[Serie A] Siena 0-1 Juventus, Oct 25th, 2009 (7 Viewers)

[Alen]

I blame our CMFs, they are not making any runs or making any avenues for Diego to play them the ball...the poor fella has to battle 3 opposition players, get beaten up like a rag doll and eventually get fouled for us to get a chance at goal...the 3 guys behind him must be more proactive

Yesterday there was one situation that perfectly describes what you've just said. In the live commentary thread Sergio said "Diego is being shadowed by 3 players.
3 players. Where the hell is the rest of the squad?"

In this particular situation Diego ran his ass off to get to the ball first. He got it. Two Siena players run towards him and surround him. He looks, left and right, east, west, north and south. There are no Juve players running towards him so he can pass. The third Siena player is coming. No Juve player can be seen. Then Diego makes a hand gesture towards one of our players and asks him to run forward so he can pass. Then you see De Ceglie, who was just standing there all the time and watching what will Diego do, finally started running forward.
He needed an invitation to do it.

 

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[IrishZebra]

I expect it from PDC but not from MElo

 

[Ahmed]

that's not Melo's role, he's there to guard the back 4...Momo and Camo are the ones who need to make the moves going forward

 

[Luca]

I'm going to go back to something me and alen were talking about yesterday to show you how melo was not at fault

I wasn't trying to demonstrate width but your point is a very valid one anyway, it just goes to show that in trying to cover the poor fullbacks whilst staying true to our formation, ciro has well and truely overstreched the three man midfield, maybe this is why melo has only looked half the player he usually is, he's just stranded in the middle alone.
It's no secret that for this formation to work we need great fullbacks, that unfortunetly we don't have.
Therefore the 4-3-1-2 is just not right, I feel sorry for ciro in this respect because this was obviously his master plan.
Like I said we need the CM's to balance out this 3 man midfield as they are better at finding space than our DM's, space is the key to dominating a midfield which is the vital area on the battle field, notice how mesured passes into neat spaces for another midfielder are far more effective than 3 DM's throwing their weight around in desparration for the ball. A RB that can play football would do this formation a wold of good too.
But for the times like this ciro really should have a back up plan.
and that's the inexperience talking

 

[Alen]

First of all, we don't know what is Ferrara telling Melo to do. At the start of the season Melo was going forward very often but lately he's sticking to his place in the center, right in front of the defense.
We don't know if he's doing that because he's tired and can't do all the running or because Ferrara stricktly told him not to leave his place and just cover the midfield, letting the others take care of the attack. I'd say it's the latter.

As for yesterday, Luca is right i believe. Yesterday, with the formation we had, he was obviously told not to move forward at all because he was the only one we had in the center of the pitch and he had to singlehandedly win the midfield.

 

[Ahmed]

sure but his pattern of play and positioning on the field suggests that Melo has been told to be the guy sitting in front of the defence...it is his natural exuberance that makes him burst forward to get involved in the attack...not to mention a classic goal vs. Roma

 

[Bianconero81]

Owned might be an extreme word, but I needed to exaggerate just to exhibit how clueless we were yesterday. So what if we had 60%-70% possession? What was the end product? Absolutely 0. We were abysmal!

 

[Marc]

Owned might be an extreme word, but I needed to exaggerate just to exhibit how clueless we were yesterday. So what if we had 60%-70% possession? What was the end product? Absolutely 0. We were abysmal!

And all that against probably the weakest league opponent.