In his post-match comments on the Club site Jol said, “We tried to do something to the spine of the team. We worked on it for eight days. Against Southampton and Manchester United, we played with two flank players and Berbatov in the number 10 role but we looked too defensive. Today, we wanted to change the spine and it worked. But we couldn’t score a goal. We scored an own-goal and then we had a big hill to climb.” Spine of the team. A good old fashioned phrase. Bill Shankly described it as, “A football team is like a piano. You need eight men to carry it and three who can play the damn thing.”. His spine was a straight line - the ‘piano players’ - through the middle of the team, back to front. Jol’s interpretation of spine yesterday was some sort of midfield ‘diamond’: …………Boateng….. …Kasami..Parker..Ruiz.. …………Berbatov… So in theory at least, Jol should be better off since he had five men playing the ’piano’ to Shankly’s three. Unfortunately for Jol his five had two missing parts in Ruiz and Berbatov which meant that Swansea were able to play through and around his shape at will. In the same post-match comment Jol said, “Ruiz is probably my best offensive midfield player. I would like to get a bit more but hopefully we will get that in the future. Ruiz is a very good player but he needs a bit of confidence and that’s what I’d like to tell the crowd. If they get on his back, he can’t produce what he’s able to.” May well all be true but the role given to Ruiz in yesterday’s diamond was defensive not offensive and he is just not suited to that. Berbatov alternatively should have been well suited for the role he was given. However he lacks the legs or the inclination to carry it out. There was nothing wrong with Jol’s plan. The problem was that he didn’t have the spine to drop his two favourites and replace them with players who could execute it.
His midfield diamond of 5 was really only a diamond of 3. It's no surprise that parker is knackered as he's doing the work of 2 players. The theory is right but like you said C58 some of the paleyers just can't/won't play it. Its so frustrating as we can all see it but the coaching staff can't? However, what happens if Big Mart does what we say and after 6 games nothing improves, what happend then? I suppose we can say we tried it and gave it a go. For now though its round holes, square pegs still.
