Pre-Season Tactics Breakdown

[stubbo-admin]

Here's the nerds describing what they've seen in Pre-Season..for those that like that kind of thing:

[Gaffer58]

Same in the way Pep ruined Grealish, the thing is he went to City due to his Villa performances, then Pep completely changed him,slow, always passing back, not taking on his defender, now he’s not good enough for City and looks like he’s moving. Granted his trophy cabinet must look quite good.

[Gank]

To support your theory in this, Massive, I'd agree that Mourinho completely ruined Joe Cole as a footballer everyone loved to watch whilst improving his stats. He was never the same again. So of course, we bought the less entertaining version back again!

[Massive Attack]

I find it ends up dumbing down Footballers making them in to identikit robots not trusting them to react more on instinct although still in a Team structure. It's all risk averse, percentage crab Football that sucks the joy out of the game for me. Invariably a Team that sits deep and soaks up as much of the action as possible with little ambition or flair to be braver on the ball with possession mainly kept in the defensive and middle third doing dick all with it.

Bring back more mavericks, trust and genuinely believe in the players more to express themselves instead of this tiresome Football that usually sends us in to a deep sleep. Think Bilic, Redknapp, Pardew when they all got it right at times.

Football nowadays is so unnecessarily over-complicated in today's game that tries to micro manage every single stat or percentile claptrap. I'm not saying it doesn't have some place in the game that can be used sparingly when lent on gently, but it's the over reliance managers and the game in general has made many of them fall in to this death loop of footballing monotony. 

Take for one good instance the nonsense trend of many Clubs forcing their Teams to play out from the back. No. Only do that shit if you genuinely have the player's technically good enough and switched on to cope with such pressure when doing so. Not force divvy players who cannot trap a bag of cement to be something they can never be. Coach according to what you have to work with and play to their strengths whilst limiting their weaknesses. 

A Pre-season tactics breakdown FFS.. 

Just run your bollocks off so to get up to speed and fine tune your shit with some ideas on how to play for the new season, it aint that deep.

[Gank]

I always argue with my old man about retaining possession so that the data analysts can tell you which ball to play to which player on the exact spot from which he's most likely to score. The old man hates it played backwards to reset the attack. And so does Massive Attack. I get that, it's not entertaining and that's why we watch it but it's a results business and to understand why it's important to understand this stuff, I'd very highly recommend The Numbers Game. 

For me, reading that book changed the way I watch football, and as a result I watch it differently in the stadium than I do on the telly and I don't get so wound up when we play it safe, but still enjoy seeing the likes of Paqueta risk a ball that may or may not work or Kudus (RIP) ignoring all that shit and just running at people.

[Massive Attack]

Can't stand the virgin nerds analysis who have likely never played the game in their lives. The Club even entertain and give them a platform ffs. Absolutely stats mad to the point you just go numb with it all. 

[kylay]

I appreciate these as well, Stubbo, even if it does get to be a bit much a times. Having watched both West Ham v. Bournemouth and Man U v. Everton in quick succession, I thought Bounemouth looked easily the most dangerous and well-drilled of the four. Their speed of play and ability to unbalance the defence in the final third was impressive. For that reason, it was really interesting to hear these two talk about the way in which we responded and also how we fell victim initially. In the moment, it certainly felt as if we just rode our luck, considerably, and took our chances where Bournemouth didn't. The body language looks better and there were both a lot of players who came over to our section afterwards and a lot of smiles. 

About the most insight I can give on this preseason is that we don't look like dogshit as we did last preseason.

[BRANDED]

Sport is ultimately about winning. It takes great players to win at the top level.

no shit 

[El Scorchio]

Stubbo,

Bore off mate.

SpursOnline is missing a furry animal I've heard on the grapevine. Happy to send directions!

He's getting chippy because no-one reacts to his usual rancid out of date bait any more.

[stubbo-admin]

 Being a fellow bore myself, I appreciate these insights. Cheers Stubbo

I like them too, although even for me this was a bit long winded. But the breakdown of the movement involved in our second goal against Bournemouth was interesting to me, as well as insight that they believe in possession at least JWP is doing the role he is being asked to play fantastically well (where most of us just see a guy not contributing frankly).

But it also shows me football has gone WAY beyond what I understand of the 'beautiful game' the days of Harry Redknapp (who also played 3-5-2 and no one called a defensive manager), and being generally solid with a plan to 'give the ball to a couple of mavericks' and see what they can do. 

To watch the game these days without truly understanding what has been worked on and why we do what we do is to only see half the picture. Like tasting a fine wine, and preferring the 4.99 Merlot from Aldi. You like what you like, and that's fine, but there is a lot more depth to it than the uneducated truly appreciate...a science and art that goes beyond 'i like what I like'. 

Whether any of that actually matters is an age old debate of course. 

[stubbo-admin]

Stubbo,

Bore off mate.

SpursOnline is missing a furry animal I've heard on the grapevine. Happy to send directions!

[Sir Alf]

 Being a fellow bore myself, I appreciate these insights. Cheers Stubbo

[Mad Ferret]

Stubbo,

Bore off mate.