But you can't tell during a game whether plan A is working or not. And if Plan B always gives worse results it's still not worth changing. Conte is successful BECAUSE he understands this. You would not be a good coach because you don't.
If his plan A was have our left flank play a completely different formation to the rest of the team, he needed a Plan B...one where the left flank played the same formation as their teammates
If Plan A isn't the best way of playing then it shouldn't be Plan A and the coach should be sacked. If Plan A isn't being implemented by the players they should be dropped. Plan B is never needed.
Plan B is always needed That's why you see players falling over in the penalty area at convenient times, because that's the Plan B for a lot of teams
You’re telling me you couldn’t tell things weren’t working against Man Utd? Or against Chelsea or against Arsenal? Every big game, the plan doesn’t work. I don’t mean dramatically change everything but tweaks need to be made in certain games to change the game. Conte has his system but he seems to lack flexibility.
This ignores the ability of the opposition to modify their game. If they change shape or tactic, then we have to be able to change how we play?
Only if you assume that how well our system works depends on how the opposition play. Despite what all the pundits say it isn't obvious to me and no-one has ever tried to argue why it should be so. It sounds completely illogical to me. If the opposition are playing the best way they can and we are playing the best way we can then any alteration by either side makes things worse for that side.
I didn't watch the Man Utd game. But they have better and more expensive players than us and will beat us if they play well and we don't. Especially if they score through a massive deflection. Similarly Chelsea but we got a draw there. As for Arsenal we were getting on top in the first half but that was all destroyed by a rare Lloris blunder and then the red card did for us. But surely you don't think that losing games from time to time means that something is wrong and has to be changed. If our Plan A was good enough to score 90 goals a season and concede only 30 we would most probably win the league. But we would also most probably lose a couple of matches 1-0 or 2-1. That wouldn't show that anything was wrong or needed to have been changed.
It demonstrably does though. If you assume 343 to be our ‘default setting’, we find it much harder to play through teams in a low block. When they come out and play or press us we usually do much better. Various ways of playing football have always worked better or worse against various other ways. I’m all for getting really good at a ‘default setting’ and imposing that on teams but when someone like Tuchel works out the plan, like he did in the game earlier this season, then you have to change it to alter the dynamic of the game.
Plan B - Here is relatively recent Spurs example; Harry liked to play a possesion, short passing, quick style with 2 small mobile strikers Defoe and Keane. On occasions when this wasn't working, he would send for Crouchie, we would go longer and more direct. Thats plan A & Plan B in a nutshell.
I rmember when Harry was out injured Llorente did a better job "team play".Then Harry came back,didn't do well and Llorente got dropped.....so did the team! Looks like if Harry and Sonny don't score................!? we can't rely on any one else.
That's all fine but since my opinion is based on the assertion that there was no way of testing whether Defoe and Keane was working, it doesn't persuade me. However it wouldn't be an issue if Plan A was always to bring on Crouch at some point. It's the decision to do it based on what has happened in the match so far that is my issue....but see my next reply
I think we are giving far too much importance to the position of players on the field. Whatever starting positions we took against United would have made little difference because we were simply outplayed. United were quicker to the ball, quicker to close down the player and quicker at moving the ball around the pitch. Essentially different formations are to enable the use of different players. As The Changing Man has just pointed out, if you bring on a player like Crouch you change the approach of the team. Look at the options; Play faster, play long ball, play passing to feet, man marking, zonal marking. All of these choices and more, can be altered by individual players and their particular skills. There is always a plan A and plan B as soon as you bring on a sub you have changed to plan B. Conte is a very very focused manager and he clearly he invests his efforts into a style of play and then looks for the players to carry this out. That obviously works as the evidence of his successful record clearly shows, but it requires players who run and run to make it work. I'm guessing that the number of games is a factor here but that applies to the other teams as well. I think you always need one player in midfield who is strong and can take a game by the scruff of the neck, when the team is misfiring. Spurs have players like that but we only use one. If teams come at us hard and close us down we tend to crumble. We rely on Kane and Son to bale us out and spark the team. Hjobjerg does attempt to fill that firing role for us but as a result we overplay him to the point of reducing his play. I suggest we need Skipp and Bisouma to be given more game time so that we have an alternative. As others have said we have a squad, we need to use it.
The situation is changed by the score to some extent. Because no plausible Plan is really likely to score three goals without reply in a single half. So in a knockout match you have to change the level of risk you take. But that change was not driven by evidence that Plan A was not working. Since we should expect to concede first a third of the time it would be absurd to change our plan whenever we did.
We were 2-0 down on the night and 3-0 down on aggregate. That's quite a lot of evidence that Plan A isn't working.
My whole point is that it isn't because something similar happens even to Man City once or twice a season. And even if it was it doesn't prove that Plan B is better.
It's not really surprising that our Plan works out differently against different counters. But that still doesn't demonstrate that some different plan would work better....
