7 - Philippe Coutinho - V1

O

Ousmane Dembélé

Banned
As much skill and quality as this guy has he really needs to improve his positional discipline and awareness on the pitch massively. When he plays in the place of Iniesta he needs to realize he is a LM not a LW. Many times last night he pushed up far too high and it sometimes looked like we were playing with a front 4.

Here's an example from last night just before we scored the 6th goal:
Jvv84ox.png


You could chalk his positioning down to the fact we had a huge lead and it really didn't matter anymore, but there is no excuse to be that high up on the pitch especially when the ball hasn't crossed half way line yet. His job is to break down the opponent's midfield with cutting passes/dribbles through the lines of defense and get the balls to our forwards in space, not to push up to the point where he could essentially be considered a 4th forward. He needs to tuck into the midfield like I have illustrated providing the CBs with a passing option and allowing Alba to push a little higher up and wider to give us width and overlap creating attacking combinations on the left since Suarez plays centrally. His positioning was also one of the biggest reasons why Girona were able to break on the counter so easily, when he's caught up in attack we lose our structure and numbers in the midfield allowing us to be overrun.

I hope this part of his game massively improves over time or otherwise we cannot play him in the midfield against the bigger sides.
 
Last edited:
FinBarcelonafan

FinBarcelonafan

Well-known member
Ousmane Dembélé said:
As much skill and quality as this guy has he really needs to improve his positional discipline and awareness on the pitch massively. When he plays in the place of Iniesta he needs to realize he is a LM not a LW. Many times last night he pushed up far too high and it sometimes looked like we were playing with a front 4.

Here's an example from last night just before we scored the 6th goal:
Jvv84ox.png


You could chalk his positioning down to the fact we had a huge lead and it really didn't matter anymore, but there is no excuse to be that high up on the pitch especially when the ball hasn't crossed half way line yet. His job is to break down the opponent's midfield with cutting passes/dribbles through the lines of defense and get the balls to our forwards in space, not to push up to the point where he could essentially be considered a 4th forward. He needs to tuck into the midfield like I have illustrated providing the CBs with a passing option and allowing Alba to push a little higher up and wider to give us width and overlap creating attacking combinations on the left since Suarez plays centrally. His positioning was also one of the biggest reasons why Girona were able to break on the counter so easily, when he's caught up in attack we lose our structure and numbers in the midfield allowing us to be overrun.

I hope this part of his game massively improves over time or otherwise we cannot play him in the midfield against the bigger sides.
Click to expand...

Very good point. He is leaving way too much pressure now on defense to build up something and we know how that's going to go against bigger sides, like Madrid etc. We need him to do the build up.
 
C

cro-man

Active member
He can score goals out of nowhere with his long distance shots. Its really impressing. Still he needs to improve if he wants to replace iniesta because atm he does loose too much possesion and his positional awareness needs to improve. If he doesnt it will become a problem because we will need a iniesta replacement and coutinho will play more as a winger...
 
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