The unfair condemnation of Lukas Engel

coluka said:
What we are seeing is the result of his coaching from Silkeborg with a few weeks of Boro thrown in. He is young and can and will improve, what his ceiling will be, can not be predicted. He needs time, coaching and if he isn’t ready then he should not be thrown in the lions den except as a last resort. He has shown positives, but defensively his game needs much work. We need to remember he was originally a winger. If the clubs data was wrong, that is not the lads fault and hopefully fans direct the criticism appropriately.
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He's 24 isn't he, not sure he can be classed as 'young'?

Most players need a period of adjustment when coming to a better league and it's easy to underestimate the gap better the Danish league and the championship, not just in terms of equality but also speed and the required level of fitness and strength.

I would write any player off after a handful of games, more so one that is trying to bridge such a big gap, but I have to be honest and say the signs aren't good at all.

I also think the Bangura signing was a consequence of his early performances.
 
Maccarone said:
He didn't get much support from Mcgree though....he's not the player he was last season either, all's not well in the camp I'm afraid
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McGree was the problem for me. Made no effort to help out. Coburn nearly got back for the goal. Last season McGree was busting a gut to cover Giles. Not this season. I can see why he's not been playing. Needs a kick up the backside.
 
I said similar in the other threads - Engel has had a few bad games, we can't deny that - but no full back should be left as isolated as he has been - he's constantly in one-on-on situations.

If we had Forss or Jones in a one on one situation, it doesn't matter who the opposition full back is, I'd expect Forss/Jones to have over a 50% chance of getting past them...

Every team would want a winger in a one on one situation with a full back.

I'm not defending Engel's overall performance - it's been bad - but other players are equally to blame.
 
Ash88 said:
I said similar in the other threads - Engel has had a few bad games, we can't deny that - but no full back should be left as isolated as he has been - he's constantly in one-on-on situations.

If we had Forss or Jones in a one on one situation, it doesn't matter who the opposition full back is, I'd expect Forss/Jones to have over a 50% chance of getting past them...

Every team would want a winger in a one on one situation with a full back.

I'm not defending Engel's overall performance - it's been bad - but other players are equally to blame.
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If that's all it was I'd agree, but it was his body shape, his positioning, there were real basics of defending he was getting wrong. Massively wrong. And repeatedly wrong.

There was no real huge tactical shift in the 2nd half, but in the same circumstances RVB, playing out of position, and hardly on fire at the moment btw, did infinitely better.
 
MickaelDebevePhenomenal said:
If that's all it was I'd agree, but it was his body shape, his positioning, there were real basics of defending he was getting wrong. Massively wrong. And repeatedly wrong.

There was no real huge tactical shift in the 2nd half, but in the same circumstances RVB, playing out of position, and hardly on fire at the moment btw, did infinitely better.
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There's no denying RVB did better, and Engel wasn't good enough. 100% agree.

But Engel is not the sole reason for this seasons failure. He wasn't the cause of Sheffield's goal, and other than his terrible back pass vs WBA, he hasn't been the sole cause of other goals either.

One on one you'd expect a full back to lose 50% of the time to a winger - Giles was the same - just like you'd expect Jones to win at least 50% of the time at the other end...

When Engel is in one-on-one positions - his cover (Hackney/O'Brien) are nowhere to be seen - they're up the pitch on the attack - all the time. Nobody in the team wants to defend.

When Engel gets beat - our defenders (Lenihan/Fry) are totally flat footed, ball watching, not knowing where attackers are - But they seem to avoid any of the blame.
 
Well Engel didn’t play at Blackburn and we conceded thrice. He didn’t play against Millwall and we lost, he wasn’t playing at Coventry and we lost 3-0. Nor was he playing in any of the last five games of last season, none of which we won and shipped another five goals against our two.

He is struggling of course but for me the main problems are a lack of protection - from both the midfielder in front and from his left-sided central half - and the fact we aren’t scoring goals. If we were scoring he would in theory be less noticeable.

I don’t know if he’s good enough but it’s sad to see one player getting all this grief when other, more established players are getting away with murder.
 
Ash88 said:
When Engel is in one-on-one positions - his cover (Hackney/O'Brien) are nowhere to be seen - they're up the pitch on the attack - all the time. Nobody in the team wants to defend.
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Depends, if the team is in balance then I'd expect better than 50%, 65-75% if you can defend. Travelling with the ball is slower than travelling without it.

The problem, is that the team aren't always in balance, we don't get men behind the ball fast enough. It starts with wide forward who don't track back, which then gives CDMs a decision to make, support the full back, or cover central players. If both CDMs move over 1 slot, so the closest CDM supports the FB, then we need our forwards to pressure any balls played back to the opponent FBs/CBs. One thing I've noticed repeatedly is that yes we get isolated at FB, but we also get caught by the switch far too easily, If we overload at RFB to support an attack that side, and we allow the ball to be switched to our left, then half our team are now out of position. You need forwards to work harder to stop this, and ours generally don't work hard enough.
 
BoroMart said:
Depends, if the team is in balance then I'd expect better than 50%, 65-75% if you can defend. Travelling with the ball is slower than travelling without it.

The problem, is that the team aren't always in balance, we don't get men behind the ball fast enough. It starts with wide forward who don't track back, which then gives CDMs a decision to make, support the full back, or cover central players. If both CDMs move over 1 slot, so the closest CDM supports the FB, then we need our forwards to pressure any balls played back to the opponent FBs/CBs. One thing I've noticed repeatedly is that yes we get isolated at FB, but we also get caught by the switch far too easily, If we overload at RFB to support an attack that side, and we allow the ball to be switched to our left, then half our team are now out of position. You need forwards to work harder to stop this, and ours generally don't work hard enough.
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The problem is the team are never in balance. The catalyst last season was Howson's positional discipline allowed Hackney to essentially float around and do what he wanted, which was successful.

We had Giles who struggled 1-on-1 but was positionally better as a LB than what we've seen of Engel so far, and Smith who was positionally very good at RB too.

We were able to push teams inside because of how we set ourselves up (last season). This season teams are going wide (all the time), because they know it's our weakness.
It's not our weakness solely because of Engel, but because of the space they can run into once the ball is out wide. It's how Wednesday, Blackburn (twice) and QPR scored.

I think Hackney and O'Brien are being let off lightly this season because they both look pretty on the ball.

I like them both as players... but in the system we play, they're essentially CDMs, and they should be positioning themselves so they're able to defend when we haven't got the ball, as well as attack when we have it.
 
What's the answer? Narrower back four without position? Guess that relies on the wide attacking players tracking back (something we've seen little of).

There was an early switch on Tuesday to Engels' side. To be fair he won the ball, but if he didn't there was around a 20 yard channel between him an LCB, a decent side would have had a runner straight through there.
 
Ash88 said:
The problem is the team are never in balance. The catalyst last season was Howson's positional discipline allowed Hackney to essentially float around and do what he wanted, which was successful.

We had Giles who struggled 1-on-1 but was positionally better as a LB than what we've seen of Engel so far, and Smith who was positionally very good at RB too.

We were able to push teams inside because of how we set ourselves up (last season). This season teams are going wide (all the time), because they know it's our weakness.
It's not our weakness solely because of Engel, but because of the space they can run into once the ball is out wide. It's how Wednesday, Blackburn (twice) and QPR scored.

I think Hackney and O'Brien are being let off lightly this season because they both look pretty on the ball.

I like them both as players... but in the system we play, they're essentially CDMs, and they should be positioning themselves so they're able to defend when we haven't got the ball, as well as attack when we have it.
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Lots of people thought that Adam Clayton was rubbish. But blimey he was so good at protecting the defence. It's not all about miles covered or pace or defence splitting passes. It's about being in the right place at the right time. I mainly attend away games and in every one of these under karanka either Clayton or Ayala was my man of the match. Just through getting a foot in at the vital moment and by hook or by crook stopping the shots coming in.
 
Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret said:
Lots of people thought that Adam Clayton was rubbish. But blimey he was so good at protecting the defence. It's not all about miles covered or pace or defence splitting passes. It's about being in the right place at the right time. I mainly attend away games and in every one of these under karanka either Clayton or Ayala was my man of the match. Just through getting a foot in at the vital moment and by hook or by crook stopping the shots coming in.
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Adam Clayton is exactly the type of player we need. It's the job Howson was doing last season.

Hackney and O'Brien both seem very good traditional CMs and they both look good on the ball, but that's not the role we're playing them in - they're playing as CDMs (or at least one of them should be).
 
Nano said:
Don't forget that it is the fans that pay the money that allows the club to spend the transfer fees and wages on these players so there is nothing wrong with fans questioning the way that money has been spent. If that is stating the obvious and saying somebody who is not good enough is not good enough then I don't have a problem with that. Everyone is capable of having a bad game so I wouldn't write someone off so quickly but there are signs when you watch a player and you can see they aren't good enough. Things like their first touch, their awareness and the way they track/mark attackers should be the same whether they are playing well or not.

I missed the 1st half the other day so I haven't commented on Engels but I was listening on the radio and they were mentioning that he was being tortured and Carrick obviously thought so too because he subbed him off. For some reason our scouting seems to be along the lines of spotting players that are playing well in their leagues via stats and then assuming they can do it in a much tougher league. Do we not do any analysis on player's actual abilities? Barlaser had a load of assists, Engels had a load of assists so we sign them but they clearly lack the ability to do it at the level we're playing at. I get goals and assists when I play football but I'd get none in the championship.
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I'd agree with most of this, aside from Barlaser. He was getting so many assists in the champo, he may have been playing for a side lower in ability than us last season, but he faced exactly the same quality opposition over the season when he got those assists until he signed for us.

A big reason why I expected more from him.
 
Ipad1977 said:
I'd agree with most of this, aside from Barlaser. He was getting so many assists in the champo, he may have been playing for a side lower in ability than us last season, but he faced exactly the same quality opposition over the season when he got those assists until he signed for us.

A big reason why I expected more from him.
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It's a totally different role to what he was playing at Rotherham. He was brought in to replace Howson and still allow Hackney the freedom we allow him.

At Rotherham he was in a midfield three most of the time, and they shared attacking/defensive duties... similar to when we had Crooks - Howson - Tavernier.

You can't expect him to be a defense minded midfielder looking out for Hackney, and still getting the amount of assists he was getting, it doesn't work.

When we put him in a midfield three (with Hackney and Payero) vs. Huddersfield in the cup... He got 2 assists and had a really good game (although they did get a man sent off so difficult to judge 100%).
 
Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret said:
Lots of people thought that Adam Clayton was rubbish. But blimey he was so good at protecting the defence. It's not all about miles covered or pace or defence splitting passes. It's about being in the right place at the right time. I mainly attend away games and in every one of these under karanka either Clayton or Ayala was my man of the match. Just through getting a foot in at the vital moment and by hook or by crook stopping the shots coming in.
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The art of defending is really about knowing where the dangerous space is and where the passing lines are then it’s about knowing when to press and win the ball and when to block the passing lanes.

We aren’t very good at any of these things as proven by our goals against column
 
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