Quote Originally Posted by plague View Post
I think the Wellington game is a great example of my frustration.

Everyone knows Wellington try and score on the break, then defend deep for the rest of the game.

They peppered long balls to Barbarouses like they always do and we gave away an early pen. From that moment everyone knew what was going to happen. We were going to have the bulk of the play and they were going to sit deep and counter.

All we did in attack was go side to side trying to find an open channel for our wide men to cross in. Our game plan was also completely transparent.
Problem was we were always free at the back and lacking more than one (albeit very good) target for the crosses.

At the 5 minute mark when the pen was converted our coach needed to decide how he was going to play it. Yet he tried the same thing for 40 more minutes before deciding to put an extra man up front (Goodwin for stynes) to take advantage of our tactics. Why not straight away?

He then waited till 67th minute to sacrifice a back for the extra attacker and we scored not long after.

When a red card is given in games coaches immediately sacrifice players and change tactics because of what is in front of them. Yet we still have this mentality of 'waiting to see' when we concede early or the game falls into the opponents hands like Wellington.

I just want coaches to be braver and smarter. At the moment they all seem to be reading from the same book and it doesn't seem to be helping anyone.
You don't even need to make subs, even just moving players around the pitch can help. For example, about 5-10 mins after an opponent has lost a player and are working themselves out, move a midfielder wide or a fullback forward to try and creat space in the middle to exploit when they want to leave the space out wide. Or, when you come against a low block, lump a CB up as a second striker to knock balls down and cause some havoc for the last 5-10 of the first half or even starting the second half, they will have trouble winning the ball aerially and focus on that giving your ball players (hopefully) more time on the edge of the box to shoot/create.


There's obviously positives to be being confident in your style of play and never changing (aka. Arsene, Ange, Simeone, etc) but in the other 99% of cases you end up looking like an idiot. Doing something, even if doesn't work, is still better than doing nothing and failing.