True. His rotation were chaotic and didn't make much sense.
But most of my problems are down to the fact that when we lose the ball, we have two players who don't do anything to get it back most often, and when they do it's just some random runs who are not coordinated in any way. At a very high level, you can't get away with that stuff. You see Madrid players in CL how they give extra and even guys like Ronaldo and Benzema, work hard to keep shape and be compact as a team. Because here is mostly where we suffer. We aren't skilled enough to pass the ball at high speed in fast tempo like in CL latter stages (huge problem no1), so we lose it more often than in the past. Which would be fine, teams like Liverpool for example lose the ball all the time. But when we lose the ball we also have too many players who are either a) too old, b) too lazy, c) not smart enough to think what the opponent might do next (huge problem no2). When we lost the likes of Alves and Xavi, who were master passers and quck thinkers, to survive close to that level of playing, your off the ball work and pressure has to be higher. Instead, it's also the areas that have declined to a huge degree, probably even more than our passing and fluid movement between spaces.
So if you add those issues together you'll see that counter pressing is not there. Every time we lose the ball to a very good team, that team has the tools to get to us if they get their attacks well coordinated on the night. Like Roma did. Like Chelsea didn't, even though they had the chance to do it. We are pressed into making mistakes, but when we are supposed to answer to that with our own pressing and our own pressure applied in the opponent's half we don't do it. We aren't motivated and hard working enough to deal with losing the ball more easily. We aren't good enough to pass and move as well as we did, but we are also not brave and comitted enough to compensate for it, to the point that we actually fail in the two most important parts of creating danger as a possession team. Positional progression through fast passing to find the free man, and ability to win the 2nd ball through pressing when riskier passes are attempted and an interception from the defending team happens.
