The thing that always puzzles me is why a club has half a dozen coaches with various specialilties but it's always the most drastic and costly option of sacking the head coach. Why not seek a better defensive specialist? Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk
I also don't understand why coaches seem to choose a philosophy and system and then die on that hill. People saying we should get this guy who plays this system or that guy who likes that formation. Why can't Javi just change the system? What is the downside for him? In what other area does a leader keep doing something which isn't working, simply because it's part of their brand? It's lunacy. Drop 4 players, play a more compact system and get some clean sheets. Then look to reintroduce your preferred method when the results give you space. Javi wont do that though and that's why he will get sacked.
I don’t care about The Man Who Sold The World. I just wish Pozzo was The Man Who Bought A Proficient Centre Back.
Still believe Dawson will turn out OK. For me it's Kikos shocking positioning that is making him look worse than he really is. He'll end up being our Starman.
Maybe our New Killer Star. Consulting the Nick Pegg encyclopaedia, I see that one of DB’s earlier & less distinguished compositions was Going Down. Bad Omen. More remarkably, he sang at the 71 Glasto a number called I’d Like A Big Girl With A Couple Of Melons. This morphed into O You Pretty Things.
I think it was Albert Einstein that said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results"
Javi's 4-2-2-2 isn't working. I'd much rather he changed it and benched some underperforming favourites than we got a new coach in, but that doesn't seem to be how football works.
Time for Javi's take on the QSF "Four slow centre back in a row" tactic. Capoue and Douc sitting in front. Rest of the team free to pelt it after long balls from the defence and see if they can rustle up a goalburger.
You mean (l-r): Kabs, Cathcart, Dawson, Mariappa ? It would just mean two more players on the pitch that are also prone to giving away silly penalties.
That's a horrible omen They had a little bit on the Glastonbury festival in the last documentary I saw. I believe they said all he took was an old organ. But made quite a stir at 5-30 in the morning. Must of been amazing being there, sun rising, soaking up the great man at work.
No point in taking an 'old organ' with a Couple of Melons in the offing. Best to take a brand-new one.
If he does, it'll be exactly the same thing that did for Quique, Mazzarri and Silva. All rooted to their system and unable/afraid/too arrogant to try to change it when the wheels came off.
This is what I mean. Maybe a coach needs to be fired regularly to make the most of their career and get paid off. Maybe a 10 year stint at one club is not profitable. Surely one coach, if good, should be good enough to do the job, not just for a few months. No idea why they seem to come in, implement ideas, be successful for a bit, get found out, then get replaced. Rinse and repeat.
In the chapter about Watford in that book 'State of Play' which reids posted on here a month or so ago, Duxbury talks about how there may be a "romanticism" in a manager staying at a club for 10 years, but it isn't very realistic. He said that rather "we take the view that managers have a two-year life-cycle. They're either going to be phenomenally successful and move on to a bigger club, or it won't work out". It might sound perhaps a bit harsh for it to be considered that the manager hasn't "work[ed] out" if they manage to see out nearly two years at the club, but I think it also relates to the Pozzos likely recognising that most managers do indeed have a preferred manner of playing, and that this style or approach can be more or less suited to certain situations a team may be facing. Thus as the fortunes of the club change, then unless the manager is very good and very adaptable, then they would rather bring in a new manager to take on the new task as it were. The most clear example of this can be seen in Joka leaving to be replaced by QSF as soon as we won promotion (there were rumblings that supposedly Joka left because he wanted too much money, but I could never fully accept that argument, it sounded more like PR; if the Pozzos had wanted to keep Joka on as manager I'm sure they'd have found a way to have kept him). The switch made sense from a footballing perspective as Joka's relatively gung-ho attacking style was ideal for winning the many games required to get promoted from the Championship, but as we saw with him at Fulham could be disastrous if continued against much better teams in the Prem when you can't be expected to win every game. QSF's tactical approach meanwhile was pretty much the opposite of Joka's, being incredibly rigid and negative, but it was what was required to keep us up. Gracia plays a fairly attacking, free-flowing style which is good if you're established in the division and pretty confident of having the players to carry it off, but now that it is clear that our defence isn't good enough any more to cope with being so exposed as in such a formation, it would make sense for the Pozzos to switch again to a manager more able to be pragmatic. Javi has been here not far off two years now, after all...
Good points. In the same book (on the next page even!), Duxbury also says ‘If we’re happy with the work he’s putting in, and we can see the tactical preparation he’s doing but results aren’t happening, then we know it’s not the coaches fault. We know it’s the players fault, and we haven’t got the recruitment right for him.’ I think that’s likely where they are at now. It wouldn’t surprise me if Javi isn’t in as much danger of losing his job as some think. He has a reputation for really putting the hard yards into training etc and preparation.
We’ve seen over the last year or so the team come out exceptionally well prepared to go toe to toe with good teams. Javi is a good coach and may yet find an answer. As we saw last night, the squad has a little depth and so he has a few throws of the dice before his time is up.
Before, after and during, though I'm hearing that little problem of his is now on the mend after some very strong anti-biotics.
I think it wasn't. It's one of those misattributed quotes that gets a life of its own - like "Play it again, Sam", supposedly by Bogart. Besides it's wrong - it's not a definition of insanity. If you said 'A good example of stupidity....' I'd go along with you.