Some spot on comments about yesterday's game however sometimes I do not understand reverting to a counter attacking team when in a comfortable position or so it seems at times.

 

The record against always winning when scoring first could become detrimental as maybe the aurora of the team thinks another win is a dead cert and it is only us dropping back and not continuing the play that got us in a good position that allows teams to come onto us and causes problems.

 

Certainly I got the impression that the gaffer was demanding that Boro pressed forward when we started sitting back and as others have mentioned we can not afford to be complacent when the "harder" games are played.

 

There is one thing I am certain other teams will be looking differently at us now and the respective Managers will be telling their team to stop us from scoring first, works both ways I guess as there will be games that we will have to come from behind and that's where our weakness has been exposed

 

I'm not sure we did revert to a counter attacking team.  Pulis lead teams tend to have less possession than the opposition anyway so you can argue that we will always be a counter attacking team in one form or another.

 

Yesterday though was slightly different.  We were coasting at 3-0 and there were about 4/5 mins between our goal and theirs.  My memory might be faulty here but I seem to remember in that time a few fancy flicks or something along those lines, which made me think we'd taken our foot off the pedal.  Then out of nowhere they scored and I reckon it shocked the players a bit.  Once you drop your intensity in a game it's hard to get it back, especially if the players also get a bit tense/nervous at the same time.  Sitting back in that situation is less a tactical decision and more a survival instinct I guess you could describe it as.  Bringing on Cranie for Downing you could say is a defensive move but that was inside the last 10 mins.

Derby dropping points again makes these 3 points seem even better. Even if we lose against Brentford we'll retain that 6th spot.

We invited the pressure yet again, but fortunately the job was done first half. Barnsley had very little craft of their own. Their target man was a nuisance when he received the ball in the right areas but that was few and far between until we brought Cranie on dropped 10 yards deeper. I don't understand why Pulis thought that was a good idea. They weren't passing it through us. They had very little pace. We generally had the ball deep in their territory so long balls were almost rendered insignificant. Harrison for Downing would have given the crowd and the team a lift. At 3-0 up at home to a blunt Barnsley there is no risk. If Pulis does this against the better teams we'll get punished.

I think whilst the formation and the personnel on the pitch might be different in the latter stages of the game to Karanka, Pulis has the same intention. We used to invite pressure on ourselves all the time when we were in the lead under AK and dealt with it comfortably more often than not.

 

The key difference is Martin Cranie. Pulis has his go-to utility player in Cranie which increases the numbers at the back in the hope that more numbers means more chance of maintaining the lead. Karanka would make changes to help his team sit back too but they'd just be more like for like if anything. Karanka trusted his basic shape to defend anything that got thrown at us, Pulis doesn't.

 

It's two ways of trying to accomplish the same thing. Karanka's method will undoubtedly get less critics as he did tend to keep the same number of attacking players on the pitch. But who is to say that better teams will definitely punish us for that kind of scrappy display until we actually are in that position? We have to actually be good enough at the other end to take the lead against good opposition first and foremost before we know for sure.

Better teams may punish us if we were in the prem but I’m not sure championship teams will definately punish us. It’s not like we are giving away many chances when we retreat. It’s a tough run in so it’s not inconceivable that Pulis is trying to conserve fitness especially with Besic and downing.

Pulis does puzzle me at times. He seems very self-contradictory - in his post match interviews, he seems a bit annoyed that we are taking our foot off the gas and playing deep at the end of matches, and you can see him on the sidelines trying to get us to push on, yet he is making defensive substitutions pretty much every match. As Humpty said, bringing on a pacy winger rather than a defensive player may give the team the impetus to push forward a bit.

I don't think we went to counter-attacking. I think they got a goal out of nowhere, then anxiety set it all around the ground and the players had a wobble, which is down to fragile confidence.

 

*Not really sure why Harrison isn't getting 10-15 minutes game time, if he's not going to play for the u23s.

Pulis does puzzle me at times. He seems very self-contradictory - in his post match interviews, he seems a bit annoyed that we are taking our foot off the gas and playing deep at the end of matches, and you can see him on the sidelines trying to get us to push on, yet he is making defensive substitutions pretty much every match. As Humpty said, bringing on a pacy winger rather than a defensive player may give the team the impetus to push forward a bit.

 

That substitution was made in the 83rd minute though so we can't really say that this had anything to do with what preceded it.  All of that stuff happened as soon as they scored their goal essentially.  The substitution of Cranie for Downing was presumably just a way to make us more solid as we weren't going to suddenly become dominant again at that point.

The Crania sub was just weird all round because he didn't drop into defense, he was occupying the right wing position for the majority of the time he was on.

I think it was just making us more solid as we'd long since lost control of the game by that point.

Pulis does puzzle me at times. He seems very self-contradictory - in his post match interviews, he seems a bit annoyed that we are taking our foot off the gas and playing deep at the end of matches, and you can see him on the sidelines trying to get us to push on, yet he is making defensive substitutions pretty much every match. As Humpty said, bringing on a pacy winger rather than a defensive player may give the team the impetus to push forward a bit.

 

That substitution was made in the 83rd minute though so we can't really say that this had anything to do with what preceded it.  All of that stuff happened as soon as they scored their goal essentially.  The substitution of Cranie for Downing was presumably just a way to make us more solid as we weren't going to suddenly become dominant again at that point.

 

I'm not just talking about Saturday, though. In almost each of his games (especially if we've been winning) the subs have been defensive. It tends to be Clayton for another midfielder, Crainie for a midfielder and then a token few minutes for Britt.

Baker coming on at the weekend did buck the trend a little. It's only a minor issue, while we're winning games, but it does seem to go against what he is saying we need to do in interviews.

I'm not just talking about Saturday, though. In almost each of his games (especially if we've been winning) the subs have been defensive. It tends to be Clayton for another midfielder, Crainie for a midfielder and then a token few minutes for Britt.

Baker coming on at the weekend did buck the trend a little. It's only a minor issue, while we're winning games, but it does seem to go against what he is saying we need to do in interviews.

 

I think Baker coming on was an attempt to get the team playing again rather than sitting back but it didn't really work.