James Turley

[slack_pie]

I've just seen the first Port Vale goal and Matt Tootle's defending is a perfect illustration of the poor full-back play which is causing many of our problems. He starts off too far away from the winger and instead of closing him down he backs off further, giving the attacker even room to curl the ball around either side of him. Sometimes our full-backs leave so much space that wingers could probably even flip the ball up and lob it over the full-back's head if they wanted! They might as well not be there at all.

Get tight to the winger for Christ's sake! I'm not saying dive in and commit yourself, but get in the attacker's face and give him no space to operate in, and meanwhile our attacking wide player should be dropping back to double cover wherever possible. I've noticed that Hemmings really has made an effort to do this in the games I've seen, which combined with his goal threat is probably why Kewell likes him in the wide position, but Boldewijn needs to do the same on the other side.

Spot on. I have no idea why this continues to happen week in week out. If a full back can't or won't stop crosses, what good are they? Most of the time it doesn't even look like they are trying to stop the ball going in the box, but instead just run alongside the winger about two feet away. ****ing clatter him!

[jackal2]

If a full back can't or won't stop crosses, what good are they? Most of the time it doesn't even look like they are trying to stop the ball going in the box, but instead just run alongside the winger about two feet away. ****ing clatter him!

Well, quite!

I don't usually like praising Red Dogs, but I wish we had a couple of full-backs in the Stuart Pearce tradition. These days, the obsession with "wing-backs" seems to have left us with an entire generation of supposed defenders who cannot actually defend, or simply can't be bothered to do so. If they bother to track back at all, they just position themselves in no man's lands with their hands behind their backs, watching play rather than affecting it.