I don't know where it comes from. Every manager when asked about tactics or formations gives a dismissive response along the lines of Cloughie's, if not as forthrightly. Yet so many people are convinced that these magical formations are the main key to success. Football managers are smart people, and their thought process is clearly a lot more advanced than "4-4-2 good, 4-5-1 bad". It's interesting to read a well considered tactical insight from fellow fans, but when they just complain that the formation isn't the same one that works best on FIFA, it's nothing more than a tired and meaningless cliché. You could look on the board of any struggling club and see the same identical criticisms aimed at the manager. They're always "tactically inept" and of course have "no plan B".
just check sheff utds forum during their 3-0 humping to boro
i did
i saw
wilder has took us as far as he can
wilder doesn't know his best team
he needs replacing
we look utter ****
hes picking the wrong players
but now they are joint top of the championship
managers in football are primarily man managing
you need your players to fully back you and believe in everything you do
once doubt from a player sets in
that's when bad results happen in a consecutive fashion, generally, that's if you have good players
you can make micro changes such as pushing a player into a certain position when defending/attacking
or having more midfielders to balance the play
but football is such a fluid game that, in reality 90% of it is down to the players
one guy is drawn towards the ball leaving a winger free etc
for me its mostly psychological, you can make a player believe he is the best and adkins wouldn't be that man
make him believe he will have an awesome game
you can direct a player to push here and there, to mark a certain guy
but you can't stop a mistake or a player being out of position allowing an opposition free space
or a goal keeper ****ing up or a forward ****ing a shot up or a cross, or a 30 yard screamer
or your defense ****ing up a corner, no matter how much your practice
it's the ****ing players on the pitch
you need mentally intelligent players also
the best players are not only better at playing football but better at reading the game
we have **** players, a bunch of misfits
it's like the settings for the mighty ducks movie
a midfield of batty or henriksen? or stewart?
like that is a terribly **** midfield at this level, henriksen is an attacker, batty is a new guy
and stewart is close to simon walton levels.
last season we had larsson and meyler, two vastly experienced guys, one who played in a world cup quarter final, we didn't replace them
like come on?
dicko who had a massive injury and was never the same, a glorified adebola and a guy that last had a good scoring record at the same club 10 years ago
even though campbell is one of our best players, but he ain't going to score many
the best managers are always the ones with the best teams right?
let's see guardiola at city or at a barnsley
it's far far easier to manage players that have massive ability
than it is to manage a rag tag bunch of players that are at city
its not nfl, where tactics are much more important
people say we are playing negatively
the only thing he hasn't tried is
milkonvic and groskici together
or two forwards but then beneath them there is no quality, no steel
we need a fresh start with new owners. this is only going to get worse at the moment
we are ****, the championship is a much tougher league than it was 10 or 5 years ago
the one thing we are lacking is home form since adkins came in though, it's shocking
replacing adkins will do nothing, we need new owners and a freshstart
sunderland got what we needed this summer.