“Through the middle” tactics

Pep plays with wide players which streches the pitch

We play with two winger on same side, no space. Acres of space on right, which teams exploits.

Completely different ideas though.

Pep wants his wingers as wide as possible. That's why he plays with inverted full backs.

Wide wingers creates as much space as possible in the middle.

As he says this makes it very dangerous to play through the middle because losing the ball can leave you open.

We compress everything into the middle o countrer this. Knowing that it makes it very difficult for us to be able to play through successfully. But the idea is that it doesn't matter so much if you lose the ball because you have everyone there ready to win it back. And if you can win it back high up the pitch you are likely to score.

It's deliberately making it more difficult for our own players to create clean chances with the ball. It's nonsense. There's a clip of us laying brilliant football in the game.

A Struijk chip, to Harrison who has a great touch and then inter play with Gnonto/Bamford if I remember correctly leads to a chance for Sinisterra which is snuffed out.

And the players are unbelievably good, do everything so well and it doesn't lead to a good chance because we can't create space. Sides only have to defend the centre. And we put so much pressure on ourselves to nail every moment otherwise it goes wrong.

We have some really exciting players and they are being suffocated by these tactics.