I wouldn't say we're defensive or negative, I'd say we're too cautious, but playing 4-5-1, especially at home, adds a negative element to us. Under that umbrella term of "cautious" comes the fact that, as much as I want to see us play nice short passes, the way in which we do so is laboured, simple, easy to defend against and lacks any sense of urgency, tempo or penetration. Everything is sideways, backwards and slow. The movement off the ball is collectively so poor and unintelligent that there is little opportunity for us to keep moving forwards whilst playing the short game or to penetrate/get in behind the defence - invariably someone gets fed up of passing it sideways and backwards and so lumps it up the pitch so that it comes straight back and puts us under unnecessary pressure. There aren't one or two individuals playing like this, it is all 11 men out on the pitch and it should be plain for anyone to see that this is how they are being told to play. It's not difficult for any manager or coach to tell his players in the dressing room to be quick out of the blocks and to play up-tempo, urgent football so my guess is that this isn't how Brown wants them playing unfortunately.
We lack a decent forward to give us options in the final third but our options elsewhere in "creative" positions generally are ok - in Payne, Worrall and Hurst we have plenty of creative power. What we lack is the right mentality. As I said, by that I don't think we are defensive, but we are too cautious. If PB wants to play the short passing game then it needs to be played with some energy, some zip, some tempo and with players who are willing to work hard in running off the ball into space so that we can actually move forward with it. And as an extension of that, we want to be going for a 2nd and a 3rd goal after we have gone 1-0 up.....be ruthless and relentless, don't tlet the opposition settle into a rhythm. Our style of play should be unsettling the opposition and stretching them, making us a nightmare to play against, that's how chances to score goals come. But the mentality at the moment is doing the opposite - all we are doing is passing it sideways and backwards with zero off-the-ball movement so that our players are easy to mark and to track. It's so frustrating watching Leonard, Timlin, Payne, Atkinson and countless others break forward with the ball and then have to dwell on it with his arms outstretched in dismay because no-one in front of him is giving him an intelligent option. So all we're doing is retaining possession by going sideways or backwards, teams aren't breaking a sweat against us and we are too easily sussed out.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the tactics/mentality and quite possibly with what is being done on the training pitch too.
