Apologies if my tone was a little brash, but the frustration of circling around the same argument.. Which is your opinion being presented as if it's a fact (a personal bugbear of mine in everyday life) obviously got the better of me.
The point I have been trying to make is that football is not played on paper, on wikipedia, or even football manager and that the best laid plans fall apart as soon as the first whistle is blown so the positions of circles on a team sheet don't count for much.
But that's all that needs to be said so we can direct this thread back on to matters at hand [This Sunday]
Scowey, I never had a problem with it. Was just pointing out to Westy why I bit back.
I don’t agree with you - one of the reasons for Manchester United’s success under Sir Alex Ferguson was that tactically they were always drilled to perfection.
As an example, every time I see a deflected goal go in I wince, because as the best centre backs (Ferdinand, Terry) will testify, if you stand up and face forward you might take one in the groin or the face, but chances are the ball will not loop up or deviate into the net. When a player sticks his leg out or twists or bends to the side, he’s greatly increasing the chances of the ball spinning, looping, flying off in an uncontrolled manner. Almost every deflected goal you see will be caused by this and the commentator will incorrectly attribute it to bad luck.
Hansen always used to use the phrase ‘playing percentages’ about defensive positioning because if you position yourself correctly you greatly increase the chance of seeing the danger away. Failing to do this was the cause of the Sheffield Wednesday goal.
The same applies to creating chances and scoring goals. Great strikers positioning is absolutely crucial - how they start and then react to a passage of play is partly instinct and partly drilling on the training ground. That’s why on TV analysis there’ll often be a graphic of a string between a front pair. Their positioning and movement is vital to being able to find each other and unlock a defence. Skill and instinct then plays a major part in how the pass, the chip, the shot are executed. I would not expect our players to be executing goals like the sublime Pogba chip into the box / Rashford finish last week.
Then you add in the human element - Gary Neville recently said he had a target of being at fault for 4 goals per season - that is four times when he did something that tactically he shouldn’t have that led to a goal. It is never going to be perfect but drilling and tactics improve your chances.
Absolutely true that our players are not as good at this - in terms of quality and intelligence and discipline (if they were they would be Premier League players). But they still should be doing a lot better than they are.
My major criticism of Hurst in early games was that he was not giving us any chance to score goals and it’s still the case now with how we are setting up. If players are giving their all but they have nothing to execute, or they are executing the wrong things, they will lose football matches and gradually get frustrated. I could see this happening under Paul Hurst and I was banging on and on every week about the need to change it.
This was NEVER a criticism I had of McCarthy and to give him his credit he worked hard on all this stuff and his sides were drilled like an absolute machine. It would spring a leak, the defence would lose their discipline for a period, and then he’d get in and change it and fix it, never perfect but keeping working on it. Perhaps that’s the major difference in the goalkeepers as well this season.
