Please stop the awful hoofing!!!

WESTY_SUFC · Jan 9, 2011

I think (maybe wrong) we have players who can keep the ball on the ground so why nearly every time we get the ball in defence the whole of our midfield turn their backs to the player and run away? Also when a midfielder gets the ball he looks up to find everyone static. The movement of the side is terrible.

Is it something Sturrock tells the players to do? Are the players lacking in confidence that much that they are hiding from the ball, not wanting it? Are we simply not good enough to play the ball from back to front?

At Oxford we kept it on the floor (although being allowed to as they were v poor) and took them apart. We looked like a really decent side.

Can we please try to stop the hoofing. Its rubbish and boring!

ps. This is going on the whole season not just Chesterfield.

southendkid · Jan 9, 2011

To be fair the second penalty happened because we didn't hoof it away, if we had then we wouldn't have given away the penalty. But I agree, too often our tactic is to pass back to Morris so he can hoof it

McNasty · Jan 9, 2011

The only way hoofing would work for us would be if we signed Akinfenwa who would batter the opposition on his way to getting the ball.

Play it on the ground please.

MrB · Jan 9, 2011

Our fulll backs very rarely come to look for the short ball from the keeper, they always trot up to the halfway line. I assume this is what they're told to do but when a team is already winning, they're less likely to put pressure on a full back collecting the ball as they're not chasing the game so are happy to sit further back. This is turn should allow the full back to play a pass to a winger or CM so we can build an attack from there rather than the keeper just hoofing the ball aimlessly for one of their centre backs to head straight back. Not sayin we should do it every time, but a bit of variation would be nice.

As a case in point, this was Reina's distribution in two home games against Wolves, one under Benitez, the other under Hodgson. You can see why Liverpool fans were getting annoyed!