[Albion] Hürzeler’s (Brighton) Tactics

[Surf's Up]

If we lose to Chelsea I predict a tsunami of bed wetting (I know, mixed metaphor) on here, totally failing to take any of the above into account!!

 

[AstroSloth]

Offsides against for each team in the league this season:

 

[Flounce]

WHEN we lose to Chelsea I predict a tsunami of bed wetting (I know, mixed metaphor) on here, totally failing to take any of the above into account!!

Corrected for you

 

[Machiavelli]

Yes, agree with the more recent comments, and the stats posted by @AstroSloth are the best argument.
The thing with goals like Forest's equaliser is that they're very, very clear and stark. They illustrate an easily identifiable 'problem': play a high line and this is what happens. But what also happens is that you catch teams offside a lot (see above), you concede fewer goals (four in five PL games), and you compress the space and get to press higher up the pitch.
It's much the same as when you concede through playing out from the back: it's easy to fixate on that, but it ignores the benefits that this strategy brings -- there's a reason that all PL teams do it, bar Dycheball Everton (and how are they getting on?).

 

[Mancgull]

Interesting thoughts here. I agree that if you have a strategy then you need to stick at it, make sure you are very well drilled at getting it right far more often than not, and constantly try to improve.
RDZ had his in terms of playing out from the back. Make sure players know where to pass, practice patterns non stop. It worked usually but then occasionally it did go wrong and we were punished.
Forest had a week’s preparation time to look at ways of trying to break our high defensive line and they did it a handful of times.

What I’m a little concerned about is that we seem to lack a bit of attacking intensity early in home games and not be sure about how we should build up attacks. With RDZ we seemed to play a lot of small triangles which led to overloads on the wings. I haven’t really seen that under FH.

What I did notice though was that the Hinshelwood goal on Sunday was similar to St Pauli goals last season in that a midfielder stole into the box and that the midfielder almost hid behind the striker on the line of delivery, so was hard to track.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Chelsea strike me as the ultimate test for the high line. They are in fine form, scoring for fun and have pace to burn all across front line. It feels like the game where we get found out ... but ... if it's that obvious to me, someone who's never managed a football team, then I have to hope that FH is well aware of Chelsea's strengths and puts in place a plan to counter them, perhaps involving Baleba playing deeper with the CBs.

 

[Seagull58]

Had Veltman held the position he should have done, Forest would have been easily offside.

Not chewing the fella out who has had a terrific start to the season.

But these are the things we need to improve on if we're going to make this work

In the interview with Hürzeler posted above he highlighted two aspects of the tactice:
Our counterpressing, which he is quite happy with and which is, statistically, the best in the league,
and our rest defence (how we set up defensively when out of possession and trying to win the ball back), which he says has room for improvement. He believes that our defensive players are not always in the best positions in these situations. This is obviously an area he will focus on to make us less susceptible to the fast counterattack. The high line is here to stay.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

Chelsea strike me as the ultimate test for the high line. They are in fine form, scoring for fun and have pace to burn all across front line. It feels like the game where we get found out ... but ... if it's that obvious to me, someone who's never managed a football team, then I have to hope that FH is well aware of Chelsea's strengths and puts in place a plan to counter them, perhaps involving Baleba playing deeper with the CBs.

Just think that whoever we put in central midfield, however fast they are or however deep they play, they would not have stopped the Forest breakaway goal, nor Utd's.

They are better off forward pressing the ball to prevent it coming through in the first place