Town suffered their fifth consecutive defeat against Manchester United last Saturday, stretching the winless run to eight games. While most fans expected we’d experience tough spells like this, it’s still hard to watch us getting beaten every week.
There are some positives to take from our recent games though. Liverpool and Manchester United were always strong favourites to beat us, but there are some things to draw from these matches which show signs of recovery.
We’ve cut out sloppy mistakes
In the losses to Stoke and West Ham, we made some pretty silly errors, some leading to goals. Playing the ball out from the back and being sloppy with possession in our own half was making it easy for teams to exploit mistakes and score from the breakdown of our attacking moves.
While Town showed a lot less attacking intent against the Liverpool and Man United, they also kept things simple at the back and didn’t make as many errors, despite being put under a lot of pressure.
It’s hard to legislate for individual mistakes, but as a team, we went through a patch of taking silly risks in the wrong areas of the pitch. Hopefully, we’ve put that to bed now and teams won’t be given easy scoring opportunities anymore.
The fighting attitude was back at Old Trafford
Alexis Sachez was fouled seven times on Saturday, more than any individual player in any game so far this season in the Premier League. While conceding fouls isn’t a great positive, the fact we weren’t sitting back and letting them dictate play is encouraging.
Kongolo’s slam into McTominay was further evidence that we’re tough customers. Again, not pretty to see, but pleasing in a way. That physicality might help us to impose ourselves on games and give us an edge over opposition when games are tight.
The “Berlin Wall” tactics can hold out top teams for long periods
Jose Mourinho described our defensive system as the “Berlin Wall”, which I quite like as a way of describing our system when we sit back and defend. Much better than the low block, as it’s often called.
It’s a bit dismal to watch Town sit so deep and surrender possession so readily. And it hasn’t yielded any points since the home win over Manchester United, but it does takes quite a lot to break it down. For long spells, we’ve held out top-quality teams in the last couple of games.
We won’t play those tactics for 90 minutes against teams like Bournemouth and West Brom, but if we’re holding a narrow lead in the closing stages of a game it may come out. I’m confident we’ll be able to keep out weaker opposition with this system but we need to be able to get into a winning position first, so we’ll need a more attacking way of playing too.
Our supporters are back in good voice
The support from the stands has unquestionably helped the team to deliver our success on the pitch in both this season and last. The lift the players get from our support is vital and it’s one of the things that makes our team special. Sadly the support dipped in early January and there were grumbles of dissatisfaction from the crowd. That seems to have turned a corner now.
Leicester away, West Ham at home, and Stoke away were low points in terms of atmosphere. Obviously, the football being served up by Town didn’t offer much encouragement to supporters but it was unusually quiet in those games.
Our support has been loud and proud in the last two games though, and while they still both ended in defeat, Town fans can feel satisfied that they did their part to push the team on. There might be some dark moments in the upcoming games, but I trust our fans to remain positive and give the players the boost they need when we’re up against it.
We’ve only got one game against the top six in the next eight games
It’s great to watch Town play against the top clubs in Europe, but it’s also very likely to end in a defeat. Now we’ve got Liverpool and Manchester United out of the way we’ve got a couple of months where most games are closer to an even playing field, with Spurs at Wembley being the only top-six club we’ll face.
Town’s current run is miserable, but we’ve got some excellent opportunities to turn that around and start climbing up the table. While these games I’ve described as “winnable” will still be tough, we’re capable of beating the teams around us if we play to our ability. We did it earlier in the season, so I’m hopeful we’ll recapture that form.
Despite being in the relegation zone for the first time this season, we’ve not got a run of fixtures that will define our season and our destiny is in our hands. If we can find four wins from the next eight games then we’re likely to be safe. If not then we’ll need to get points from our run in against Chelsea, Man City, Everton, and Arsenal. No problem!
Very good article as usual