Football thread non Orient

And we’re terrible at it 

I hate to see it
A keeper goes to take a goal kick,and has a defender either side of him,he passes to one and they lose possession quickly in their own third of the pitch
What a daft tactic playing all the opposition onside too

I watched the Chelsea v. Crystal Palace match today, and from the beginning Chelsea seemed destined to dominate. Their attack was balanced, and at times they had four attacking players enter the box with two supporting players trailing slightly behind completely for an attack that overwhelmed the defense. They scored early, and Will Hughes for Palace had an early yellow, and Palace looked like it was in real trouble. Palace played backwards and sideways and looked inept in the first half. They seemed weak.


It looked like the entire plan for Palace was to simply hang on and play forward occasionally to play into a set piece from a good position. Low block with lots of side and back passes in a manner you’re describing dohnut. At some point midway through the second half, though, the game changed and Palace picked through the Chelsea defense multiple times. They then really started going forward, culminating with an Eze goal. 1-1 between two unequal teams.

It really seemed like the Palace manager’s strategy was to bore the pants off Chelsea and then strike and it worked. Interesting strategy if true.

Thats the truth redshank, it’s now the norm throughout.  I even see it in the Wessex league at times.

I can see use to a degree. Keep possession, pass through the midfield or wingbacks and build attacks.  A long punt from the keeper risks losing possession. But for me where it goes wrong is players over-complicate the tactic. Messing around just risks losing possession, any impetus moving the ball forward quickly is lost. Especially when, after all this teams often just lump the ball forward anyway. Tedious. But it improves the possession percentage or ‘dominating the ball’ as it’s called. 

Love building from the back. Not dicking about.

Yup.  Not rocket science. Though me being an old git who hasn’t played for more years than I care to remember I must own up to not being up with the modern game other than watching. Mostly Orient, and I’m not too sure that counts.

One thing from watching a glut of football recently are the number of ‘faux’ injuries to the head. The value of replays showing little or no contact and certainly none that accounts for players rolling around in agony.

Example, A Man U defender loses the ball in a fair but robust tackle, the forward away on an attacking run. The defender crashes to the floor, holding his head, in an attempt to get play stopped. Thankfully the referee played on. The slow motion replay showed minimal contact on the shoulder! So if you can’t stop an attack fairly, cheat. Well spotted the referee.

Referees are between a rock an a hard place over potential head knocks. little choice to stop the game and rightly so. But what’s creeping in is another variation of game management. My suggestion is that any player implying a head injury should go off, for 5/10 minutes, to allow physios to fully access the injury before the player being able to safely return, just to be on the safe side.

Goalkeepers too play the management game, pretending injury, to slow the game down. Don’t like it one bit.

A view about the dicking about at the back. When we watch Spanish teams, each player is so skilled with ball at his feet, it's a once per season rarity that a high press will get it off him. How can the Spanish be so darn good at the individual level?

Perhaps they treasure ability over work rate.

A few reasons.

For years the coaching manual was derived by Charles Hughes who recently passed away and his philosophy was route one football, to score or be in a goal scoring opportunity in four or less passes. I grew up under that system, but thankfully my coaches didn’t follow those beliefs. However, it put our game back years. Then We got banned from European football and that set us back further still. All the while Spain were increasing the number of coaches qualified to coach kids etc. it has to start young. Today we have something like 2,500 UEFA B coaches Spain has something like 24,000 go to the A level and ours is lower than the 2.5k whilst the Spanish have something like 18,000 so we are way behind the curve in quality coaching. 

The coaching in our pro clubs is as good as it is anywhere and England has had major success in the youth sections and with a bit more adventure England under Southgate should have won a World Cup and a European trophy. Some of the English players are as good technically as a Brazilian for example.

So we are still to a certain degree playing catch up with the Spanish, but we are getting closer all the time. With the blueprint of England now fully laid out, things can only get better. Well I hope it bloody well does! Look how the premier league improved with the advent of foreign coaches and players, suddenly going down he pub after training just don’t happen now. We are still learning and still improving and we will get there.