LFW’s resident coach (unsalaried position) Neil Dejyothin returns to dissect QPR’s performance at Norwich on Saturday.

Improvements and problems

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.

Why can we not cope with Grant Holt?

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.

Team for Walsall

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

Photo: Action Images

ThGrimRanger added 10:39 - Aug 27 Some really good analysis here....can someone fwd this to MH
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stansleftfoot added 11:15 - Aug 27 Its time to dig out the cliches but its true, we will never build up enough confidence if we don't get the ball, keep the ball, win a higher proportion of the second ball.....back to basics...
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Neil_SI added 11:20 - Aug 27 We definitely lost a lot of second balls that we should have done a much better job contesting throughout. Norwich just kept it simple; once on the ball, get it down and play it out wide, get men in the box and cross it in. Basic, but effective. They need to put in the hours on the training pitch and work on phases of play and potential context, because it's all about movement and support. When a player is in a certain situation with the ball at his feet, every man should know where they need to be in order to help him out. And all they need is two or three patterns of play to work on and build up and they should be fine. Even going on Norwich's approach would yield them better success at this point.

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SomersetHoops added 11:30 - Aug 27 This is really depressing for me and suggests once again we will be struggling to stay in the PL. I didn't go to Norwich, but I saw the tactical ineptitude we showed against Swansea and the lack of changes made to improve things. Before everyone says - we've only played two games, lets consider the fixtures we have coming up and the lack of confidence these first two games must generate. I accept what you say about the Norwich game and this seems to indicate further managerial incompetence. This is not what I expected from Mark Hughes and his expanding team of supposed football experts who so far this season appear to have got tactics wrong in both games. I didn't expect tactical excellence from Warnock's teams, but expected his players to go out and battle to the end for a result. It seems now we have lost that battling spirit and not gained any improvements in tactical play and I expected better from MH. What depresses me the most is that there is no admission of tactical shortcomings and the blame is always put on lack of good players in certain positions or lack of ability in the players we have. What was the point of having a pre-season if we have not established tactical methods of play to deal with different opposition. Its clear the games in Asia were just a public relations exercise and I don't discount the value of that, but in terms of bedding in the team against adequate opposition I think the last West Country game against Taunton Town was a harder test. Its time for Mark Hughes to get a grip with what is going wrong and I agree with others that he would do well to read and consider the analysis of both our games so far by Neil. He needs to do something about it from his side rather than laying all the blame elsewhere and claiming success from what by all accounts was a very lucky draw against a team we need to beat if we are going to progress.

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Neil_SI added 12:27 - Aug 27 SomersetHoops – The situation is recoverable and we can turn it around, but we've got to use those difficult matches to our advantage. It's a great opportunity for us to work solely on our defensive shape and counter attacks – much like how we ended last season. We should already be at that level and then building from there, but it looks like we are having to go again from scratch, in order for Hughes to get across his philosophy and style. I don't think Hughes expected or saw this start coming – he looks shellshocked and somewhat worried underneath. The key question for me is whether they are being prepared properly or not? It's hard to say – perhaps the players are just not capable of carrying out what he wants them to do? But there lies another problem – if that's the case, then it also points to teaching and coaching methods that may need to change. If you can't get your point across and reflected out on the pitch then you're in trouble and something is wrong and continuously signing better technical players in the hope that they are on the same wavelength as you is not always the answer. A good teacher can adapt to his pupils – a great teacher can teach anybody from start to finish and has the patience and belief to see it through. We all need to show a little patience, but we do need to see massive improvements on what we've seen so far and see value for our return, on the management and coaching side to the performances from the players on the pitch.

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BeauRanger added 12:43 - Aug 27 A fortunate point that I think most would have settled before the game, following the previous Swansea result & better than we got their last season. Although this is basically a new team the current level of performance is concerning following the pre-season prep' they have undergone. It will take time to settle in the heat of Premier League battle & we would have reasonably expected a better start, however lucky the point shows some green shoots of recovery. Naive not to be able to deal with the threat of Holt who is basically an old fashioned centre forward who likes to bully anyone he can....opposition players, refs & even his own club into a new contract. How long are the refs & their assistants going to let him get away with the blindside holding, turning & collapsing in the box at the slightest contact? If anyone should now how to deal with a players of this type is should be MH? Last season Norwich found a way to be effective through Holt, Johnson & Hoolahan etc. They knew their best team & how they wanted to play. Not sure Rangers ever got that far apart from the 5 game winning home run. Rangers need to go back to basics & learn to be hard to beat first, to me Traore doesn't have a defenders instincts & is continually caught wrong side of his man & doesn't do enough to get back. As good as he is on the ball & going forward we need some better defensive cover. Despite his excellent attitude is Clint Hill a Prenier standard centre half & Onuha doesn't look happy as a full back to me either? I can't believe MH (+ coaches) isn't aware of at least some of this & has already promised us we won't be in a relegation battle again. Far too soon to panic but needs to show progress soon, which will be tricky with the upcoming league fixtures.

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devonranger added 20:59 - Aug 27 agree we need to bring in fresh faces,but lets pick the defence which will face city regardles of any signings.
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jonno added 21:20 - Aug 27 Very disappointing and worrying that Hughes and his staff appear to have little or no idea about how to set up the team tactically as mentioned by Neil. It's not exactly rocket science and should be the minimum expected at our level.
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TacticalR added 22:20 - Aug 27 Apologies, as I'm going to repeat some of the points I made after Clive's report on the match... Our long ball football was ugly and ineffective. Has this 4-4-2 formation ever worked for us? Ferdinand was at fault for the Norwich goal. At the beginning of the move, Hill was marking Jackson and Ferdinand was marking Holt (just outside the box). Ferdinand got drawn towards the ball and forgot all about Holt. Hill took a gamble and left Jackson to mark Holt (he had to choose one as he couldn't mark both players), and the unmarked Jackson scored. Perhaps Traoré could have come in quicker to mark Jackson, but I think he was injured early in the match. How many times was Cissé offside? It was annoying as he should have been looking down the line, but I think the problem was that the balls were all straight and over the top (often straight from defence), rather than diagonal or on the ground. There was one good long pass along the ground from Park that nearly got Cissé in. I also noticed that the midfield players weren't able to get forward quickly enough to support the front two, but as you pointed out they didn't seem to do a good defensive job either. Zamora drifting so deep means we were missing a link-up man to supply the front players. You're also right that Norwich did a good job in closing down our midfield quickly - they really strangled us in midfield. Although Holt is able to use his size extremely well and has a bag full of dirty tricks, his turn inside which got Hill booked was actually quite skillful. He's also a good hold-up man. Until we have a defender who can deal with him, I think it's a sensible policy to plan to change the defender marking him at half-time, to reduce the risk of a sending-off.

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Northernr added 22:35 - Aug 27 Just to add to what Tactical says about Ferdinand and the first goal - to go from a position shown in the diagram of 6 v 2 with a third on the edge of the box in possession to a point five seconds and two passes later where the ball is in the net and the guy that scored it was one of three unmarked in the six yard box is piss poor.
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ozexile added 23:04 - Aug 27 What great analysis. Our inability to get the ball from our half into the oppositions without hoofing it is very worrying. Everything in their half was a 50/50 ball. And then we're immediately on the back foot. Faurlin's return would solve alot of these problems.
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Kaos_Agent added 23:09 - Aug 27 Well considered and written as usual Neil. Given all the points you made, what would be your starting squad against Man City?
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Neil_SI added 07:27 - Aug 28 TacticalR - You've raised some good points too, some of which I had noticed as well. The main problem with both the 4-5-1 and 4-4-2 systems we've played in the last two matches is that we've not played either of them properly. They've been very bog standard and straight lined, and if you don't play them in a more dynamic fashion, they're not going to work properly. The marking for the goal was really poor and you can apply that to Park's tracking of players as well. He gets caught in no man's land and not really doing anything in that passage of play either, and because there's a lack of support and protection in front of them, it's easy once the strikers make their move to cause havoc and panic. It was a soft goal to concede, even if Norwich played the move really well. I wasn't as bothered by the amount of times Cissé was caught offside. The balls in to him as you say were not from the best positions on the pitch and they were very straight on, which can always lead to this problem, especially if they do not play those balls early or accurately enough, or even too fast. I know many don't, but I like Holt. I have no problem with the way he plays, even if some of the antics are a little on the cheap side. The substitution at half-time was sensible, but as I said, if you're going to wait until half-time, they could have swapped and put Ferdinand on Holt until they got to the interval.

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Neil_SI added 07:28 - Aug 28 ozexile – Cheers. I agree that Faurlin would offer a massive improvement in terms of ball retention and allowing us to build up possession and pressure. Let's hope he has no complications from his return. One of the other problems we had was distribution from Robert Green was sometimes silly. He was often launching the ball to Jamie Mackie on the wing and at times given him a ball that any player would struggle to deal with, not least the one player in our side who does have weak technical skills and first touch. Mackie pointed at Zamora once or twice, asking Green why he was playing it to him and not Zamora – sure enough on the next go Green played it to Zamora and he won a flick on. They just need to apply some common sense at times.

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Neil_SI added 07:29 - Aug 28 Kaos_Agent – Cheers – I'm not sure what my starting team would be overall, but my feeling is that we need to be potent and dangerous on the counter attack, and I think the best player we have to do that, who knows how to play the lone striker role better than anybody else in the squad is Andrew Johnson. He stretches the play intelligently in the channels and knows how to hold the ball up and buy time. And that precious time can help move the units forward and stop them from getting penned in so deep. Whether he has a full 90 minutes in him, 60 or just 45 is another matter though.

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snanker added 10:44 - Aug 28 Bottom line a very fortunate point to say the least. Our ability to cough the ball up in midfield and drop ourselves in it should have had Canaries taking all the points. Second best all over the park and bet BZ now knows how HH must've felt at times !! When is AF back on the job ? What was the thinking behind AT warming the paint. MH does have a history of taking time with his sides and prepared to continue to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being but prefer the next chapter sooner rather than later in the Prem !

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Charlie1 added 11:12 - Aug 28 Why didn't you use empty / squashed plastic cups to demonstrate the tactics. You perfectly outlined Fellani on the inbound train!
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hoops123 added 15:25 - Aug 28 Ferdinand and Hill aren't good enough. Faurlin needs to sit behind Song and Diakite ( who's not had enough game time), with Tarbs and hoillet out wide. Love Mackie, but he needs to be benched, impact player only. short summation, but our main distributor of the ball is key to our formation.
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