The stats and the evidence of our own eyes is we are too passive and in my view obsessive about getting into one of a number of different defensive shapes.
We have pretty a pretty decent back 4 with plenty (maybe too many) options.
We have a very good holding midfielder who performs pretty much every game – so long as we don’t drop him.
We have two nervous keepers which almost everyone but our manager can see so for now pick the least nervy (Campbell?) and hope for the best while scouting loanee possibilities.
Trust your defensive 6 and let the get on with it.
The other 5 players should be focused on putting pressure on the opposition and creating at least double figures in efforts on goal.
Of course they should be pressing and covering without the ball but that’s not the main reason they are there.
Whitehall and Roberts of course were spared most of the structured shape stuff which is perhaps why they created 40 or 50 goal involvements between them in the last 2 seasons.
That ship has now sailed with Roberts now at his correct level and Whitehall morphing into a full time caricature of his shithousery persona.
The Southend full backs spending 95% of the game attacking and Jones and Brennan spending the same percentage of time defending rather poorly was not an inevitable consequence of the home side superiority.
It was a consequence of our tactical mindset.
It appears that we set up in games with 2 possible results in mind. 1-0 is preferred but 0-0 will do.
Given our aversion to actually keeping clean sheets this seems a strange tactical path to follow.
