Monday 27 February 2017

Conceding from corners - here we go again!

The Cherries have a problem at corners all right. It was not that the goal that WBA scored to take the lead came from Artur Boruc's poor punch that should dominate talk about the weekend's defeat, important though it was, every time that Albion put the ball in Bournemouth's box there was a sense that a goal could well be coming.
Boruc gets his punch all wrong.
The corners were a particular strong point of Albion's game and yet we didn't see a massive amount of eager striped shirts trying to run away and get a yard on the Bournemouth players. The ball was just lofted into the area of the six yard box or the far post, and the attacking West Brom players just waited for mayhem to unfold. Bournemouth created many of their own problems at the back. When you see a keeper drop the ball, you get their first and you put the ball out in row z. It's not pretty, it's not cultured, but it stops a soft goal, and yet why is it that AFCB always look on their heels when a ball bounces along their six yard line? The reactivity of the players should be high in that they must expect the worse could happen and that Boruc might not get to the ball cleanly, but by not having a dominant keeper it was essential that the team won their headers and helped him out - we knew this before a ball was kicked.

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While Albion's players are tall and powerful in the air, AFCB had to match them. Any side that go to the Hawthorns and don't have a physicality about them will be swept aside and I just felt that it was last ditch tackling all afternoon from the Cherries whenever WBA came forward. There needs to be an organiser at the back who is yelling at other players as soon as the Cherries concede a corner these days. The side needs to be more aware of what players they are marking and who the strong headers are in the opposition team. 

Personally, I wouldn't mind if the side is made to defend corners all week. They need to get it into the heads that they don't concede from corners, no matter what. If they can just cut that out of their game they are more likely to pick up a few points and at the moment 0-0 draws sound like fantastic results.

2 comments:

  1. Unfortunately our corners are so poor. So if we are training against them we probably look ok (in training). When we come into a game situation against teams who can put it in the mixer, chaos follows

    It's been a problem this season and last... but everyone has caught on to it now!

    ReplyDelete
  2. To be able to defend in the Premier League one must have Premier League defenders...nuff said

    ReplyDelete

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