Fair play to West Ham - they were by far the better team today and anything less than 3 points would have been a gross injustice. The less said about Tottenham's performance (especially in the second half) the better. Chalk it up to a bad day at the office and hope that AVB has learned a few things from Sunday and the mistakes won't be repeated.
Well said THFC. West Ham fully deserved the points yesterday. They came with and stuck to their game plan. They also had something that we are missing, leaders all over the pitch. We have daws whereas they had Nolan, noble, jussi, tomkins all leading. Not a good day at the lane but one I'm sure we won't see repeated.
It reminded be of the 3-0 home loss we had to Sunderland a few years ago. Poor all round display but we recovered and finished 2nd + didn't lose another home game all season. It looked to me like a newly assembled team came up against a finished article on top of their game. The weak full backs were always going to be the achilles heal, I'm not sure why AVB let Assou-Ekotto go out on loan and didn't bring in a replacement. If Walker was injured, to me it would have made more sense to play a back 4 of Naughton, Chiriches, Dawson and Vertonghen. It's no secret that West Ham are strong on set pieces and that may have helped prevent the first goal.
DL, I don't think that AVB let BAE go on loan for footballing reasons, it was more to do with his character! Bad mistake in not bringing in another left back though. Naughton works hard and gives it his all but he's not a left back and it shows. We've got plenty of midfielders but a lack of defenders, especially full backs. The Romanian has only played 2 and to be fair he's looked uncomfortable in both, Kaboul is once again injured so that only leaves Daws & verts. Some of the squad looked unfit yesterday, some looked tired. It doesn't help that AVB himself doesn't seem to know his best starting X1 yet. Hopefully over the next 2 weeks we'll get Lennon, Rose & Capoue back & others will have settled in at the club.
I don't have a scientific answer to these questions and my previous statement was therefore more conjecture than a provable theory. However in general terms the 'style of play' is 'keeping the ball' and 'winning it back quickly'. This is based on the fact that the opponents can't score if you have the ball, and you can't score if they have it. Therefore passing the ball to a team-mate is rated miles above speculative plays such as long passes and crosses or even long-range shots. So that is why the wingers play on the 'wrong' side and cut in etc. It also explains the pressing game to get the ball back which works best if you press the weaker opposing passers who will generally be the defenders. This in turn leads to the 'high-line' as you need to keep the space in midfield narrow. France, Spain, Germany, Holland, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Bayern Munich have been doing this or similar for years. I'm not sure a statistical analysis will be fruitful because it is hard to remove the bias caused by them also having better players. I think you could actually argue that we switched to Plan B yesterday and it cost us: we got impatient and started trying long passes and crosses, two of which gave away possession for W Ham to score. I'm not seriously trying to argue that we should have a completely systematic approach. But we've clearly not got the best players in the Premier league as money talks there, so we need some other advantage if we are going to continue to finish above our 'rightful place'.
You spend enough time on our boards to have seen at least one of the ten explanations for this, untenable disciplinary reason for BAE, followed by not finding a decent replacement 'in time', if no-one suitable is available, you can't buy them, simple. AVB created the situation for the indiscipline so he can live with the consequence.
Showing such a document to all the players would be a clear mistake for the reasons you outlined. But having it as a basis for getting over key messages for individuals is surely a really good example of how 'science' could give us an advantage that others don't have
Depends how the information is relayed, if its one to one fair enough, but if its given out as a group there will be a certain amount of in one ear and out the other, and if they're handed a dossier to read of their own accord I doubt that gets done either! All teams do their homework these days, like I said, its how its relayed to the players in a format they understand thats important, so what advantage you mean I have no idea.
That's the thing though, I don't. Thanks for informing me anyway. Still think it was stupid having no decent full backs, there is plenty of good ones out there.
Every day! Anyway, BAE lives literally round the corner from our pre match hotel, but AVB introduced a rule that everyone meets at the new training ground to travel to the hotel. BAE has repeatedly been sat in the hotel reception waiting, rather than joining the team in Enfield. Petty i know, but it escalated out of proportion into a standoff, which in front of the rest of the squad there can be only one winner without setting precedents. Yes there are plenty of good ones at other clubs...were they for sale?...no.
To win at football you have to try to get every advantage you can. A tiny bit from better homework, a bit more from relaying that to the players well, a bit more from better fitness and health, etc. One thought on the previous posts - perhaps the fact that some players improve as they get older and some don't is their capacity to understand all this stuff.
To me that reflects badly on the manager, particularly if it resulted in a player having to leave. Why haven't you got a decent left back ? Oh, he didn't want to leave the hotel in order to travel across London to get a bus back to the hotel, so we got rid of him. Fakin ridiculous.
Rose was good last season and has been good for us this season, despite my doubts. Walker has been much better too, yesterday was the first bad game he's had but apparently he was carrying an injury. You're in the same shoes with Cole having to play through injury(and not particularly well) because you've got no other good left backs.
Does it?...I'm not surprised as it goes and proves you haven't read the whole post about the effect on the rest of the squad. What it says is, you condone indiscipline. I put the details just for the hell of it, but it doesn't matter, forget the hotel crap for one minute, what this boils down to is an employee refusing to do what a manager has asked. If you apply that simple sentence and nothing more in any other form of work...expect the sack. Its like you being asked to do something you disagree with, but you still do it, because you don't want the sack. The only thing thats fackin ridiculous is your view of the situation, one player doing as he pleases is wrong.
Disagree making up stupid rules is fackin ridiculous and leads to sitiuations where intelligent employees are put into very poor situations. The managers job is to get the best out these very expensive employees not think up ways to piss them off. In this case AVB has left us without proper cover at left back just to satisfy his ego. ****ing Ridiculous!
Its a balancing act IMO, with the particulars of this case its easy to look at it and say that perhaps AVB was being unreasonable, but at the end of the day rules are rules and a top level Premiership club can't be run off the basis of "OK lads we'll meet at the training ground, except Benny, he's meeting us at the hotel in half an hour". To me, that smacks of a lower level of professionalism than one would expect from a club at our level. In this particular case the solution was probably to change the meeting place, but at the same time this could affect the preparation process and may give the impression the routine was being altered just to save one player some travel time. What I'm saying is that there must have been a good enough reason NOT to change the process to accommodate BAE - whether that was a purely practical reason or to do with the management not wanting to make it appear that a senior player can force them into disrupting their pre-match routine we'll probably never know. But the management cannot be made to look stupid in front of the rest of the players because as much as AVB et al have to keep the players happy in order to make them perform, there HAS to he a hierarchy and respect. Of course its a two way street, but maybe if BAE had gone to see AVB after training one day and asked in private if the routine could be changed or if he could be allowed to do it differently then he might have got a response that wouldn't have been a public dressing down and humiliation. But if this came in the midst of a double effort to rack up petty fines from the club from Ade and Benny then its fair to see why AVB might have lost it with him. He's had problems with senior players in the past after all.
The rule is absolutely fine with 99% of our other employees, so its not stupid, and you think its ok to massage the ego of BAE and let him do what he wants. I expect better from you Spurf. The team coach is a team coach, not a ****in bus picking up ego's en route. The lack of professionalism on BAE's part is the only thing ridiculous here.
The rule is fine because it does not affect the other employees. No the rule is not fine because it refuses to admit common sense. There was only one employee that it effected and no consideratiuon was given for the sense of the issue. PLUS! these are not drones we are talking about here but talented individuals being paid huge amounts of money to perform. PERFORM! they are entertainers and if as a manager you do not take that into account we will lose all kinds of talent to the game. Gazza, Best, Hutchinson, George, all broke rules and caused problems for the 'grey ones' and these are the guys that light up the game. The fact that Benny played and performed very well for Harry and then became a problem for AVB suggests that the problem lies with AVB who after all is crap at football and is paid huge amounts to get players to PERFORM!
