Post by paz on Nov 21, 2023 18:02:04 GMT
For what it's worth, my personal observations on Saturday, which, for a variety of reasons, was my first live game of the season so I'm comparing with last season:
On Saturday, the ball was hoofed up to Smith at almost every opportunity. Last season, Bugiel won nearly everything in the air, so that was a fruitful tactic, but Smith won very little, so most of our attacks broke down at the first hurdle. Last season (or at least in the relatively succesful part of it), we played out to the wingers a lot more more and got a lot of joy from that. Did we have better wingers? Love Harry, but he's a midfield player, not a winger. Nothing much came on the right wing either. Very little created from midfield. We are certainly missing Easty from a defensive point of view. We seemed to give Tranmere a lot of space in front of our defence. Would Easty have stopped that? I think Ali Smith's contribution is very underestimated. Almost every time Tranmere hoofed a clearance from defence, their sole forward was the first to the ball and was able to initiate a counterattack (I think their goal came from one such instance). Defensively, I wonder whether Ben G's injury is still affecting him as I've never seen him lose so many aerial duels. Statistically we have the worst defence in the league. What has caused the change from last season, when a solid defence was the bedrock of the team?
Don't have any answers and obviously I hope we turn things around, but both teams I saw on Saturday are in for a difficult season.
Omar Bugiel - Sutton United
Whole of Season 22/23
Arial Duels won 239 (43.6%)
League Matches 35
Goals - 6
Assists - 2
EFL Cup Matches - 2
Goals - 0
Assists - 0
Total goals 6
--------------------------------------------
Harry Smith - Sutton United
Season 23/24 so far...
Arial Duels won 153 (62.7%)
League Matches 14
Goals - 6
Assists - 2
FA Cup Matches - 1
Goals - 2
Assists - 0
EFL Cup Matches - 2
Goals - 1
Assists - 0
Total Goals 9
For me, I would not trade Smith for Omar in a million years.