gus can adapt ,so when sides do come here to defend in numbers we can break them down, he will become a legend and get his dream job. But its happened so much over the past year, I am genuinlly worried he is incapable of it.
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