- Aug 30, 2010
- 19,315
- 57,798
I don’t think the players can’t follow his instructions, I just think that they don’t believe in what he’s feeding them. How much commitment would you have to instructions from your manager at work if you truly believed deep down that there was a better way, but he didn’t want to consider it? Probably with less commitment than if you really believed in their ideas is my guess. Especially if that manager has alienated some of your friends at work.
Secondly, who do you drop and who do you bring in? No one seems really bought into this style of football. You end up with lower quality players on the pitch who are no more committed to the style than the ones that have been dropped.
There are a few exceptions. Kane and Hojbjerg have been excellent and fully committed. Lamela and Lucas, for all their faults and shortcomings, always give 100%. But I bet even if you ask these guys if they believe this is the very best way to go about playing football, you won’t get many (if any at all) positive responses.
I don't blame the players for being disillusioned. The whole concept of letting the opposition have the ball and come at you is simply 'anti football'. Why would a professional player want to play that way? It now seems that they've completely forgotten what to do when we have the ball and can't wait to give the fucking thing back to the opposition in some kind of misguide belief that it will yield results. It's like sending a boxer into the ring with the instruction 'Don't worry how many times he hits you - at some point he'll leave a gap and you just knock him out'.