A problem I've noticed is that when our players have the ball, particularly in our own half, there's rarely anyone running towards the player to take the ball off him. Ie keeping it simple. The player is then forced to play it long. This is a simple thing that would make us much more effective. I bet in training there's loads of play like this but it all goes out of the window in match situations. There's a time and place for the long ball - note Leicester with Jamie Vardy. It rarely works without bags of pace.
TEP
I agree with your "having to play it long"...when you line up with a back 5 and 2 defensive midfielders, it doesn't give many options. There's often a 30 yard gap between these 7 and the attacking 3, so no option but to knock it long. When Harry Vince plays, he does drop into the 30 yard gap, so there's at least more option then. The other factor in this is that we spend so much time soaking up opposition attacks, the ball invariably starts in our own third with a hoofed clearance, and the same scenario applies. The one man who seems able to continually drop into the gap and bring others into the game in my opinion is Karl Hawley. Now, admittedly I wasn't a fan, and I would guess he'd struggle to last 90 minutes, but he seems to have more time on the ball, better vision, and in my book, recently his class has started to come through. Maybe he is the missing link, and should play a little deeper?
