Canadian Arab wrote:

United Arab Emarite wrote:

That's a great effort in post #42 CA.
I hope at the next managerial vacancy at Tannadice you'll get your CV in.

A lot of tactics these days goes over my head but can I just ask what's wrong with 4 at the back?
I've played in a back four over a thoosand times (at a very low level right enough) & it worked swimmingly.
I've also seen well over a thoosand games & can remember Gough/Hegarty/Narey/Malpas - that was good!
The SSB's had McKimmie/Miller/McLeish/Rougvie and that wasn't bad either.
Things are awfie complicated these days, it's all down to Sky & pots of money which has ruined things.
Grown men running over superimposed giant football pitches in giant TV studios talking shite. Pays the mortgage.

Football is inherently a simple game.
 

Cheers UAE! But I retired from coaching just before COVID and don't have any desire to go back ...

Nothing wrong with a back 4. I said on twitter during the first half on Saturday that I thought we should move to a back 4 (which he did at half time). I probably wouldn't go with 4-4-2 (which works superbly well if your central midfield is John Holt and Billy Kirkwood with Bannon on the left and Milne on the right, and the opposition rarely have the ball) but in this league it leaves us a bit open to a quick counter through the middle. I'd go with a 4-5-1 where the middle 5 has two wide players and a triangle in the middle. As we get into the attacking third the wide players tuck in (no wider than the 18 yard box) and width comes from full backs getting up the line. So you finish up with (roughly) a 2-5-3 when the ball is in the attacking third. The triangle in the middle can have two deep and one high or one deep and two high, and you can flip it multiple times during a game, if need be. With two high, you are basically playing with two guys behind your main striker, wide midfielders on either side in the box to either side of your main striker, and both full backs wide and pushed up. If there's a turnover, you have numbers and position to go into an immediate high press. You can invert the triangle during the game to having one high and two deep, if you're under the cosh a bit. And you can also vary the type of players in the triangle to determine what the overall approach is going to look like. If we're up against it, the base of the triangle are going to be two "win it and give it" types (e.g. Holt and Kirkwood, Ranks and Paton, Sibbs and Holt/Odada) with Doc at the top of the triangle. More attacking but still being safe could be any two from Sibbs, Doc and Manny at the base and Babunski at the top. Or flip it and have Sibbs at the base and Doc + Sevelj for more attacking but wary of the counter, or Sibbs at the base with Doc and Babunski high, or go for it with Doc at the base and Babunski and Kai high. The shape is consistent but the attributes of the players within the shape create different options.

I think this is sort of what JG went to at the beginning of the second half, with Odada, Sevelj and Babunski in the triangle. Except it wasn't a triangle as Babunski chases guys all over the place and so does Odada. The three in the triangle have to be fully aware of where the other two are at all times, and keep the shape and distances (which will only happen after we've worked on the whole system daily for a number of weeks). But I'd be quite happy to see that formation as Goodwin's official option 2 - though it will take until Christmas for the entire squad to get fully comfortable with both options 1 and 2. If you're miles better than your opponents, the shape really doesn't matter. But when teams are well-matched, some formations are better either at creating chances against an opponent's formation or preventing a particular opponent's formation from creating much against you. Player positions may only differ by 4 or 5 yards between 2 different formations (which is what Robbie Neilson was being flippant about when he joked about moving a guy 5 yards to his left and you've gone from a 4-5-1 to a 4-3-3 (?)) but if one of the opposition's attack strategies tries to create a diagonal channel that allows a pass to be played from near the centre circle towards a corner flag for a blindside run after a fullback has had to tuck in a bit more than they would like, and your formation change means when the ball is near the centre circle you now have someone slightly deeper and wider and taking away that channel, then the opposition might have just lost their most important attacking outlet. But that lad needs to move quickly to that correct position as the opposition is playing the ball in to their CAM near the edge of the centre circle, and if he gets it wrong and gets there too slowly, or doesn't go quite wide enough or quite deep enough by a couple of yards, the opposition exploit that error. This is why it takes 2 or 3 months for the entire team to get comfortable with a formation - they need to make the movements on autopilot, every single time. If one guy doesn't know his job or doesn't do his job perfectly, that's the error the opposition are waiting to punish.

This is also why it's pointless shouting at Goodwin to change to formation X. It's not just a case of moving Jimmy from centre half to the middle of midfield. Sure, when everyone stands still before kick-off, you might now have a 4-5-1 instead of a 5-4-1, but if the shape doesn't respond automatically to what the opponents are doing with the ball, you're dead in the water.

Like your dedication, but modern footballers should be capable of understanding at least 2 or 3 systems and where they fit into them.  If they don't they shouldn't play.  I don't think that takes months to learn.  As you say those systems need to be flexible enough to deal with what the opposition are doing too.  If Goodwin hasn't got 3 or 4 options every game then he's not much of a coach.  He clearly does have those options.  Last season he seemed to rely too much on option A, but he probably (and rightly) thought that option was good enough to win the league.  This season I think he's been a bit slow to change it up in some games, but Sunday's half time changes were timely and worked so maybe he's getting a little braver.  For me the starting line ups need to be a bit braver - especially at home against teams we need to be beating.  Confident that he'll start a little more positive on Saturday...

Last edited by Finn Seemann (Yesterday 9:30 am)

Canadian Arab wrote:

Finn Seemann wrote:

Like your dedication, but modern footballers should be capable of understanding at least 2 or 3 systems and where they fit into them.  If they don't they shouldn't play.  I don't think that takes months to learn.  As you say those systems need to be flexible enough to deal with what the opposition are doing too.  If Goodwin hasn't got 3 or 4 options every game then he's not much of a coach.  He clearly does have those options.  Last season he seemed to rely too much on option A, but he probably (and rightly) thought that option was good enough to win the league.  This season I think he's been a bit slow to change it up in some games, but Sunday's half time changes were timely and worked so maybe he's getting a little braver.  For me the starting line ups need to be a bit braver - especially at home against teams we need to be beating.  Confident that he'll start a little more positive on Saturday...

It's not "understanding" the system Finn. Of course they can all do that. It takes 2-3 months of working on that system every day in training to get to the point where players all do the right thing, at the right time, automatically, with everybody in sync. Good opponents are moving the ball around in order to make your team adjust their positions, and they are waiting for the time when one player doesn't get it right. You can get to probably 85% effectiveness within a week or two but you're still going to have enough errors occurring that you'll lose goals. To have 3 or 4 systems in place that work well with minimal errors would take an entire season of work on the training pitch. Goodwin has only had around 3ish months with this squad.
 

 
I remember when football was just football and not precision engineering. How do we explain Jim's failures against teams like Darvel and Spartans who all had full time jobs to go to but still made him look foolish. Surely to fuck professional footballers ought to be capable of marking a man and finding a teammate with a pass. The basic simplicity of what is essentially a game.

redford_must_score wrote:

I agree that honing a youth team or an amateur team in formations and flexibility in them would take longer and I'm presuming that's Canada's experience of it.

Obviously I didn't coach professionals but I've done semi-pro, university and top level youth (e.g. Alphonso Davies played in that league). I had a discussion with a UEFA Pro licence coach with pro coaching experience about the formation stuff and he was talking about professional men's teams when he told me 2-3 months full time to "master" a formation with a squad. He was making a comparison with a youth team training 2 or 3 times per week and how long it would take them to learn one formation.

ADS - this stuff has nothing to do with the basics of marking a man or finding a team mate with a pass. It's about where you are at all times relative to all of your team mates (but particularly your closest unit of team mates), the ball, and the opposition players that you are covering (marking or taking away channels). All of those things are moving all the time and therefore so are you. But I'm talking about your movement only needing to be made a second later than it should be, or to a position that's 2 or 3 yards from where you should actually move to, and that's the error that then gets punished. And this stuff is not new. The way it's talked about might be different, but wee Jim did exactly the same. There was an interview with a former player that I listened to a few years back (I think it was a midfielder but can't remember who) - they were an excellent player who came through the youth system, and he spoke at length about wee Jim teaching him when to play the pass. He was talking about the same pass to the same player, but made half a second later than the player would typically have made it, so that the shape was slightly different, the angle of the pass was slightly different, and the pass being made at that time would then have a domino effect that created a hole for someone to attack 3 or 4 seconds later, 30 yards away, that wouldn't have happened if the pass was made when the player would normally have made the pass. And because they knew that hole would be created, they also knew that Luggy would be arriving there just after it was created, and would then have the ball on the edge of the opposition's box, so Doddsy is already preparing for his run across the front of the centre-half. All of that came from wee Jim explaining to a lad why he needed to delay his pass by half a second. It seems like microscopic details, but wee Jim was all over that stuff. The end result was that we looked like a team that knew how to mark a man and knew how to find a team mate with a pass and therefore how to win a game, and we watch it and say "See how simple the game is!".

Also, it doesn't matter how technically gifted a player is. If a player has never trained on a particular formation, he will need to train for weeks so he does it correctly. There aren't any short cuts.
 

redford_must_score wrote:

 That's a bit disingenuous Canada because you're sneakily inferring that what Jim McLean did supports your view about players adapting to formations.

That wasn't my intention - I was pointing out to ADS that back when it was "a simple game", these tiny adjustments to position and timing were still done by JYM and others, all to create the illusion of what appears to most people (myself included) to be a simple game. There's some truth to the idea that some more recent "innovations" over-complicate the game, but what I'm talking about isn't new and has been a part of the game for decades.

redford_must_score wrote:

 Guardiola would have top players adapted in a very short time, come down the leagues and abilities and the time rises but not massively on the proviso that you are getting buy in from the players.

I don't have any data on how the time to master a formation changes as you move down the leagues. It's not about the players understanding what's required. A good coach like Guardiola can have his squad fully on-board with what he wants within a pretty short time, I'd imagine. Probably quicker than Jim Goodwin could get the ideas across to his squad. But the repetition, ad nauseam, of movement in response to dozens of different on-pitch scenarios, and then moving towards getting the players to recognise which scenario they're facing in scripted open-play sessions, and then moving into unscripted open-play sessions where they have to recognise the scenario and make the correct movement every single time - which is different for every scenario, and which will be interrupted countless times by coaches to address errors and make adjustments - is what takes the time.

If you want an analogy - I've lived on the Canadian prairies for over 30 years now. Winter driving conditions can be horrific and last, on average, for 5 months of the year. Since moving here I've racked up probably close to half a million miles of driving, with 200,000 miles on winter roads. I imagine you or most other folk on the forum could tell me exactly what to do in the event that you hit black ice, or get pulled into a snow rut or lose control of your vehicle on a winter highway for some other reason. There's no issue with the understanding. The difference is, when that happens to me, I immediately go into autopilot and do exactly the right things to maintain control of my vehicle without even thinking about it, with no panic. I probably drove in severe winter conditions here for 5 years to get to that point (and I came here with plenty driving experience - I drove a taxi in Arbroath for a few years). Most of the other folk on the forum might do the right thing, a few wouldn't, and the ones that do would still have to think about it for a second. That second might not make much difference, or that one second delay might be what leads to a collision or going off the road and flipping the car.

It's like building up muscle memory, but for your brain. That's all I'm saying.

As you say, though, the desire and never-say-die attitude and the work ethic are critical. With those things in place you can overcome a team that has their positional stuff perfected, and without those things in place, a team that has the positional side of stuff sorted out is still going to lose regularly.  For me, Goodwin has got the team playing with the desire and attitude needed, and he's working on the positional formation stuff. When he gets to the end of that process, our team will be in a pretty good place I think. My original comment on this topic was to give my opinion on why he seems to be sticking with a formation that isn't working well when we have a few key players missing.

Canadian Arab wrote:

Stepping away from Tekel Towers, folks. Always enjoyed chatting here - a good bunch of passionate Arabs. Look after yourselves.
Andy.

 
If I've said anything at all to bring that on mate then I sincerely apologise. I'm no coach and don't pretend to know anything about the finer details of coaching so I'm in no way doubting your knowledge or experience, just simply seeing the game in a simple way is all. Perhaps simple is my forte? Who knew? 😋

Anyway my point being please don't go on my account bud.

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