A player giving a rave review of the person responsible for the his playing and career prospects - whoever would have thought it!!
Fair point, but Topić also reveals what's different about Manning. This is important, because as Ben Lee reveals in his latest tactical analysis, Mirko plays a crucial role in the fluid tactical transitions during games. Rather than focusing on formations, Manning bases tactics around clear structures and principles: "When asked for an assessment of his base formation, Manning responded: "What formation have we played? Out of possession we’ve been a four, we’ve been a three, we’ve been a five. It’s more around principles of play for me.” Indeed, with Manning more than most, base-formation analysis is pointless. His teams create and follow clear structures and principles in each separate phase of play, and none of them are dependent on how the team looks on paper." This is why Manning has those detailed one to one follow up sessions with each player to clarify their roles within those 'clear structures and principles'. Topić has to judge when he moves forward to strengthen the press or he drops back drop back into a mid-block. This is less about whiteboard tactics and more about players' decision making during games. It's also about player development within the overall team development. That is hopefully where the performance improvement will come from as the season continues. https://www.pinkun.com/sport/norwic...-city-ben-lee-tactical-analysis-mannings-set/
Part of my problem here is that my mindset has not moved on since the days of full backs, wing half's, centre half's, inside forwards, wingers and centre forwards when the tactics were to defend as well as you could and score more goals than the other side. In other words a simple and entertaining spectacle - we hoped!! All these stats as to who ran the furthest before adjusting their jock-strap and who ran the quickest over 10 yards leaves me cold, bored and uninterested which is why I always turn the sound off when watching a televised game. I judge a game and performance on what I see and to a lesser extent the comments of others. When we first became interested in Manning I paid a lot of attention to the Bristol City Board and it reminded me of our own Board when Wagner left. 25% were saying they wanted him to stay because he had got them into the top 6 where they were heavily beaten but 75% were glad to see the back of him because of his boring tactics and ideas which he refused to changed. I fully accept that the season is young and a there are a lot of new players to bed in but despite all the complicated explanations uttered I have seen nothing to indicate that the views of the 75% are wrong.
Unfortunately I think this is going to be a slow and painful couple of years where we drift in mediocrity, not terrible, not great, bad runs, good runs. Its all so deflating that we have chosen this direction compared with the style of the previous manager.
I basically agree with what you say, although I will accept through gritted teeth that Webber at least stood by Farke for a long time at the start of the project, unlike Knapper who gave Thorup all of ten months, having expected him to work wonders with a team that had lost Sara and Rowe and replaced them with a bunch of kids from overseas who were very unlikely to hit the ground running.
