No, a major problem would be our defenders handing the ball over to the pressing attacking players who get a chance at goal. Thats what happens to the players trying to play there way out of everything, those are the chances consistantly given up. Players like AWB and Smalling know they arent Xavi or Iniesta and arent taking the same chances, they are trying to do less with the ball but dont feed into what the press is all about - stealing the ball high up the pitch with your attacking players so that you get chances.
The best way to play against pressing is to test their high line with runners. You don't do that with short passing through the middle, you do that with a measured pass for players to run onto
I say again when you are pressing you want players who are confident taking the ball into their feet and looking around for teammates to play intricate passes to. Thats how you steal the ball, not from the sensible and safe passes that a less gifted player will choose.
That’s not true at all.
Go watch MotD2 and see how Leicester middle 2 played against City’s high press.
Pass and move, pass and move, then you’re past the first level of high-press which are the strikers and midfield. It literally was Leicester's bread and butter in that game and even better to watch with video analysis.
We are conflating the idea of ball carrying defenders with overall quality when in reality the defender just needs one pass out from the back that is not parallel or behind. We just don’t have the midfield movement for that.
Pogba or Marci are normally the only ones waiting for a pass and then there is no off the ball movement and things slow down. That’s why it looks like we have non-ball playing defenders.
AWB looks shit against the high press because he has no options. James who is always stationary, or Sideways to Pog or Maticor behind to Lindeloff or Mags. We get someone coming short then no movement after that. We can’t play tiki-taka against the high press, we simply don’t have the off the ball movement drilled into our players.