LFW’s resident coach (unsalaried position) Neil Dejyothin returns to dissect QPR’s performance at Norwich on Saturday.
Firstly I'm relieved we escaped with a point and it's certainly not the time to panic. It's really important that we've come away with a point and put something on the board, that's the real positive from the match and I hope that can help galvanise us for what is a difficult set of fixtures to come.
But let's cut to the chase, we should be concerned with how poorly we're playing and it's alarming to see the team in such a bad way so early on.
This time we set up in a 4-4-2 formation, which was very flat across the board. The players stuck to their positions, so we had a flat back four, a flat midfield four and two strikers.
However, each of the units never really supported one another and this left us too wide open whenever we lost the ball. What I mean by that is when we were on the ball you never really saw the full backs pushing on and overlapping the wide men. Similarly when we lost the ball, you never saw the wide men tucking in or getting back to double up on Norwich's wingers.
You can apply this to the midfield too. You never saw Ji-Sung Park or Samba Diakité really bursting forward to support the strikers or get beyond them. Similarly you never saw them dropping into the hole to do a mop up job in a defensive midfield position just in front of our centre-backs - which they badly needed - or to try and pick up possession in there and control and dictate the tempo of the play.
Static – you become like that when you are afraid and low on confidence. Nobody was willing to take a risk in fear of making a mistake.
The problem here is because we played in such a flat manner, our units often got further and further apart, so at times when Norwich launched attacks, the back four may have retreated together in a straight line, but nobody from the midfield followed leaving oceans of space right across the pitch and Norwich kept on picking up the ball in there and had the time to turn on it, play and spray it out wide.
This is the QPR set up in the build up to the Norwich goal - which came from a throw-in – and this is what kept happening throughout the first half. The defenders were in a straight line, on this occasion joined by Diakite who was helping defend the throw down that side. But as the play progressed, the midfield were always the wrong side of Norwich's attacking players. A huge amount of space was available for them to operate in just in front of the defence (red zone) and it's here where they were always able to spread the ball into wide areas for them to cross in, or wait for overlapping support as they could outnumber us in wide areas.
In contrast – a very similar situation in terms of position on the pitch - this is how Norwich defended versus our attacks, with a player sitting in the hole in front of the two defenders, providing extra protection and cover and making it difficult for us to play between the lines. The green area signals the successful protection zone and cover. It they win the ball, it makes it easier for them to recycle possession too, because of the added angles and extra passing options this set up creates.
We were wide open throughout the first half and prone to having crosses fired in, and we suffered because of the amount of mistakes we made in terms of misplaced passes. Ji-Sung Park, Samba Diakité and Armand Traore were all guilty of giving the ball away needlessly on many occasions and in really dangerous areas. Do this against better sides and we will be punished worse than what we saw here.
And then we had Bobby Zamora, who looked rather fed up with the lack of quality service, coming really deep to try and get hold of the ball. There was one occasion he popped up in the right back position, and even went to take a throw from there himself at one stage. He must have dropped deep to nearly the centre back positions on five or six occasions, and stuck out like a sore thumb because he was the only player offering any movement between the units.
So there was a lack of a plan. And that lack of a plan and pattern play led to minimal efforts on goal, or even phases of attack in and around the Norwich penalty area. We had one tame strike from Jamie Mackie in the first half after he dribbled in from wide, the penalty and rebound which resulted in a goal, and one speculative tame 30 yard effort from Zamora in the second as well as the Cisse missed scissor kick. I don't think we managed to get near their box in the second period apart from that, which is disappointing considering the personnel we had on the pitch.
The Canaries also did a good job on our central midfield, closing Park and Diakité down aggressively and quickly and rushing them into making mistakes. Diakité was often caught in possession after trying mazy runs. I thought this would happen, these two games have already shown that players are wising up to his traits fast and pouncing on them.
The midfield don't seem to have proper roles at the moment, much like last week, but this week with just the two, it felt like Park and Diakité were performing the same duties. I always think it's a cop out when a side tries to share the responsibilities. It reminds me of the whole Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard situation for England over the years. Simply tell one player to sit and the other to go. Then there is no confusion or passing the buck to anybody else, and everybody knows who's job it is to mop up and protect the centre backs and whose got to provide the onus to get forward and do some work further up the field.
Defensively we look very vulnerable as a team and on an individual basis. If you looked at the marking for their goal, both centre backs lost their men. Anton Ferdinand completely takes his eyes off Grant Holt at the critical moment, as does Clint Hill with Simeon Jackson. It's all these basics that need to be worked on and ironed out.
Having said all that, probably at the expense of attack, we did look slightly more comfortable in the second period in open play – but what good does that do when you still concede far greater chances for them to score?
Simeon Jackson should have done much better with a shot that hit the side netting. Robert Snodgrass should have buried his header that hit the roof of the net, they had a moment where they got behind our backline and Snodgrass flashed a ball across the goal that had he applied more care and picked the right pass, would have resulted in a golden chance for Holt, and we got away with one from Russell Martin that came back out off the bar.
And I wasn't impressed by the amount of time it took to get Zamora stitched up and not making a substitution when we could have after Traore pulled up with yet another injury. We played with nine men in that period for far too long and resulted in that chance for Snodgrass. Naive, very naive.
What improved? The result – a great point when you consider the above. Away from that, Nedum Onuoha had a decent forty five minutes after what was a bit of a disaster for him last week.
Well on one hand he’s a really good player, so you have to accept that he’s going to give a lot of defenders a hard time. He plays to his strengths and uses his experience really well to gain an advantage, and he’s also a good judge of the temperament of the officials too. He understands how far he can go with each of them and that is intelligent, if somewhat sneaky play.
Sadly as expected, we didn’t deal with him very well. He gave our defence another torrid time and there were plenty of better ways to deal with him than we did, but we didn’t do any of those and I’m not sure why Mark Hughes thinks we dealt with him well – Holt was a handful as he always is and we didn’t prepare for him well enough.
The one-on-one situations we allowed him to get into with Clint Hill, or whoever he ended up against, was a little schoolboy really.
There were times when Norwich had the ball in wide positions that they played diagonally into him, and neither of the central midfielders shut out the channel of space that the ball travels through. All they needed to do was shift five yards in one direction to help with that, and if the ball goes over their heads, they should turn immediately to apply pressure on that striker from the other side.
Both Ji-Sung Park and Samba Diakité were guilty of this, but their starting positions often left space for the Norwich player to simply roll the ball into Holt. This made it easy for them to find him.
All we needed them to do was shift over five yards to block the channel and make that pass more difficult. It doesn't mean they can't find him, but it makes it harder. The player has to be more accurate, and if they play it along the ground there's a greater chance the midfielder can block the ball.
If they do find him that player then needs to turn around as soon as the ball is airborne and apply immediate pressure onto Holt, meaning he is being closed down from both sides. This makes it much harder for them to retain the ball, forcing them into taking a great first touch and more often than not, forcing them to play backwards quickly in an attempt to keep the ball.
This gives the centre back a little more time, and puts the striker under more pressure to release the ball quickly. But I was still frustrated that when we allowed Holt to turn, we often fell for the trick of taking him down. He doesn't have bags of pace, so it's better to jockey at a yard or two's distance and wait for help to arrive and for the defensive shape to compress. You have to stand off him a yard to give yourself some space and ensure he’s not leaning his body on you or cleverly wrapping his arms around you on the blind side.
We also played a risky game after Hill was booked. He was in serious danger of being sent off before half time, so if you’re going to wait until the half is over it’s best to switch who is marking him. Anton Ferdinand should have assumed the responsibility from that point, even if it meant putting Hill up against Jackson’s pace.
Holt’s performances against us are a lesson for some of our forwards though, because he gets players sent off, wins penalties and wins free-kicks in and around the box that could be vital to a sides chances of success. Don’t be shy – watch and learn lads.
The next four matches, including the Walsall one, are important for us in terms of working out a plan, what our responsibilities and duties are and giving them a good go. We now need to apply a 'one game at a time' mentality, because it's too daunting to look at the fixtures on paper and needlessly worry about them. That does us no good, but we do need to use them to build game by game.
Whatever we can get out of the Manchester City, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur matches will be a bonus, but we shouldn't wave the white flag and accept defeat in them either. We may expect to lose, but losing matches saps confidence, and we need to use them properly to try and build on what we've got and raise our performance levels as much as we can, and actually try and take something from them.
You don't want to go into the West Ham and West Brom games after completely devoid of confidence, especially as you still run the risk of injuries and suspensions prior to those matches too, so you can't be sure you will be at full strength for them either.
So I'd start with Walsall and rest at least half of the team, let's get some of them out of the firing line, and put a few new bodies in to top up their game time and then begin the process of building a platform. This one, we should concentrate on going forward and working on our attacking play. If we can play well and get some goals, it'll help boost morale.
I’d like to see Boswingwa, Andrew Johnson, Ryan Nelsen, Shaun Derry and Adel Taarabt all involved and I think it needs to be a relatively strong team, with an emphasis on ball retention between the midfield and defence, and working on ways to release the striker and stretch the play.
The core work ahead of Manchester City is to create a defensive shape and platform that can spring and launch counter attacks. We need a similar style to when we played them last season, but as nothing hinges on the result, we can be a little more adventurous on the counter and more willing to pass and move the ball.
Tweet @loftforwords, @neildejyothin