Tactically Inept?

[Original # 10]

Always found the term 'tactically inept' used to justify somebody wanting to test if the grass is greener.
You won't hear somebody calling a manager that approve of as 'tactically inept'

It's pretty obvious to me that none of Redknapp, AVB nor Sherwood are tactically inept and in my opinion you don't have to be a tactical genius to get the best out of vastly talented professional footballers.

Being a great man manager on the other hand will do you wonders.

Two of the above mentioned have that it in abundance it would seem.

 

[Jaispurs]

We had 60% possession against Man City. It means 0.
Tip tap, backwards, sideways - OMG I'm glad that buffoon is away from my beloved Spurs.
TS is playing Harry football and the players have responded well with smiles on their faces running through walls for each other
Clueless AVB had us opened up so easily with one through ball.
I'm glad we have the Harry Spurs back. We may lose a few 2-3 or 4-5 but at least it's not 6-0 or 0-5.
Football is a simple game played by simple people. its complicated by people with too much time on their hands and players look clueless as they are not comfortable reading text books - if they were they would have been doctors or lawyers.
Harry got pelters for telling Pav to 'run around a bit'. Thing is Pav understood that. He scored and we won the game and that shot us to a really successful 3 years.

 

[SpurSince57]

Are you? doesn't it depend on who the three are? If you've got wide forwards who are genuine goal threats who like to play up in line with the focal point are they likely to drop in and make up the numbers when we lose it. If you play genuine midfielders/attacking midfielders in there, will they leave the forward isolated? have they got the right movement or goal threat to play around the forward and in essence wouldn't you call that a 4-5-1. Who would play in your version of a 4-3-3? my personal opinion is that formations are extremely overrated on here and you find a way of playing that suits you're best players and the players you have in general.

When is a 4-4-2 not a 4-4-2? When it's a 4-4-1-1!

There's an interesting article on the resurgence of the 4-4-2 here:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/dec/27/tactical-review-strike-partnerships

In the readers' replies below, one OnlyJoeKing makes the point that Arsenal play a sort-of 4-2-3-1, but that it's very different when the wide players are Podolski and Walcott rather than Cazorla and Ozil.

The bottom line is that without reliable goals from midfield we have no option but to play two strikers if we want a fighting chance of a top six finish, never mind a top four one, so too bad if that leaves us light in midfield.

 

[Samson]

We had 60% possession against Man City. It means 0.
Tip tap, backwards, sideways - OMG I'm glad that buffoon is away from my beloved Spurs.
TS is playing Harry football and the players have responded well with smiles on their faces running through walls for each other
Clueless AVB had us opened up so easily with one through ball.
I'm glad we have the Harry Spurs back. We may lose a few 2-3 or 4-5 but at least it's not 6-0 or 0-5.
Football is a simple game played by simple people. its complicated by people with too much time on their hands and players look clueless as they are not comfortable reading text books - if they were they would have been doctors or lawyers.
Harry got pelters for telling Pav to 'run around a bit'. Thing is Pav understood that. He scored and we won the game and that shot us to a really successful 3 years.

I remember us losing a semi-final 5-1 and a quarter-final 4-0 under Harry, so let's not set up standards that Tim will struggle to achieve.

 

[FinnYid]

People seem to have so many ideas about what is tactical nous, but I can ùnderstand the point about AVB being one of the least tactical coaches in the PL. He had strict system that he used through thick and thin, is that really tactical? Or is being tactical more about adjusting your game pending on opposition, players available etc.? Of course you have to have some sort of basic system you play, but isn't being tactical the way you use and alternate the system on different circumstances?

 

[HoddlesBoot]

For me the real interesting point that comes out of the United game was Ade, Eriksen's and Soldado's performance - their movement and interactive play.

Soldado was playing as a fantasisti a lot of the time. You could say that Eriksen was playing more like a traditional trequartista, and was sitting in a free role between center midfield and the two forwards when he moved into CM from the wing.

But Soldado's role was a revelation. He was at times a False 9 but played mostly in the fantasisti position. This is a play-maker who is given a free role to operate in central midfield, attacking midfield and wide positions on the wings or as a second striker. At times Ade was a little like a rifinitore coming in from the wing to link midfield and the attack. The interplay between the three was wonderful to watch and they took the United defense apart a number of times with this interplay. The United defense had a real hard time working out who to follow and where.

Its early days yet but it seems that Sherwood is building a real connection between these three so they interchange and switch. But as its early days, sometimes it didn't quite work out and they were in each others way, but its shows some real tactical smarts on the part of Sherwood. Perhaps its Ramsey's influence as well?

Other feature were the discipline show by the CM two who held their positions for most of the game and the fact that we were often defending as a flat six until it all got very ragged and we even had Ade helping out at the back towards the end. Obviously more rehearsals on the training pitch are required.

Tactically inept? I don't think so. There appears to be a real pattern developing here and something that has happened in training. At times when the interchange happened it was so slick that it had to be rehearsed. However its a lot easier when you have world class talent like Eriksen Ade and Soldado playing together.

Have you been snorting pasta?

So Erik cut in from the left and both Ade and Soldado would drop back, have wander and pass it around?

 

[FinnYid]

While it's not that easy to define what kind of head coach is tactically adept, it's pretty sure that it doesn't constitute merely of following things (as some seem to think):

1) sticking to some one rigid formation that is supposedly "tactical"
2) playing on slow tempo
3) playing it safe and defensively

if it was, you could take random bloke out of pub and he might well be called tactically adept head coach.

One might say it's about eliminating strenghts of opposition and taking advantage of their weaknesses without breaking your own game. If it's all about your own system, it's never that tactical, is it?

However main building blocks are getting the right players in, getting best out of them and making them play like a team. Other things are more or less fine tuning. Let Steve Kean have his pick of 18 players in the world including Messis and Ronaldos, give him some time with the team and in all likelihood he'll beat on the long run and on the 38 game league any top manager with material of WBA.

 

[Kiedis]

People seem to have so many ideas about what is tactical nous, but I can ùnderstand the point about AVB being one of the least tactical coaches in the PL. He had strict system that he used through thick and thin, is that really tactical? Or is being tactical more about adjusting your game pending on opposition, players available etc.? Of course you have to have some sort of basic system you play, but isn't being tactical the way you use and alternate the system on different circumstances?

He seemed more flexible last season, changing from 4-2-3-1 to 4-4-2 at times and also gave Mancini a schooling by changing to 4-3-3 at half time at the Lane in the game where we went from 0-1 to 3-1.
The defensive line was also adjusted more often.

Not sure why we didn't see more of that this season.

 

[PG Spurs]

Will be interesting to see what happens when everyone's fit. Started off with Lennon and Townsend on the wings, which was pretty rigid, and the only flexibility was switching them. Then when Townsend injured himself, Siggy ran around a bit on the left. Then when he injured himself, Eriksen took up the position to great effect. So I'm not sure how much team selection has been dictated by injury, and how much was planned. It is more fun to watch now though!

 

[SpurSince57]

Always found the term 'tactically inept' used to justify somebody wanting to test if the grass is greener.
You won't hear somebody calling a manager that approve of as 'tactically inept'

It's pretty obvious to me that none of Redknapp, AVB nor Sherwood are tactically inept and in my opinion you don't have to be a tactical genius to get the best out of vastly talented professional footballers.

Being a great man manager on the other hand will do you wonders.

Two of the above mentioned have that it in abundance it would seem.

It was 'tactically naive' when applied to Jol, although those criticising him for being overly cautious never explained how he was supposed to provide us with thrilling, fluid football with the players he had at his disposal (oddly, HSV and Ajax played just that sort of football when he was in charge).

Ramos, on the other hand, was widely hailed as a tactical genius. 'Juande only has to play another coach once,' simpered one total arse on here, 'to have full mastery over him.'

Tragically, no-one told Gareth Southgate this.

 

[Ironskullll]

People seem to have so many ideas about what is tactical nous, but I can ùnderstand the point about AVB being one of the least tactical coaches in the PL. He had strict system that he used through thick and thin, is that really tactical? Or is being tactical more about adjusting your game pending on opposition, players available etc.? Of course you have to have some sort of basic system you play, but isn't being tactical the way you use and alternate the system on different circumstances?

You're getting dangerously close to using the word strategy here.....

 

[Ironskullll]

He seemed more flexible last season, changing from 4-2-3-1 to 4-4-2 at times and also gave Mancini a schooling by changing to 4-3-3 at half time at the Lane in the game where we went from 0-1 to 3-1.
The defensive line was also adjusted more often.

Not sure why we didn't see more of that this season.

It baffles me too. Perhaps it was something as simple as him feeling that he needed to be conservative given so many players who were still being schooled in and coming to terms with his basic strategy. Maybe he simply didn't feel that the time had arrived yet to take risks with the ball by moving it more positively and quickly, trying to create more dangerous situations. Maybe he just didn't feel the time was yet ripe for introducing any variation to his most bass of basics.

 

[BorisTM]

lol formations, some of you folks are stuck to them as a flee is stuck to a dog's ass.

 

[shelfboy68]

We had 60% possession against Man City. It means 0.
Tip tap, backwards, sideways - OMG I'm glad that buffoon is away from my beloved Spurs.
TS is playing Harry football and the players have responded well with smiles on their faces running through walls for each other
Clueless AVB had us opened up so easily with one through ball.
I'm glad we have the Harry Spurs back. We may lose a few 2-3 or 4-5 but at least it's not 6-0 or 0-5.
Football is a simple game played by simple people. its complicated by people with too much time on their hands and players look clueless as they are not comfortable reading text books - if they were they would have been doctors or lawyers.
Harry got pelters for telling Pav to 'run around a bit'. Thing is Pav understood that. He scored and we won the game and that shot us to a really successful 3 years.

It's all about balance in achieving a successful football team losing 2-3 or 4-5 means fuck all other than losing in glorious failure which this club has seen far to often for our liking.
It's about winning games with style if you can but sometimes you can't always play how you want to for a number of reasons so occasionally you need to win ugly and that sits fine with me.
Liverpool in their day and utd recently both preach attacking stylish football but both were able to win ugly when it mattered as winning is what counts for any successful football club.

 

[Flashspur]

Have you been snorting pasta?

So Erik cut in from the left and both Ade and Soldado would drop back, have wander and pass it around?

did you watch the game champ...I did

 

[AnotherSpursFan]

After watching 4 games under TS.
I'm convince he's tactically astute and a good coach. He has a systematic gameplan that the players were able to follow, as a result we play a more fluid brand of football that i've not seen for many many years.

With HR and Jol, they're good and i like Jol, but something is missing from their team, the team's performatnce blows hot and cold and normally lacks cohesiveness

 

[spursandbarca]

Give the bloke a chance..so far so good.....much rather ts a success and stays 5 years than a tyrant like van gaal who will ruin the club...

 

[idontgetit]

We had 60% possession against Man City. It means 0.
Tip tap, backwards, sideways - OMG I'm glad that buffoon is away from my beloved Spurs.
TS is playing Harry football and the players have responded well with smiles on their faces running through walls for each other
Clueless AVB had us opened up so easily with one through ball.
I'm glad we have the Harry Spurs back. We may lose a few 2-3 or 4-5 but at least it's not 6-0 or 0-5.
Football is a simple game played by simple people. its complicated by people with too much time on their hands and players look clueless as they are not comfortable reading text books - if they were they would have been doctors or lawyers.
Harry got pelters for telling Pav to 'run around a bit'. Thing is Pav understood that. He scored and we won the game and that shot us to a really successful 3 years.

But then Harry didn't understand why we dropped off around March time in his final season and threw away a 9 point gap. It's all very well telling the players to go run around a bit when they're motivated and seem to have a natural understanding of each others game. It's when things turn to shit that a talented analytical and tactical eye is essential.

I do like Harry's approach to football, look first at getting the best out of your own team. AVB I think was the complete opposite and looked first at how to disrupt our opponents (and just simply had no idea how to get the most out of his squad). What's needed is a balance with the primary focus on your own game but a keen eye on what you can do to disrupt the oppositions and importantly a good eye for the shape of a match that will enable you to change things if the oppositions natural game is exposing your own.

 

[Misfit]

Sherwood has shown remarkable growth in just a few matches. We've lost the control of game we had often under AVB but that's not by design. Timothy has been thrown in at the deep end and now that the fixtures will begin to normalise in frequency in the next couple of weeks I have no doubt some work will be done on the training pitches. He clearly wants them to press more and push up the field more than they have done at times but with little off-time in the last month it hasn't been possible to work on these things that much.

I'm actually rather impressed with his progress in just 3 or 4 games.

An encouraging aspect of all this is that the players spirits in general or individually don't seem to have changed. Everyone seemed happy enough before AVB was thrown through the saloon window and seem happy enough now.

 

[thinktank]

Sherwood has shown remarkable growth in just a few matches. We've lost the control of game we had often under AVB but that's not by design. Timothy has been thrown in at the deep end and now that the fixtures will begin to normalise in frequency in the next couple of weeks I have no doubt some work will be done on the training pitches. He clearly wants them to press more and push up the field more than they have done at times but with little off-time in the last month it hasn't been possible to work on these things that much.

I'm actually rather impressed with his progress in just 3 or 4 games.

An encouraging aspect of all this is that the players spirits in general or individually don't seem to have changed. Everyone seemed happy enough before AVB was thrown through the saloon window and seem happy enough now.

To be fair to him, in the WB game you could see him on the sidelines shaking his head and mouthing 'no', 'no', 'no' at some of the play he was seeing; so it was evident that info hadn't sunk into some of the players.

Pleasantly surprised as well, looking forward to what he has in store for a fully fit squad.

Right, I'm off to the pub....