The long-ball game played by Crawley reveals a lack of organisation.
When Grimsby Town lost against Crawley Town, Paul Hurst discussed the team’s issues with the long ball and made a broader point about being flexible to changes that teams might make.
The Mariners manager discussed how he anticipated Crawley to play based on their recent games, which he said showed a shift away from a pass-heavy, possession-oriented style. In League Two, dealing with long balls and other direct play is not uncommon because many clubs lack the players to concentrate on maintaining the ball with deliberate and gradual build-up play.
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The team must be able to handle those circumstances where they must defend numerous aerial passes. Hurst did not believe his team had a lot of trouble handling them, although he did occasionally observe a lack of organisation. I haven’t seen [Crawley] play a game where they played as many long balls as they did against us, but in my opinion, that is something we need to improve on.
“I simply think we didn’t deal with them as well as we could have in this circumstance; I don’t think [the long balls forward] caused us a lot of issues, but it just looked a little disorganised. The fact that we outpossessed them, which is something we want to attempt to accomplish, was a departure from their regular manner. I believe they had the second-highest number of passes in the league, behind Notts County.
“That says we played well against them, but on the other hand, if there is a shift in the opposition’s style of play, then we need to handle some circumstances better. You must be able to deal with pressure, whether it comes from League Two or the Premier League.
Town has generally played well on defence so far this season, but over the course of the last two games, they have given up six goals, which is unusual for a Hurst-coached club. The Town manager acknowledged that there were one or two situations that were tough for his squad to avoid, but it was not unexpected to hear him express his annoyance at the fact that they had given up three goals in each of the previous two games.
Hurst continued, “Some of the goals we’ve given up recently have some clear contributing factors that are hard to stop, like a mishit cross that goes in the far corner and last week’s goal.”
“However, there are other aspects of our actions and the way we are giving up ambitions that I don’t like. Again giving up three goals [against Crawley] is obviously not what we want to be doing as a team.
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