James Tarkowski

[Cozzie]

Love his attitude and approach to the game.

He's always the first over, giving it the biggun if one of our players gets done over, haven't had that type of snide in the side for a long time.

[Bluebridge]

Love his attitude and approach to the game.

He's always the first over, giving it the biggun if one of our players gets done over, haven't had that type of snide in the side for a long time.

Seamus is exactly that.

[Goaljira]

Seamus is exactly that.

He's not though.

[Bluebridge]

He's not though.

He is, normally the first there to defend his teammates.

[Audrey Horne]

Coleman is always up for a scrap

[Goaljira]

Coleman would be there giving verbal and moody looks, but he was never the one putting himself right in the middle like Tark and Branthwaite do now. They're like Fulton Reed and Dean Portman from The Mighty Ducks.

[TheRam]

We don’t play in a low block.

Don’t know why this is always said about us.

We defend quite high up the pitch.

[StirlingBlue]

We don’t play in a low block.

Don’t know why this is always said about us.

We defend quite high up the pitch.

Early on we do, but once a move beats the initial press our defensive line drops back lower than the 18 yard box, it’s definitely a low block.

[AjaxAndy]

It's both isn't it?

We've had spells (immediately post first points deduction) where played really high up with super aggressive pressing.

And then spells like recently especially where we've been fairly low block.

Also plenty of times where we've been a bit of both during matches.

It's almost as if there some tactical flexibility there but that's not how people want to view Dyche it seems.

[Bluedylan1]

Yeah it's fair to say there's some variation to how we defend and where we set our defensive line.

So to amend my earlier comment about Tarks being a very good low block defender, I'll say he's a very good penalty area defender.

I never feel comfortable with too much space in behind him (and neither does he), where he can get isolated with attackers with pace and skill, which is why often Branthwaite is the one of the two sitting a bit deeper and sweeping up. That seems to work quite well.

[AjaxAndy]

Yeah it's fair to say there's some variation to how we defend and where we set our defensive line.

So to amend my earlier comment about Tarks being a very good low block defender, I'll say he's a very good penalty area defender.

I never feel comfortable with too much space in behind him (and neither does he), where he can get isolated with attackers with pace and skill, which is why often Branthwaite is the one of the two sitting a bit deeper and sweeping up. That seems to work quite well.

Yeah he's not fast at all, but his positioning is pretty good and his reading of the game likewise.

I definitely wouldn't want him being exposed against pace regularly though, like you said Branthwaite is a massive asset in situations where Tarks isn't able to deal with the situation and something we desperately need to consider with whoever we bring in to replace Jarrod.

[Shogun]

Think we saw under Lampard (admittedly a terrible manager) what happens when you ask Tarks to play further up the pitch. Consistently goes flying into challenges that he's never going to make and takes himself out of the game when he doesn't get the ball.

He is a decent defender but he's not at the level of somebody like Jagielka that we've seen in the past.

[Cods]

Good organisation, positioning, reading the game, and calmness are good attributes that contribute alot to the team that don't really come from anyone else except maybe Gana.

How Branthwaite might play with a different defensive partner would be interesting, hopefully we've no need to see that eventuate for a season or three.