Educate me

[teblin]

Condescension is often in the mind of the beholder (NB Mr Dagger). I must fess up though, that unlike poxy Ingerland, I don't bear your club any ill will. However, I am not altogether sure about your coach.

In some ways he is what I would consider to be good 'Olde English'. He appears to be a steady man-manager and something of a motivator. His wheeling and dealing in the transfer and loan markets shows that he is quite astute too. Unfortunately when it comes to tactics...

In 20 dreadul minutes on Saturday your team conceded three goals in a game for the first time this season. LCFC boosted their own goals against column by 60% in under 3% of total playing time. And all this in a match where they had been leading (and largely dominating by all accounts) 2 - 0 for nearly an hour. If we accept the information that has been passed on to this board then the coach must take the lion's share of the responsibility for the unsatisfactory, but not disastrous, outcome.

Pearson is a solid enough coach but a DULL and PREDICTABLE one in the way that almost all British coaches are. For them, outside the bog standard Anglo Saxon attack/defend paradigm nothing else exists. In Britain, the counter attacking option is only usually considered by coaches when their teams go down to ten men or when the main strike force has been laid low by knob rot.

Invariably when the tactic succeeds (which statistically it does) they put it back in its box again for use in some unforeseeable eventuality many seasons hence. It never seems to occur to them to repeat the experiment in the next game or even to ask why the system works.

Well, I'll tell you why it works - it's a greater leveller than the glue pots of the 1970's.

There were quite a few games last season where we soaked up pressure and then hit team on the break using the pace of dyer(and others). If i am not mistaken that is counter attacking?

[Radovan's Caravan]

There were quite a few games last season where we soaked up pressure and then hit team on the break using the pace of dyer(and others). If i am not mistaken that is counter attacking?

Indeed sir you are correct, but nine times out of ten when this happens it is a spontaneous response determined by the dynamics of play (being forced onto the back foot as opposed to choosing to sit deep) rather than a deliberate pre planned tactic. The only team that I can think of that consistently play this way in England is Arsenal (somehwat ironic that Man City beat them at their own game).

Instructing a team to slow the game down is effectively telling them to play a possession game - you can't slow anything done when you aint got the ball (unless you're Barcelona or Brazil whose phases off the ball are commonly called goal kicks and throw ins). You might get away with that at home against weaker opposition that are easily discouraged. And you might just get away with it away from home while the chips are still up.

But you definitely won't get away with it on the road when all the tea cups have been smashed in the home dressing room.

[Thracian]

This I agree with (collective responsibility) and im sure he knows that he got it wrong but one can only hope he will learn from this and make sure it doesn't happen in the future. Only time will tell.

Im not as such saying that the players ignored the instructions but what I am saying is Pearson isn't the one kicking the ball. Yes his tactics were wrong but surely if the players actually performed to the managers tactics which knowitall said we wouldn't have conceded and walked with three points. In theory his tactics would have worked as we were shutting up shop and frustrating the opposition by doing so, just like many teams have done to us at the Walkers.

One of the great problems with shutting up shop the way we do is that we've nowhere to go when we get the ball, no-one makes the runs into attacking areas because there is no great ambition to get forward and score again and, because, the available passes disappear the defenders start to hump the ball aimlessly.

It happened time and again against Watford. Times I have stressed that it is easy to pass the ball whenthere's no pressure but the mark of a good side when we stay calm and pass the ball constructively when the opposition are trying to attack.

Retaining possession is a fundamental of playing successful football. And with our slow defenders we don't really have a sensible option of simply trying to absorb pressure indefinitely. I've long said that any team who stretches our back line and has the confidence and belief to run at them will cause endless trouble.

Our defensive record is good because very few teams do that. But the signs have been there at times, particularly Newcastle second half when we were opened up fast and wide as a whore on piece work.