Decision was taken to go direct from back after loss of confidence
After the defeat at QPR on New Year’s Day, Tom Cleverley highlighted a lack of nous among his squad.
He was looking for ‘player coaches’ on the pitch, clearly asking for his more experienced and senior individuals to help those around them.
What he wasn’t looking for was his captain, Dan Bachmann, to be attempting Cruyff turns in his own penalty area.
He was successful the first time, but his second attempt was shut down by Sheffield United’s Callum O’Hare and the ball so nearly bounced into the empty net for what would have been an embarrassing goal.
Later in the game Bachmann suffered what looked like a serious ankle injury, but a question about the keeper’s performance still had to be posed to the head coach.
“Dan’s suffered a really difficult moment so I don’t want to speak about his performance too much,” said Cleverley.
“We lost a bit of confidence in the first half in using our goalkeeper so I took the decision to go more direct.
“I feel like, if we want to go to the next level in football, you have to control football matches – and an element of controlling football matches is using your goalkeeper to keep possession.
“That’s the way football is nowadays.
“You won’t seen many successful teams not doing that.
“So it is a direction we want to go down and unfortunately with a couple of errors and a lack of confidence we didn’t look comfortable doing it.
“So you have to go more direct which gives you less control of the football match.
“It’s somewhere we want to get to in the future.”
In front of Bachmann there was a welcome return to action for experienced defender Angelo Ogbonna, who had not played since injuring his hamstring at Luton in October.
“He’s a really good voice – like I said in the week Moussa leads by example but Angelo is a vocal leader,” said Cleverley.
“I was pleased with his performance today.
“He brings us that basic defensive instinct and hopefully physically he’ll come out of the game for the better.”
