claretspice wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2019 10:31 pm
Any team can have a bad afternoon on the ball in difficult conditions. When it's a trend though, that excuse rather loses credibility. And it is a trend, even in our two wins, for our away performances in particular to a bit lacking in both refinement and control.
Danger of making a necessity out of a virtue here. Being able to hang tough on a day when you're under par is a virtue. But it would be better to consider trying to have fewer days when we're under par away from home.
These arguments always get slightly absurdly polarised. On the one hand there are those who want to see us play like Man City, possibly with similar flamboyance in the transfer market. On the other hand there are those who increasingly seem to resist any debate whatsoever about whether we can refine our game. Each position is almost as daft as the other.
How about when we played really well away at Arsenal and Wolves and only picked up a point when we could easily have had four ?
I would love us to “refine our game” and having the likes of Westwood and McNeill in our team we do show plenty of glimpses of it.
But as things stand Dyche plays a system that suits his players and a way that he believes will give us the best chance of getting a result - and he seems to be doing pretty well.
He would argue (and has) that he has tried to develop the way we play - or refine it as you call it. What he can’t account for is that when the game starts if some of his players are careless with their passing or make unforced errors. I don’t think that’s anything to do with Dyche or our system - it’s just players not playing as well as they can or making wrong decisions.
Dyche is never going to try and completely change our style of play whilst he is at Burnley with the financial constraints he has to operate within - because he probably knows that the players he has at his disposal would struggle and he will have seen what happened to teams like Stoke when they tried to move away from what they were good at.
IMHO I just think we have a few fans who expect a bit too much and forget how tough this league is every single week. Look at Villa today - spent an absolute fortune and hammered by a team who we easily beat. It’s like this almost every week with most of the league outside the top 6. It’s so hard to string wins together and show consistency every week.
Chelsea playing us off the park.
Burnley easily beating West Ham.
West Ham beat Chelsea !
Happens frequently in this league and you just have to hope you turn up enough times in a season and do what you need to win - whatever way you choose to play.
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