Reids Coaching/Management thread

It was me that said that if I'd focus a lot on set-pieces if I became a manager yes, I haven't done any set-piece routines with either team yet (offensively anyway), will try and fit some of those in over the next few weeks (our training is 2 hours with no game at Hendon, so plenty of time for things like that!) Will be interesting to see how many goals Brentford score from set-pieces this season, i've studied the work of their new set piece coach Gianni Vio a fair bit!

 

This is part of the 'moneyball' approach by the owner of Brentford and Midtjylland - keeping a very close eye on these two this season!

 

Indeed, I posted a couple of great articles around here somewhere on them both:

https://decorrespondent.nl/2607/How...is-Danish-football-club/230219386155-d2948861
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/feb/22/brentford-mathematical-modelling-denmark
http://www.theguardian.com/football...ute-champions-league-brentford-matthew-benham (same author as the second one and regurgitates some stuff, but still interesting)

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/fa_cup/4139303.stm

This Yeading?

 

Nah, Yeading Town are Sunday league thankfully.

 

Gotta love grassroots. Tomorrow's game with Hendon is off.

Another dropout for the game this afternoon, leaving us with just the 4th choice CB against a 1st division side. Not looking forward to this!

 

Lost 2-0, turns out the drop-out for today was winding us up and was actually there. Surprisingly good score-line, but tbf they should have had 6 or 7 if they could finish. Shocking attempts on goal.

 

What did you go through with the team this week? Sounds a more positive result than you were expecting?

 

Good stuff reids! Interestingly, until recently I used to play in the East Berkshire League myself, for the now defunct Cippenham Sports. We started in Div 1 when I joined in about 2006 and when I left we were struggling at the wrong end of div 2! Our highlight was making the League Cup final in 2007/2008 where we lost 1-0 to Waltham.

The league is quite competitive; however, it's not quite as high up in the non-league tiers now I think. I believe it dropped down a level. It used to be that if you won the East Berkshire Premier League you could be promoted into the Hellenic League (FA Cup entry etc.. at that level), I'm now pretty sure you can't be promoted to that level from the Premier anymore though.

I will be interested to see how you get on! Watch out for Britwell, for some reason they always seemed to do well but never got promoted; therefore, they were near the top of Div 1 or Div 2 all the time, oh and they're also dirty b@stards too!

 

Didn't go through anything really, since January we've been training on Saturdays but now the times come where we're playing on Saturdays, so we're not really training much, the training we're doing on Tuesday isn't compulsory and seems to be more for the fringe players to push for a starting spot (which I quite like, although I do feel we need to start doing "proper" training, as the fitness levels seemed to be quite low compared to 3/4 weeks ago), but we only had 7 or 8 at training on Tuesday so couldn't really do anything productive. It was a lot more positive than I was expecting, but the amount of chances they had was insane, it was only their inability to get shots on target that limited the scoreline tbh.

Ah nice! I'm well acquainted with Britwell, their reserve team beat my old team 2-1 and 5-0 last season!

 

2 games this weekend.

With Langley we've got our last friendly (then a week off before the start of the season), finally we're playing a team in our division, fancy our chances!

Tomorrow with Hendon we've got a friendly against Fairlop Rangers, no idea how good they are as they're in a different league structure, although it's looking like we'll be short of players so not looking too bright at present!

 

Great 4-2 victory for our first win. First half we played them off the park. Our passing and movement was brilliant and they were left chasing shadows, 3-0 up at half time, with 2 shots off the bar, 1 off the post and 2 absolute stonewall penalties not given. Second half we tired and got sloppy, with both their goals coming in the last 15. Looking promising for the season ahead!

 

Did the double this weekend! Hendon come out comfortable 4-1 winners, other team were good but we were a class apart. Think we're gonna have a really really good season. The rapport I have with the team is good, the talent is good, they listen to my instructions. Combined with the fact that i'll be taking it a lot seriously than other managers in terms of my analysis etc I think it's gonna be good..

 

No game for Langley this week as we thought it best to have a week off so we're fresh for the start of the league next weekend.

Keep saying it but the Hendon team is really good and I think we're gonna do well. We took part in a 20 team tournament today and finished in a very respectable 3rd place, well chuffed.

 

Ahh I see you're in my league. I play for Adam and Eve FC, division above you although your whole division is made up mostly of newcomers to the league so couldn't advise you on any off them. Couple I know of.

AFC Heathrow are pretty decent, the other Heathrow Club A and B are very good so expect the thirds to be good too and Wishing Well are crap, but don't get complacent because they're known to suddenly show up now and again.

Maybe we'll see you in the VP or League cup. Good luck!

 

Ah cool! Yeah our league is full of new teams, which means it's hard to gauge how hard it'll be, although we knocked out a couple of premier league teams in the tournament last weekend before losing to Southall United (who won the prem last season) in the semi.

 

How have you done previously against Lord Hill? We battered them 7-2 in a friendly the other week!

 

Langley kicked off their season yesterday with their first competitive game ending in a 3-3 draw. I'm normally a very calm person and manager, I only shout when i've got something useful to say and it's always either instructions or positive talk, i'll never shout at anyone for ****ing up. But yesterday I lost it, I was absolutely furious with the way we were playing. I knew when we were 2-1 up that they were going to score, and then they did. I knew they were going to score again at 2-2 a good few minutes before they did. Sadly there was nothing I could do, no subs to make, no tactical changes could've helped. But it angered me so much, the first time i've felt like that over a game of football (that I didn't have money on!). I ended up kicking a water bottle out of sheer anger, which is something i've never done before!

Hendon had our last pre-season friendly today in which we lost 3-1 to Lpossa. Not got a lot to say about this, we played really well in the first half, but 2 horribly unlucky errors ended up costing us 2 goals and with it the match. Hopefully getting them all out the way before the season kicks off next week.

 

We always seem to beat them, yet they always manage to finish above us. Good side on there day, quite prone to going out the night before though. They are a team I do enjoy beating though as they're fairly dirty and rely on one or two players.

 

I've been watching progress from afar, and found it quite interesting. I know little about the coaching scene, but I doubt if their are many coaches that put as much effort into it at your level - with such a clear career plan in mind.

I hope I'm not sounding patronising, but keep it up, you deserve success from where I'm sitting!

 

Mixed weekend.

2nd league game of the season for Langley. During pre-season we had a habit of shipping goals in the first few minutes of the match (think we conceded in the first few minutes in our first 4 friendlies). I thought i'd worked out what it was, and that was the intensity of our warm-up, we'd do the usual jogs/stretches and then take shots at the keeper. I believe that this was too relaxed and not getting people match sharp, so I started getting us doing rondos (piggy in the middle) before kick off. Problem solved, with no goals conceded in the first 15 minutes since. Saturday though the manager decided to scrap that and have everyone sit in the changing room 10 minutes before kick off, to "make them wait for us". Couldn't see the point in it myself and we soon found ourselves 2-0 down after just 5 minutes. We played fantastically after that and drew 3-3, despite dominating for large periods of the match. We should've won and i'll be insisting we go back to my pre-match routine.



Hendon was another story, I don't think i've ever seen a worse team than our opponents as we ran out 12-0 victors. I'm actually semi-disappointed as it could've and should've been 20+. Our passing and movement was fantastic, I lost count of how many shots we had, but they only had 2 shots in the entire game, which for Sunday league is pretty much unheard of. I recorded the game for my analysis which i'll do during the week (and post up here if anyones interested?) and for the players i've made a montage of the goals which i'll be doing weekly as well. Here they are if you've got a couple of minutes (some decent finishes, especially goals 3 + 5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kr1bjNhCbY

 

"make them wait for us" :whoosh:

Wow. That's brilliant.

 

Completed my analysis for Sundays game. The way I generally do these is the way i've been practicing them for a few months now (on televised games), however due to my shoddy camera work and the angle from the touchline, it's hard to see as much as I would a televised game. I basically watch it and when I make an observation I note the minute it occurred (in-case I want to watch it back a few months down the line to remind myself what exactly happened). I also note down to the formation/lineup we play as we as the oppositions formation if it's possible to work it out (when i've been practicing my analysis on televised game I don't watch the lineups and see if I can tell what formation the team i'm analyzing is playing), one addition to my analysis which is something I've obviously had to skip in my practise runs have been what to take advantage/be careful on in the return game, so i've included that as well.

1: http://i.imgur.com/9G7IyoR.jpg?1
2: http://i.imgur.com/LHiqBYq.jpg?1 (with how to take advantage of their weaknesses in the next game. The lack of "what happened" in the second half is that it wasn't really worth pointing out what i'd already picked up on so far)

PS: Apologies about my handwriting :]]

 

Reids - great stuff!

Having read through your notes, I would recommend a program called Evernote.

It allows you to tag areas for future use.

1. Scan the document and load onto PC/Mac
2. Tag 'FC Creed', 'Poor Right, 'Playing too narrow' for example
3. In the future, if you have a stumbling block, you can search for when came up against teams that played narrow or where poor from corners.

You can keep a whole library of the teams you have faced, problem areas and weaknesses of the opposition. 'How did I defeat FC Creed before' etc.

Just a thought - it might keep you more organised and help you combat issues in the future.

 

Don't worry, my spider could be a clone of yours .... it's perfectly readable IMO.

 

Interesting, cheers.

 

Langley crashed out the Middlesex cup with a 2-1 loss. The team we were playing were a very well drilled outfit and I could tell by the way they moved the ball around that they were decent. Pretty happy overall, especially since we were missing our normal 2 CBs. Also worth noting that we went back to my pre-match routine and didn't concede until just before HT.


Hendon were another level today, with an 11-0 victory and I'm beginning to think we might be in the wrong league....video of the goals will be up later, but you know you've played well when the other team are time wasting to keep the deficit down!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSAOtYJlx8A&feature=youtu.be

9 of the 11 goals scored (battery died for the last 2, i've ordered an extra one so shouldn't happen again!). Some great passing moves in there.

 

That opposition do not look very good at all... Also you should get a tripod haha.

 

Yeah, we're definitely in the wrong league at present! Thought about a tripod but take public transport to games so it'd be a nightmare, quality isn't too bad except for the first goal (when I was walking back after getting a ball!)

 

a telescopic pole is all you need, something like this but I'm sure there will be cheaper or better etc. if you look around

http://www.wexphotographic.com/buy-joby-action-grip-pole/p1570617?mkwid=sxre88nrl_dc&pcrid=86900544179&kword=&match=&plid=&gclid=cnkstyeeicgcfuccgwodqb4dcg

Failing that and I know it sounds condescending but you could get advice from a pro about camera handling. Very few folk handle a camera correctly (at least normal ones, I don't actually use a handicam).

 

Had my first session on Tuesday night and thoroughly enjoyed it!

The Gloucestershire FA have a fantastic set of pitches and it was a joy to watch some of the Bristol City Girls Academy train.

The session was mainly a classroom session which highlighted the 'English DNA' and how the FA want to see the next generation of players develop. It was interesting to hear how we differ from Spain. We start using offside rules for players over 14, whereas in Spain, its 7!

Those small details, and with some others, I think shows the big divide between our development and theirs.

This English DNA is interesting and gives certain rules that need to be followed by every coach including making sure that the 'ball is rolling for at least 70% of a session'. I think this could be so good for increasing technical ability!

My next session is Sunday 9 - 5:30pm (missing the WFC game!) which is an all day on the pitch coaching day - I cant wait!

 

We just had a game abandoned today against Hayes Working Men's of your division.

Dirtiest team I've ever played against and culminated in one of our players having his legs broken, be very careful playing against them.

 

Will do, cheers!

Langley got thumped 7-3 yesterday against a physical rough side, we couldn't match their aggression and we got punished. The worst performance by any team coached by me so far (and hopefully will be for quite some time!) and i'm still hurting tbh, not a good feeling!

Hendon scraped to a 3-2 victory, taking us top of the table. Another poor performance (so many chances, just poor finishing which is odd for us!), only saving grace on a personal level is this: For our last 2 games our wingers have had the opposition full-backs beat every single time, they either cut inside or dribble down the wing, the CBs aren't tracking our runners and we've normally got someone running into the box waiting for that cutback. The wingers then either cross (low chance of success) or try to beat the keeper (at that angle, not a decent amount of success either). So after the first game we practiced it in training. Second game, no improvement. At training I drilled it into them, that this is how we'll score goals and we'll do that drill each week until we score. I mentioned it in the team-talk at the start of the match, our second goal = cut-back. Captain shouted across that it was dedicated to me (which cracked me up), but a great feeling for something that you've spotted and then worked on finally coming off. Love it!