If there’s any legs in this I wonder if Heitinga might be coming back, after getting sacked by Ajax? He worked well with Grav and seemed to have good rapport with Slot and the group.
That’s what I meant - but I tried to be too clever and use only one word for it. I hate it when opponents are quicker to react to second balls or if they get the freedom of our midfield or wings and carry the ball for tens of yards before scoring, like Semenyo did or PSV players whose names I can’t recall at the moment. It’s not just the defensive organisation - it’s the desire to win that tackle or the second ball or pull down a player trying to run through the defence.
What gets me about this statistic is that how well structured snd organised you have to be (as well as fit) to actually play this way. We’re say 5% off maybe. It looks more like 80%.
I dont think that’s right. Our stats show we are still attempting to press but failing. I think it is reasonable to suggest it has been our lack of aggression, an almost going through the motions, that has contributed to that failing.
That is conflating doing the actions to get credit for a pressing action with playing with sufficient intensity or aggression. The eye test to me says that is not the case, and at minimum the stats highly suggestive of the same thing (i.e. why we’re failing so badly at it)