Pressing v Counter

[Ted E Bayer 490]

celtic won yesterday fair and square. There's no doubt they were the better team, possession stats would suggest it was men against boys. We sat in and they played us off the park and so we all seem to agree. Pundits and celtic fans and some bears alike have us written off already.

However I disagree. Yes they have some good players and have been dominant for some time but let's be honest here they are not that good. We made them look good with the way we set up. The exact same way we set up in last seasons games.

If you sit back attempting to play the defend and contain game you will make any team look good. We gave them so much space and time on the ball to pick their passes and sat so deep we had to resort to long balls and clearances which lost us possession.

Press and close down and you force them to make mistakes. Hearts proved this already this season only a couple of weeks ago. They didn't look like superstars as they didn't give them the acres of space and plenty of time on the ball to pass around and work on wave after wave of attack.

Don't give me the 9 men long flight home pish, the defeat and the manner of it was purely down to how we set up. If on the next game the gaffer learns the lesson we will press, push them back, force them to make mistakes and we will show them that we are more than capable of pushing them all the way!

We did it in the 2-3 game back in March, the difference is we can defend now.

I truly hope we show them less respect in the next game and show them how good we can actually be!

WaTP

[NeoGeo7 10,627]

4 minutes ago, Ted E Bayer said:

celtic won yesterday fair and square. There's no doubt they were the better team, possession stats would suggest it was men against boys. We sat in and they played us off the park and so we all seem to agree. Pundits and celtic fans and some bears alike have us written off already.

However I disagree. Yes they have some good players and have been dominant for some time but let's be honest here they are not that good. We made them look good with the way we set up. The exact same way we set up in last seasons games.

If you sit back attempting to play the defend and contain game you will make any team look good. We gave them so much space and time on the ball to pick their passes and sat so deep we had to resort to long balls and clearances which lost us possession.

Press and close down and you force them to make mistakes. Hearts proved this already this season only a couple of weeks ago. They didn't look like superstars as they didn't give them the acres of space and plenty of time on the ball to pass around and work on wave after wave of attack.

Don't give me the 9 men long flight home pish, the defeat and the manner of it was purely down to how we set up. If on the next game the gaffer learns the lesson we will press, pish then back, force them to make mistakes and we will show them that we are more than capable of pushing them all the way!

We did it in the 2-3 game back in March, the difference is we can defend now.

I truly hope we show them less respect in the next game and show them how good we can actually be!

WaTP

Did you just finish watching the game?

This is all over the place in various threads.

We all know pressing them and getting i their faces is the way to rattle them and beat them.

The actual debate is whether we would have been able to have the fitness levels required yesterday to actually play that way especially with 9 of the 11 from the Ufa game starting.

I’m not worried or panicking for the rest of the season or the next time we play them unless we end up with 9 men < 72 hours before that match as well.

We’ll press them and we’ll beat them whether it’s at Ibrox or Hampden.

[TMB 14,167]

I did hope we would play our own 4-3-3 pressing game and get a real sense of where we're at.  Sitting back and hoofing it long brought back memories of the McCoist days and getting beat like that is so disheartening.  The second half against Motherwell was exactly the same we're sitting too deep and just inviting pressure on to us.  

[.Williamson. 83,770]

What frustrates me is we consistently make them look a lot better than they are.

Year in year out we are doing this now and with different sets of players every time

[Marky. 6,963]

We could never have pressed for a whole game after the European tie on the Thursday.

They ran their socks off and it probably cost us a better performance on the Sunday.

Everyone seemed off the pace and tired really.

[BlueMe 25,327]

14 minutes ago, Ted E Bayer said:

celtic won yesterday fair and square. There's no doubt they were the better team, possession stats would suggest it was men against boys. We sat in and they played us off the park and so we all seem to agree. Pundits and celtic fans and some bears alike have us written off already.

However I disagree. Yes they have some good players and have been dominant for some time but let's be honest here they are not that good. We made them look good with the way we set up. The exact same way we set up in last seasons games.

If you sit back attempting to play the defend and contain game you will make any team look good. We gave them so much space and time on the ball to pick their passes and sat so deep we had to resort to long balls and clearances which lost us possession.

Press and close down and you force them to make mistakes. Hearts proved this already this season only a couple of weeks ago. They didn't look like superstars as they didn't give them the acres of space and plenty of time on the ball to pass around and work on wave after wave of attack.

Don't give me the 9 men long flight home pish, the defeat and the manner of it was purely down to how we set up. If on the next game the gaffer learns the lesson we will press, pish then back, force them to make mistakes and we will show them that we are more than capable of pushing them all the way!

We did it in the 2-3 game back in March, the difference is we can defend now.

I truly hope we show them less respect in the next game and show them how good we can actually be!

WaTP

The '9 men, long flight home pish' is the reason we set up the way we did, that's obvious.

If we set up the same way at Ibrox against them, then I'll start asking questions, but i can't see it.

[TMB 14,167]

2 minutes ago, NeoGeo7 said:

The actual debate is whether we would have been able to have the fitness levels required yesterday to actually play that way especially with 9 of the 11 from the Ufa game starting.

There was pictures of the first-team sitting eating pancakes on Friday afternoon watching the EL draw.  They're professional athletes, who apparently had the most intense preseason ever to get them super fit, and had at least 48 hours of recovery prior to that Old Firm game.  Gerrard has a squad available to him so why didn't he use it if fitness was the concern?  Why wasn't Candeias on from the start?  Why weren't the substitutions made earlier if the players were so tired?  celtic dominated possession during that first half is it less tiring chasing the ball around than it is to press and hopefully have more possession of our own?

I don't buy in to this 'two tired' stuff at all.  Sitting back was a tactical decision.  Even if the players were tired they could've given a good 60mins, brung on the subs, and if Rangers tired out before the end THEN sit deep and boot it up the fucking park.  

[TMB 14,167]

4 minutes ago, BlueMe said:

The '9 men, long flight home pish' is the reason we set up the way we did, that's obvious.

If we set up the same way at Ibrox against them, then I'll start asking questions, but i can't see it.

We must've been tired during that second half against Motherwell as well.  

 

[Terry Hurlock Loyal 12,133]

It's going to be a long international break on here. 

[BlueMe 25,327]

3 minutes ago, TMB said:

There was pictures of the first-team sitting eating pancakes on Friday afternoon watching the EL draw.  They're professional athletes, who apparently had the most intense preseason ever to get them super fit, and had at least 48 hours of recovery prior to that Old Firm game.  Gerrard has a squad available to him so why didn't he use it if fitness was the concern?  Why wasn't Candeias on from the start?  Why weren't the substitutions made earlier if the players were so tired?  celtic dominated possession during that first half is it less tiring chasing the ball around than it is to press and hopefully have more possession of our own?

I don't buy in to this 'two tired' stuff at all.  Sitting back was a tactical decision.  Even if the players were tired they could've given a good 60mins, brung on the subs, and if Rangers tired out before the end THEN sit deep and boot it up the fucking park.  

Flying a 6 thousand mile round trip and playing an important European game with 9 men is mentally and physically exhausting, athlete or not. Sitting in a defensive formation and conserving as much energy as possible was the only option, Candeias should've been on from the start, i agree, but that still wouldn't change the tactics. 

Our subs were changing nothing in that game, even if they were fully fit.

[NeoGeo7 10,627]

1 minute ago, TMB said:

There was pictures of the first-team sitting eating pancakes on Friday afternoon watching the EL draw.  They're professional athletes, who apparently had the most intense preseason ever to get them super fit, and had at least 48 hours of recovery prior to that Old Firm game.  Gerrard has a squad available to him so why didn't he use it if fitness was the concern?  Why wasn't Candeias on from the start?  Why weren't the substitutions made earlier if the players were so tired?  celtic dominated possession during that first half is it less tiring chasing the ball around than it is to press and hopefully have more possession of our own?

I don't buy in to this 'two tired' stuff at all.  Sitting back was a tactical decision.  Even if the players were tired they could've given a good 60mins, brung on the subs, and if Rangers tired out before the end THEN sit deep and boot it up the fucking park.  

I guess we’ll never know and I’m not saying he was right to elect to sit deep whether it was tactical or based on fitness it didn’t work over the 90.

The pancakes remark is laughable, you do know athletes have a huge intake of calories since they burn off so much, it’s not all going to come in the form of apples and oranges. It’s no like he had a six pack of beer and a kebab 

The manager also made mistakes keeping ejaria on when he was fucked so perhaps the fitness part wasn’t behind his tactics because if he was concerned about it so much he’d have brought ejaria off at half time when he was done.

I think there was an element of sounding them out and seeing what they had to offer before upping our game which isn’t the right thing to do.

I hope he has learnt his lesson to not sit in against teams domestically. We are Rangers and should go for the kill at all times domestically as I now think we are better than the 10 and as close as we’ve been to the scum in a long time.

If that means we need to rotate more then rotate more. He has made a few mistakes domestically but has done a great job in Europe so hopefully he’ll start to get things sorted on the training ground over the next few weeks and then put 5 past Dundee.

[BlueMe 25,327]

3 minutes ago, TMB said:

We must've been tired during that second half against Motherwell as well.  

 

352 fucked us in that game imo, not tiredness. 

That formation was a mistake, but again, i can see why Gerrard chose to play it, he wanted to match up to Motherwell, and it was 30 seconds away from working out. 

[NeoGeo7 10,627]

5 minutes ago, Terry Hurlock Loyal said:

It's going to be a long international break on here. 

They are always long but on the back of a loss longer, on the back of losing to that fucking mob every second seems like an hour.

[BlueMe 25,327]

I'm fucked after a 3 hour flight to spain tbh.

 

[siddiqi_drinker 14,635]

Manager deployed the wrong tactics, sitting back works in European two-leg fixtures, typically does not work, nor is it needed, in Scotland.   We lost, time to move on. 

[BlueMe 25,327]

Just now, siddiqi_drinker said:

Manager deployed the wrong tactics, sitting back works in European two-leg fixtures, typically does not work, nor is it needed, in Scotland.   We lost, time to move on. 

What tactics should he have used mate?

[Ted E Bayer 490]

26 minutes ago, TMB said:

I did hope we would play our own 4-3-3 pressing game and get a real sense of where we're at.  Sitting back and hoofing it long brought back memories of the McCoist days and getting beat like that is so disheartening.  The second half against Motherwell was exactly the same we're sitting too deep and just inviting pressure on to us.  

I believe if we do we'll get the kind of result we all want. In all honesty I would rather lose narrowly by paying a high tempo pressing game than the way we lost yesterday with backs against the wall for 90 minutes. Our set up made them look far superior which simply isn't the case at all.

I can't see them beating us if we play an aggressive attacking pressing style.

[Terry Hurlock Loyal 12,133]

4 minutes ago, NeoGeo7 said:

They are always long but on the back of a loss longer, on the back of losing to that fucking mob every second seems like an hour.

Couldn't have put it any clearer.

[beararse 6,472]

4 minutes ago, TMB said:

Even if the players were tired they could've given a good 60mins

Don't think you've fully grasped what 'tired' means in this particular context. It means they couldn't press for 60mins, otherwise they would have.

You don't yell 'get it into your heads NOW' on the training ground then suddenly decide 'actually,  see those drills and instructions that i've drummed into you these past 3 months, forget all that against our biggest rivals, i think we should take it easy for a change and not show them what we are capable of!'

How do i know that couldnt press? Because they all wear these black bra type things.  https://www.playertek.com/gb/playertek/

Even a half wit can look at the resulting graphics these things throw up instantly arrive at the conclusion 'yep, he's burst'.

Saying 'they should have stuck Candeais on' isn't a great argument. He was an ever present in the absolute horsings last season.

 

[Prso's headband 35,918]

Imo we set up with the press and the freshest players possible and see what we can get in the first 45. If it didn’t work fair enough start shutting up shop if they’re tired after 60 mins. 

I believe if we did press them we would’ve went in winning at half time and the players would’ve dug in deeper than before to see it out. 

It sent out the totally wrong message to the players and fans sitting that deep, it really was bordering on embarrassing. It was essentially us saying, we respect the amazing tarriers, please don’t batter us again. If that kind of mentality creeps into the players and worse the manager then we’re fucked every single time we play them

[the old guard 2,356]

Do both and mix it up, it's hard to press for 90 mins, need to work on it and get a better game management, but constant long balls back to front just won't do. 

[Ted E Bayer 490]

Just now, the old guard said:

Do both and mix it up, it's hard to press for 90 mins, need to work on it and get a better game management, but constant long balls back to front just won't do. 

Especially when most of those long balls weren't even aimed at a Rangers player but rather hoofed away to clear our lines and in turn giving them back possession to start the next embarrassing wave of attack.

[Lloyd 10,756]

The one time we did push men forward we conceded. We didn’t lose because we sat in.

[Ted E Bayer 490]

13 minutes ago, BlueMe said:

I'm fucked after a 3 hour flight to spain tbh.

 

Why is everyone fucked after a flight?

I go away most years, been on a few long hall flights, all in economy and I'm never so fucked that it would affect me from performing at the highest level wearing the Royal blue!

[DMax399 3,857]

There is a time and a place to sit off them. 

The truth is, that we sat too far off them for too long and they took one of several chances they had.

The balance on this occasion was wrong, lets hope the next time we play them we get it right.