Apologies in advance for any grammar errors, I am absolutely seeing red post match at time of writing this but based on this match and because we are going into a new transfer window soon, I just wanted to share some surface level tactical observations from this game.

There’s a lot positives to take but this is still well and truly a loss; absolutely no question. However, I genuinely feel like today we saw Hasenhuttl’s playing vision come to life and this match was honestly a good distraction from the current off pitch snafu with the club’s ownership.

Our forward pressing was genuinely impressive, it is our number one playmaker, Ralph has done really good work ensuring we perfect our pressing traps. Side note: I think kudos should also go to whoever did the broadcast direction on the NBC feed because the camera angles were positioned far enough to see everyone involved in our pressing process and how they go through its phases, but not too far that one would miss the speed and physical matchups present.

Ings is going to continue to be the key player under Ralph. His intelligence and willingness to help out even deeper early in the defensive transition phase is something I’m not sure his rotation option, Shane Long, really has. I think his time under Klopp really helped him get on the same page with Hasenhuttl quicker than the rest of the other strikers

His instinctive ability to catch the opposition off guard will continue to be our primary goal scoring method for now - it’s not going to take much longer for teams to wisen up on this and I’m predicting that over the reminder of this season we are going to see a diminished goal return from opposition errors in the 18 yard box - it pays to also keep in mind his fitness issues and injury proneness will affect us this season.

While his role in the pressing traps is definitely indicative of Ralph’s strategy, we need to start perfecting other high yield chance creation opportunities as well.

Since Ralph prefers two upfront, his strike partner needs to have a similar work rate and fitness levels to press the back line diagonally and keep the team even more compact. Obafemi did quite well but he definitely looked knackered by like 55 mins. Che I feel would be excellent in this role but from what I’ve seen so far, needs a bit more time to adjust to the level of pressing from premier league teams and work to better understand what phase the team is during match situations, reacting accordingly and in tandem with his strike partner.

While a lot of people identify our defence as our main weakness, I somewhat disagree, and feel that our midfield is the real problem due to the cavalier mentality of our play and the personnel we have who are ill suited to their roles. Our opponents consistently target our inability to cover space quickly as would be the standard for a team playing at this level, this has been a long-standing issue that we have failed to recruit or promote within successfully. I think this was papered over during the Puel years but was clear for all to see during the Pellegrino era.

We are terrible at evading pressure when recycling the ball. The opposition knows all they need to do is isolate the ball carrier in the middle of the park confident they’d win that battle, and why not? undermanned and on the backfoot, our defensive nightmares continue.

Lemina, I feel, was a big loss and possibly something that left Hasenhuttl plans in the lurch early this season. Even though his defensive work rate was usually nothing to write home about, I don’t think there’s any central midfielder on the team that had the same level of close control he had, likewise on the team overall, I think Boufal is the only other player that that combination of technique and agility... perhaps, Ralph should consider playing him in midfield a la Oxlade Chamberlain?

One key take home is that the team has its training ground work cut out - the players have to really work on their positioning and defensive actions in our, we keep conceding the same type of goal- I don’t know if we walk through the scenarios where we concede in training but damn we really need to work on them repeatedly until it becomes muscle memory if we are to survive this season damn.

I also don’t understand what position DJ was bought for, can he play on the right?

Anyways rant over.