CroJack
Key Player
1. It's difficult to play with 10 against 11 players.
Two accurate out of five passes and one tackle is what Aldo Kalulu produced in the first 45 minutes. Oh, I almost forgot, he got dispossessed once. For the vast majority of the first 45 minutes he was running like a headless chicken without any sense for positional awareness. And when he didn't run he watched others who were trying to play some football. Aldo is a winger and he doesn't lack pace, but he definitely lacks footballing brain. Already against Derby I noticed how narrow he played, and he did it again against Preston. Not only that he didn't try to stretch Preston defence on the left flank and use his pace (remember how James used to play for us), but he did nothing in defence to help poor Bidwell who, all alone, had to deal with opposition's crosses and shots. I hope Cooper saw what I saw, at least his analyst should tell him that Kalulu shouldn't be starting any matches for the Swans in future unless he massively improves.
2. We have to figure it out how to respond when opposition presses us high on the pitch
We did it well against Manchester City, so what did we do wrong against Preston in the first 30 minutes? Well, first of all, hats off to Preston for using high press tactics. That's the best tactics against superior passing teams like Swansea. Liverpool used the same tactics against Manchester City in the second part of 2017/2018 season when they destroyed Manchester City both in the Premier League and Champions League. Preston are not Liverpool, and I knew they wouldn't be able to play high intensity football for the full 90 minutes. Already after the first 30 minutes they started playing with less intensity and more in their own half. Suddenly, we could breath, pass the ball and attack. The goal we scored in the first half was not scored because we had figured out how to beat their pressing, but because they had stopped to press us high on the pitch.
So, what did we do wrong in the first half? Well, two things. If you want to beat teams who press you high on the pitch you either have to be good at counter-attacking or you have to be better at passing from the back. Or both. We were not able to counter-attack efficiently mostly because we lacked pace (Borja and Bidwell are not fast enough) and we lacked brain (Kalulu). Some of our rare counter-attacks were unsuccessful because of sloppy passing in the final third. Our passing from the back was awful, we panicked and gave the ball away in dangerous areas allowing Preston to send attack after attack towards our box. Mike, Connor and Joe were the main culprits, and after one stupid clearance by Mike, Preston scored.
I've made forward pass-maps for Bidwell, Rodon, Van der Hoorn and Roberts. You can see how bad we were going forward in the first half against Preston. Yellow arrows are accurate forward passes, red arrows inaccurate. Bended arrows are either lofted passes or crosses.
Two accurate out of five passes and one tackle is what Aldo Kalulu produced in the first 45 minutes. Oh, I almost forgot, he got dispossessed once. For the vast majority of the first 45 minutes he was running like a headless chicken without any sense for positional awareness. And when he didn't run he watched others who were trying to play some football. Aldo is a winger and he doesn't lack pace, but he definitely lacks footballing brain. Already against Derby I noticed how narrow he played, and he did it again against Preston. Not only that he didn't try to stretch Preston defence on the left flank and use his pace (remember how James used to play for us), but he did nothing in defence to help poor Bidwell who, all alone, had to deal with opposition's crosses and shots. I hope Cooper saw what I saw, at least his analyst should tell him that Kalulu shouldn't be starting any matches for the Swans in future unless he massively improves.
2. We have to figure it out how to respond when opposition presses us high on the pitch
We did it well against Manchester City, so what did we do wrong against Preston in the first 30 minutes? Well, first of all, hats off to Preston for using high press tactics. That's the best tactics against superior passing teams like Swansea. Liverpool used the same tactics against Manchester City in the second part of 2017/2018 season when they destroyed Manchester City both in the Premier League and Champions League. Preston are not Liverpool, and I knew they wouldn't be able to play high intensity football for the full 90 minutes. Already after the first 30 minutes they started playing with less intensity and more in their own half. Suddenly, we could breath, pass the ball and attack. The goal we scored in the first half was not scored because we had figured out how to beat their pressing, but because they had stopped to press us high on the pitch.
So, what did we do wrong in the first half? Well, two things. If you want to beat teams who press you high on the pitch you either have to be good at counter-attacking or you have to be better at passing from the back. Or both. We were not able to counter-attack efficiently mostly because we lacked pace (Borja and Bidwell are not fast enough) and we lacked brain (Kalulu). Some of our rare counter-attacks were unsuccessful because of sloppy passing in the final third. Our passing from the back was awful, we panicked and gave the ball away in dangerous areas allowing Preston to send attack after attack towards our box. Mike, Connor and Joe were the main culprits, and after one stupid clearance by Mike, Preston scored.
I've made forward pass-maps for Bidwell, Rodon, Van der Hoorn and Roberts. You can see how bad we were going forward in the first half against Preston. Yellow arrows are accurate forward passes, red arrows inaccurate. Bended arrows are either lofted passes or crosses.
From left to right: Bidwell, Rodon, Van der Hoorn, Roberts:
Conclusion: lack of pace (and brain) up front and too many sloppy passes and clearances are the main reason we underperformed in the first half against Preston. We have to be better against high pressing teams because other teams will copy Preston's tactics and we can easily end up in a situation where we are 3 goals down in the first half.
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