I totally agree about the mostly unnecessary tinkering The Kid cannot seem to stop himself from making HB Even the Sky commentators could not understand why he took Chalobah off when he did and said as much. It is almost as if The Kid has preselected his substitutions before the game and goes ahead with them no matter what the state of the game or how his preselected players for the hook are actually playing. I think that we nearly always end up looking disjointed when he makes these often unnecessary changes and it has looked like and possibly has ended up costing us games that we have been controlling before the substitutions. Last night was a prime example of The Kids mysterious substitutions, as when the Sky pundit who chooses the MotM was asked to make his selection he opted for three possible candidates and two of the three he named as possible candidates had already been hooked by The Kid. They were Chalobah and Hughes and the pundits final selection was indeed Hughes, which begs the question why was Hughes was no longer on the pitch and furthermore why Chalobah was not either?
He's still absolutely awful. Just because he did what any performing monkey could do and FINALLY did the painfully obvious thing of mostly playing our best players in their best positions in a formation that suits what we have, doesn't make him a good or competent manager. Constantly looks lost on the sidelines and his subs and game management are mostly appalling and illogical. A few wins doesn't change the fact that as a manager he is still woefully out of his depth.
Have a feeling regardless of the outcome of the season we'll see a change of head coach. Xisco has done well results wise and certainly created a better atmosphere around the club and squad, but cant help but feel he's just playing his part and that the Pozzos will get someone a lot more experienced in if do manage to get promoted.
That’s why the club don’t give a hoot he’s not qualified to manage in the PL. If we go up he’s gone and if we don’t go up he’s gone.
Even if we DO get promoted - he will be gone. Lose or don't even get into the playoffs, he will be gone even sooner. In fact, these "stop gap" "bandage" managers are grating. We have had logical reasons for getting rid of most of our past managers. Whatever happened with Pearson and Gino was a shame, because he is still a good coach. What backfires on them is Deeney getting his say most of the time, he undermines so much.
Thought it would be pretty obvious he's here for a good time, not a long time. Brought in to instill a positive atmosphere, to claw back the season after Ivic's reign lead to the players hating being here. (Whether that's Ivic's fault or the players is up for debate). He's not a tactical mastermind, he's a passion merchant, and to be fair, that might prove to have been the right choice, mid season. So far I think he's overall justified his appointment, although it made little sense at the time. Got us back in the picture for automatics and pretty much secured a top 6 spot, that many on here thought we'd slip out of.
Yep that’s fair. He’s done what he was brought in to do and install a bit of team spirit and momentum.
His subs really show his real ability up. Look at a coach like Jokanavich and the game which won us promotion. Away to Brighton and they set up differently to what he expected, he makes a 20/30 minute substitution to counteract this and we win the game 0-2. An actual tactician reacting to what he sees unfolding in front of him. Munoz almost exclusively waits until 65 minutes and then makes subs seemingly just for the sake of it, with absolutely no regard for the context of the game. Today we’re losing and not creating chances, so he makes two like for like subs, absolute madness, the definition of which being to do the same thing and expecting a different result. Having said all that he still has an impressive record, but to me all that says is the championship is less about tactics and more about pashun merchants and therefore Pearson would’ve been the perfect manager for this league. We over complicated it with Ivic who would’ve been a much better premier league manager where tactics actually matter, under complicated it with the leisure centre manager, and completely ****ed it up with Pearson the perfect championship manager.
Pretty much agree with this, although I do think the Joka tactical sorcery is overrated and it seems relies entirely on that Brighton game as proof of its existence.
I wonder if we'd shown a bit of fight but gone down fairly comfortably, would he have stayed, rather than us getting in a position to stay up and throwing it away. That said, I think it's a bit simplistic to say that the Championship is all about pashun merchants, with our squad we were always going to be top 6, but if we had just managed to appoint someone who has a clue, yet doesn't rub the players up the wrong way, we'd have a far better chance of going up
This guy is clueless if we need a goal from somewhere. Even against Coventry and Millwall he had no idea how to get us a goal, we had no chance once we conceded today.
Got to put it into perspective all watford fans would of ripped your hand off for 12 out of 15 points after coventry whole team was off it today from back to front the coach cant change them all ,the goal they scored came from them getting a free kick when lerma was on chalobah back ,we didnt deserve to lose one mistake from bachman getting beat near post we dust ourselves down and go again wednesday long way to go COYH
Fair. I remember there were other games he made quick subs to change things, or was able to make adjustments at HT to change the game, but I think it’s been overplayed in the years since. The counter to his mastery of tactical adjustments would be to question why he set us up in such a way that eventually required wholesale tactical changes. Fixing the mistakes is great, but I’d rather get it right from the start.
There is some science behind the 60-65 minute substitutions however previously when Hughes (our most influential player) had been swapped for a jack of all trades player , and this is not meant as a dig at BW, it did not make sense. Surely better to say to WH , "we need you on the pitch as much as possible and we need to protect you at the same time so after 60-70 mins instead of checking out the new showers just sit in front of the 2 CBs and create a defensive triangle"?
I think that moment is given undue weight but he was definitely tactically flexible. We played 3-5-2, 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 at various points that season under him and not through injury enforced changes. He played four centre backs as the back four against Rotherham as he knew they'd just be lumping it in the mixer. And he would make early subs or change formation during games, it was just that substitution was the most memorable example. Pretty sure he changed our formation at half time in the 7-2 win against Blackpool. He definitely didn't always get it right and sometimes set us up wrong in the first place but at least he reacted to the things unfolding before his eyes and didn't think a left back for left back sub was the way to wrest control back from Bournemouth.
I understand the criticism of Munoz’s game management at times, but I don’t see what’s inherently wrong with “like-for-like” subs. Swapping a player for another player in the same position in the same formation doesn’t mean you are doing nothing to change the course of the game. Lazaar is a different player from Masina, just as Gosling is a different player from Chalobah, and if anything the former makes more sense in a game we were losing, because likely, Xisco reasonably thought Lazaar (who we’ve just signed so we have to try him at least occasionally) offered something to change the game that Masina, who is not the best at passing and going forward, doesn’t. There were other factors that contributed to our defeat more, some of which is beyond the manager’s control.
I’d have to disagree. We were losing the game and not creating much at all, the obvious upshot of going a goal down is that the opposition will also naturally then play more defensively, so a group of players and formation that had hitherto been ineffective will only become even more ineffective. When you’re losing the game you literally have nothing to lose, what does it matter if you lose 1-0 or 3-0? So you need to take more risks which involves swapping defensive players for attacking ones. We had three attacking players on the bench and yet we only brought one of them on with 7 minutes left, surely that makes no sense at all to anyone? The like for like subs would make absolute sense in a situation where you’re happy with the current result, but I can’t fathom how like for like subs can possibly makes sense when you’re presumably unhappy with it? On the flipside he’s also made subs in games when we’ve been playing well and winning that have then brought undue pressure on to us. All the evidence to me suggests he doesn’t really know what he’s doing and just makes subs purely for the sake of making them, rather than for a specific purpose or as a reaction to what is unfolding in front of his eyes.
Exactly, there's a time and a place for like for like subs, I'm not going to criticise his subs in previous games, but this game was crying out for someone like Zinckernagel...
Why Zinckernagel? We were 1-0 down, i think we needed another striker on when the 1st subs were made as a goal was needed. He bought the striker on too late.
Random thought: Has anyone seen the Apple TV show Ted Lasso with Jason Sudeikis? It's fairly silly but funny in a way. About this patently unqualified but relentlessly upbeat football manager working at the fictional Richmond FC (the show seems to have been filmed at least somewhat at Selhurst Park). I have realised that Munoz reminds me of Lasso. Painfully, tactically naive and clearly not qualified but getting decent results with the players clearly buying into the positivity.
Is that what it's about?? I thought it was generic American comedy show starring a Hollywood actor #243. Might actually give it a watch.
It's fairly generic. And a lot of the jokes are 'oh haha x in American English is y in British English hahah.' But there are a couple of funny characters.
Rafa Benitez used to wait for the 60th min to make a sub. Remember the pundits pointing it out when he was at Liverpool. Maybe this is where Xisco gets it from. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Lazaar is a lot more attack minded than Masina so that made sense. Sometimes a change in personnel can work just as much as throwing attackers on to the field because you're losing. I remember when we were 2-0 up at Man City and could have been more, at half time Pep changed one centre back for another and it changed the game.
Putting on too many attackers kills any link between the defence and attack with the midfield connection between. We've had one or two games where we had so many strikers on at the end but we could only lump it forward as we had taken off anyone who could actually link the two areas together. Like for like is more nuanced that it may appear sometimes but there are definitely situations where Xisco has held his cards for too long than make the early change.
His cameo was very attack minded; trying to get forward at every opportunity and have a crack, although he was terrible at that last part. Masina is an old school fullback; defence first, attack second which if we want to hold a lead is great like we saw v Norwich but at other times like Bournemouth when you're chasing a game doesn't offer much.
Oh I'm not necessarily disputing it, but we've only seen the guy play for half an hour in total. Masina probably should have scored vs Bournemouth, was involved in the build up for the penalty vs Preston and popped up in the box a couple of times vs Bristol City. I don't think it's that Masina doesn't want to get forward, he clearly does but he's not the best at it. Lazaar might be better at going forward and hopefully he turns out to be a left footed Kiko, but I haven't seen it yet!
I don’t ever recall being 2-0 up against a Pep managed City, maybe I’ve just mentally blocked all our games against them out now!