Eels Attack Analysis

[Gary Gutful]

Who has said that we should be premiership favorites?
Nobody from my recollection.

Plenty were earlier in the year. Valid comment imo.

 

[Gary Gutful]

Worth a shot at this point. And it would stop him putting the curse on players.

Or we could just take away his player dolls and needles, but I'm in favour of the more violent option.

 

[Noise]

Of course its my f**ken opinion you idiot!

I am on record suggesting we make a play for the Skeleton. Hasler can f**k off.

So you don’t know it. It’s just a f**king guess.

 

[Gary Gutful]

So you don’t know it.

All comments on here are opinions. Some are more informed than others.

There are no certainties in life. There is always a chance that Paul Green or Phil Economidis could have the team performing better than we have over the last few years.

 

[Noise]

All comments on here are opinions. Some are more informed than others.

There are no certainties in life. There is always a chance that Paul Green or Phil Economidis could have the team performing better than we have over the last few years.

And if a change of coach won’t improve things (as you stated), why the f**k are you suggesting going for Bennett?

 

[Suitman]

Plenty were earlier in the year. Valid comment imo.

Ok. I don't recollect that but I'll take your word for it.
I'm sure Pou is busily searching for evidence.

 

[Noise]

Ok. I don't recollect that but I'll take your word for it.
I'm sure Pou is busily searching for evidence.

I don’t reckon many people were claiming we were going to win the premiership either. Most people in the predictions thread didn’t have us as 1st or 2nd.

 

[Gary Gutful]

And if a change of coach won’t improve things (as you stated) why the f**k are you suggesting going for Bennett?

I suggested Bennett before he went to Souths.

My position has been clear for a while. Chase someone elite, but I've always maintained that it is unlikely we will ever get the likes of Bennett, Robinson, Bellamy.

At that point you start looking at Flanagan, Hasler etc who I don't think are an improvement.

Hence why I gave my opinion which I now regret given it didn't come with a suitable number of caveats. Back to fence sitting for me...

 

[emjaycee]

Fantastic summary and a new best post in this thread
It's clear that we don't attack like other teams. We are so far off the pace in attack it's not funny, and my comment should be taken with no disrespect to the OP. This has been one of the better threads worthy of discussion of late.

Tbh, my view is that in the opposition 20/30, we attack like chooks with their head cut off. Totally clueless.
Even teams like the Titans look more dangerous than us.

I agree, a great post and no offence taken by your comment mate. This kind of discussion was the purpose of this thread. I do think (and hence my comments in the OP) that this isn't only a coaching issue but also an execution issue. We can do it well sometimes and yet not others. Unless there are week to week changes in tactics from the coaching staff, it goes back to execution on game day.

 

[Gary Gutful]

I don’t reckon many people were claiming we were going to win the premiership either. Most people in the predictions thread didn’t have us as 1st or 2nd.

The predictions thread isn't a good indicator. Merkins tip us to come 7th and then blow up about how poorly we are performing when we are coming 4th.

I remember it well because I got a bit of curry for it after one of our losses earlier in the year. I said we didn't have a premiership winning squad and there were some people that disagreed with me at the time. Same thing has happened to Pou.

 

[Suitman]

The predictions thread isn't a good indicator. Merkins tip us to come 7th and then blow up about how poorly we are performing when we are coming 4th.

I remember it well because I got a bit of curry for it after one of our losses earlier in the year. I said we didn't have a premiership winning squad and there were some people that disagreed with me at the time. Same thing has happened to Pou.

I actually think we do have a premiership winning squad. Possibly.
But saying that and saying that people said we are favorites are two different things.
I don't remember people saying we are favorites. I might be being pedantic but there is a big difference between the two statements.

 

[Gary Gutful]

I actually think we do have a premiership winning squad. Possibly.
But saying that and saying that people said we are favorites are two different things.
I don't remember people saying we are favorites. I might be being pedantic but there is a big difference between the two statements.

No. You aren't being pedantic.

Thats a fair comment actually. I stand corrected.

 

[TheRam]

I think Browns attacking game has gone backwards, I’m not the only on
here. But we are all Nuffy’s on here. I mean I couldn’t come up with a genius mantra of chasing the collision and front loading effort areas. I mean that genius takes you on the fast train to the middle of the pack!!

Mate we can't all have spoken to Brian Smith once but.

 

[Suitman]

I agree, a great post and no offence taken by your comment mate. This kind of discussion was the purpose of this thread. I do think (and hence my comments in the OP) that this isn't only a coaching issue but also an execution issue. We can do it well sometimes and yet not others. Unless there are week to week changes in tactics from the coaching staff, it goes back to execution on game day.

I think it's a bit of both.
I actually think we have the players to execute a plan. Moses, Brown, Gutherson and Mahoney (our spine) aren't dumb players. They are all clever and talented.
What concerns me (and dare I say this) is that our attack is actually devoid of ideas. It is robotic and predictable, which is why the better teams defend against us easily. Even Canberra, who is not a better team, defended our attack easily last night. Sure, we only lost by a missed conversion, but that conversion shouldn't have even come into play considering the amount of attacking opportunities we had, particularly in their attacking zone (20 metre area).
To me, this comes down to coaching and game plans.
I believe that BA is not flexible in this regard. It was easy to see last night that Canberra were getting in our faces (clearly offside most of the time). Eele said it before in his 2nd best post.
We needed to spread the ball once this was the case. That doesn't mean throwing it from sideline to sideline, but maybe just having a 2nd runner following the hitup. 1 extra pass off the ruck.
Canberra were throwing 3-4 defenders at every hitup, and getting up quickly on us. One extra pass (or cutout pass with a dummy runner) takes those defenders out of play, and opens up a better settler with a few extra meters or an extra attacking opportunity.
We could have changed to this formation easily, if we had trained for it.
Do we or don't we? I don't know.
But, I'm slowly getting fed up with seeing the same old tactics after 8 years as well. The same tactics that fail us time after time.

With our draw coming up leading into the semi's, last night was an important game. 2 points was a must.
Out of the 8 tips I did this weekend for my mum in the nursing home, this was the game that I was most worried about. I seriously considered tipping the Raiders and I told my mum that but she changed my mind.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

What is good is a blog about footy that causes us to think and have opinions, not Pou using stats to prove whatever, euphemisms and other nonsense. This is a refreshing idea, footy talk , goodness me how novel

And not just supporting our arguments with stats, but providing video links and screenshots is a shit way to discuss footy as well.

Why back up your opinion with evidence when you can just give your opinion with no evidence at all? This is rugby league ffs!

 

[eel01s]

I think a lot of fans wouldn't be so critical if the side could demonstrate a change in tactics if the game isn't going to plan.

As stated by others, one thing common in several of this year's losses is that the opposition have muscled up and won the ruck. Some may even say the opposition are offside and dare the refs to continually signal 6 again. But for whatever reason, we seem unable or unwilling to match these tactics.

Maybe it's just me watching through blue and gold glasses, but do refs seem to call out our defenders to get off the tackled player much quicker than for the opposition? Canberra seemed to wrestle and take forever to get up, slowing down our play the ball.

Each week our play the ball is demonstrably slower than the opposition. Our game relies on powering up the middle, gaining quick play the balls and getting a roll on. Teams that successfully nullify that get on top of us.

We do not seem capable of changing our style of play on the run. Coaching and spine players are responsible for this.

 

[Chipmunk]

I think our focus on the power game means we have fewer toilers than clubs like Penrith or the Roosters. There's are the guys who provide all the decoys and support play that makes an attack look smooth.

The Storm and Panthers have the most decoys of any other team. This can't just be coincidence why they're streets ahead of the rest of the comp.

 

[Chipmunk]

Our edge attack was f**king sweet in 2017. Very different to how it is now. Obviously by 2018 the game demanded huge merkins pounding it up through the middle, but when we didn't have those players we played to our strengths and snuck into the top four in 2017. Obviously Norman was a much more skilled playmaker than Drown, which made that style work. We have always played to our strengths. The problem is we lack some of the strengths of the top clubs. It would be nice to build more quickly but I'm just happy that we're building. It's very something.

Why are we building? We've not really progressed over the last three seasons?

Our position on the ladder has been more to do with our draw and less games against strong sides each year over those seasons than the way we've played.

We're building nothing. We've been fortunate that more than half of the comp have been dreadful for two seasons. We're less chance of winning the comp this year than we have been at any stage of the regular season over the last 3 years.

We're not building, we've stagnated.

 

[Delboy]

Watch8ng the Roosters tonight with a line up not as good as ours, their constant movement when in possession and support play is light years ahead of what we do.

Don’t have to go full movement , but gee it shows what a well drilled attack should look like. We aren’t in that ball park and it doesn’t seem we practice anything other than effort and crash plays, I know that is a bit extreme , but how frustrating is it to watch an attack in synch.

 

[Gary Gutful]

We're less chance of winning the comp this year than we have been at any stage of the regualar season over the last 3 years.

Why?

I'd say we're just as much of a chance as we have been in the last few years (i.e. unlikely but possible with some luck).