Liverpool have scored plenty of goals without a #10, Newcastle don’t have a #10 and seem to score 5 goals a week, City have their entire team bar Ederson in their opponent’s half so what is maybe a double 8 is sort of a double 10 there I guess. Butit isn’t mandatory, and I’ve seen years of poor possession and end to end games from us. Not just against the good teams, but against everyone. And when I say everyone, not even just in the PL. Any football team at any level, whether Championship, League One or League Two in the cups too.
For me, we would do well to change our approach as a team. Play higher, play more compact, recycle the ball better and add about 10% possession to our average at least. Chances will inevitably come when you are passing and moving at speed with several players in the opponent’s half/final third. We need to construct a team that gets more creation from wide and from full-back. Olise, for example, is an extremely productive winger, both in terms of goals and creativity, and can offer that without having to form part of the middle three. We can leave the middle three to dominate the ball. The better we can keep it and move it, the more we can keep coming back again and again with attacks. Our output and creativity absolutely doesn’t have to suffer without Bruno. Having a poorly set up team and y a player in there with the job to ‘create the chances’ is a recipe to nowhere anyway, as that player will almost certainly NEVER be able to create enough to justify a team being set up to have one player create the chances and win silverware. Even if they were really creative. They won’t create the 100 goals a season a winning team needs.
Get Olise in on the right, push the team up, maybe get Frimpong behind him, and have less creativity coming from your most forward 8 but a lot more control to ensure that the traffic keeps going one way and the team will be better for it.
