Thursday, October 28, 2021

Time to go back to basics!

Valencia's disastrous loss against Real Betis has rung the alarm bells as the team has played 7 matches without a win. It all started with a string of injuries to our key players, Soler, Gaya, Correia, Cheryshev, all injured for an extended period of time and unfortunately we could not properly replace them as none of the options proved capable! 

The team has been slowly getting back together, but its clear that we lack team cohesion and team work. Real Betis really showed us how the game is meant to be played and that is with team work and coordination, something which Valencia CF woefully lack! Jose Bordalas needs to go back to basics and start from scratch! The team needs to gel together, to form cohesion, to learn each other's movements and anticipate where players are going to play!

We need serious tactical training, in fact I think the team needs to just play as many short matches as possible, each player has to learn where the others are going to be at any given point and anticipate how others are going to play! When Valencia CF plays it all feels disjointed, it all feels disorganized and we seem to be relying too much on individual skill and luck to get us through games! 

Pepe Bordalas has his work cut out for him, luckily we have an easier match on October 30th against Villarreal CF and a chance to steer the ship at the proper course! We've faced Villarreal CF already in the preseason and we won 3-2 against them, they are also not doing much better than us. 

Once again Jose Bordalas has to start to build the team from the ground up, focus on gameplay, focus on cohesion, focus on ball control. Yeah the players can be physically ready to play for say 120 minutes, but it doesn't help if they just get outplayed! We also need a playmaker, I mean after Baraja we fortunately had Aimar for a while, then we had Banega, but since then we've not had a real playmaker. Parejo has served that role on most occasions, but he was not a real play maker, we need someone with vision in the center midfield to organize the play, to carry the ball forward with confidence. We need a Baraja basically! Soler is a work horse, he is a busy body, he does a lot of stuff, but he is not a play maker. Daniel Wass kind of has the same defensive role as Hugo, but I think the overlap might be a bit too big for both of them to play in the same team, especially when its not bearing any fruit! 

In fact I think Guedes is probably our biggest play maker as he is the only one who can realistically carry the ball forward and who often needs to come back to get the ball so an attack can happen! I think Bordalas needs to think about ditching one of Wass or Hugo, they are both defensive midfielders and where are the results? Maybe try Foulqier in central midfield, maybe Helder Costa, idk figure out who has the chops to be a play maker and try it out.