Agreed,Tic. The attackers--Stokes, Commons and Griffiths--were also a threat every week to pump in six goals. When a coach makes a tactical sub on 42 minutes, he doesn't know what he is doing. The only mitigating factor is the absence of Brown, which cannot be discounted. He makes a big difference sweeping back to help the defense and unlike every player except McGregor and Griffiths, he can run the ball upfield the length of the pitch without stopping to pass sideways. The latter is Johansson's specialty.
My prediction is that we suffer bad results in Europa and are in a dogfight for the league and he is sacked in early December. The club will beg Lenny to come back or bring in Coyle. Perhaps Coyle isn't great, but he had success in the Championship and did all right Burnley and Bolton. He is light years more qualified than :emoticon:64 .
It is clear that Stokes and Commons are off the boil, but they are better players than we are seeing. They get no service in the box. Kayal cannot pass and Johannsson can only pass sideways, so Stokes and Commons have to bring the ball in AND find a shot. Ambrose is awful at right back, which is evidenced by the fact that he had acres of space on the right side and couldn't do anything with it. Why Deila thinks he can play there is beyond me.
Tic makes a good point about the defense. The Ambrose-VvD partnership with Izzy and Matthews or Lustig as fullbacks worked very well last year. Now it's awful. Usually when the central defenders are struggling, you have a problem in midfield. Our opposition is running at them. When a castoff like Paul McGowan is a threat running into the box, something has gone wrong. This is not a good team, but it is made awful with these tactics. Did Liverpool let on so many goals because Skrtel is bad? No, the team threw everything forward and exposed the back. This year they added Lovren but also hold a more balanced field. Clean sheet today!
:emoticon:64 might want to take a lesson from that and by watching Celtic film from, say, four months ago. The parallel to MOwbray is frightening. He played an open, attacking game and didn't have the personnel to do it and would not change. The results were awful. So here we are.