Movement and crossing

[madhatter]

I think the success of this season will rely massively on these two - movement and crossing. We had nice build up play last season but movement in final third was poor and incohesive at times (2 players making same run etc.). Same goes for crossing - we wipped in a fair few horrendous crosses last season and when the good ones went in there was a tendency for players to be posted missing.

Do we think the new recruits will help on these fronts? I'm hoping we get a 6ft5 brute in the midfield as this is a physical league and we were sometimes a soft touch last season.

[Smartie]

Nail on head imo when it comes to our problems last season.

Ok, we lost more goals than we probably should but (again) our main problems were at the other end of the park. If we'd taken early chances in games that we went on to lose goals in later on, we would have been out of sight on some occasions.

We worked the ball into nice positions but all too often the final ball/ final run just weren't there.

The signings of Keatings, Carmichael and Boyle will add significantly to what we already had so I'm confident we now have a lot of options to kill teams off.

We looked miles better by way of movement in the final third every time Boyle played last season.

[jacomo]

Coaching will help too, I think.

Sometimes last season I felt our midfielders were duplicating each other at times, rather than using space to stretch opponents. Not a surprise given the hurried way the team was thrown together.

We need more goals from midfield, which probably means midfielders gambling on crosses etc by getting into the box more often.

Carmichael and Keatings should offer something different, which will help.

[Ozyhibby]

Perfect assessment of our problems last season.
Our play should have resulted in a lot more goals last season and it was the biggest difference between us and Hearts (I think they only conceded 6 less than us).
We need to score a lot more goals. Still think we need a goal scoring midfielder.