Why won't they shoot?

I'm not one for screaming "SHOOOOOOOOOOT" every time we get anywhere near the goal, but I was really frustrated by the number of times we tried to play it through a packed defence yesterday and ended up with nothing after some decent approach work. The one thing to be said about having a dip is that it puts the fear of God into defences as anything can happen - goalie error, deflection or actually sticking it in the top corner. Swansea were happy to have a go and that's how they scored, hit the bar and won a load of corners, but our lads seemed to be afraid to hit it first time when they had the chance. Only Eagles poked at it with minutes to go and skimmed the post, but Ngog and Mavies both had decent shooting chances and overelaborated.
In our position we have to realise we can't always walk the ball into the net and a few shots on target might encourage the opposition to think twice about piling players forward. We ain't Brazil and we need goals so it's time to polish off the old shooting boots IMO.

Good point, I'm trying to think of any goals we scored from distance....Mavies might have got one.

That's why I like Klasnic because he is always looking to shoot.

Reebok Trotter wrote:That's why I like Klasnic because he is always looking to shoot.

I'll give Klasnic that.

If you look at the two goals Ngog has scored, they're both similar...he takes two touches and shoots.

It's evident that Ngog thinks he has to take two touches before he shoots with everything that comes his way.

Unfortunately, not all teams allow you two touches, David!

Shooting requires confidence in your own skills. Our bloke don't have it.....simples.
Often people think that the better teams get more luck but they make their own luck by shooting away.....dribbling into the box for bogus penalties, getting fouls on the edge of the box etc......this leads to goalie fumbles....deflections into the net.
They make their own luck...... I don't have the stats in front of me...but Swansea had something like 18 shots to our 6 .......they were unlucky on this occassion not to win it.

The most annoying thing was that we wern't even shooting when we were in the box never mind outside it! I think it must ultimately come down to confidence.

Or ego. The "perfect" shooting opportunity doesn't come along too often especially when you have mobile defenders closing you down, shoving you in the back, wrapping their arms around you etc but every now and then there's a split second where the goal is in sight. At that moment you can either risk looking like a twat by toe-poking it or whatever you can do to send it goalward or you can take a touch. I'd rather our guys risked looking like a twat than fanny about waiting for the perfect moment. Eagles toe-poked it at the end and nearly scored. If the others had been more willing to at least try to shoot Swansea would have played much deeper and not caused us anything like the problems they did.