Strikers coach?

Genuine question, do we have a coach who’s job is purely working with the strikers (and attacking midfielders).

They obviously do lots of shooting drills, but is there an ex striking ace at the club taking them through things like technique, little tips, psychology, composure, decision making etc?

I’m praying Penaranda is as good as he once showed he could be and the same for Cucho and the young Brazilian lad we’ve signed. All young with potential and you can add success to that but who’s going to coach them to the next level? Especially in the major and most important art of actually scoring goals.

Money surely can’t be reason not to have one, are specialists like this rarely used at clubs?

However,if we do have one, then A) who is he? And B) he needs sacking.

 

Strikers in the first place would be good.

IMHO strikers shouldn't need coaching, the goal is static...it never moves and the dimensions are the same at every stadium and every training ground in the world. If I'm a professional footballer being paid thousands per week to play, and training is 2-3 hours long per day, then my own pride would keep me out for an extra hour for shooting practice.

This isn't a coaching issue, it's a quality issue. The last decent finisher we had was Vydra, that boy knew where the goal was. DG10 was a finisher, Kevin Phillips was a finisher, even Paul Wilkinson was a finisher...that's what we lack and you can't really coach that.

 

Pretty ironic, did he slip over picking up his work permit!

 

When the players were warming up yesterday doing their shooting drills, nobody in Leicester’s family stand behind the goal were safe in rows X and above. Our warming up process still consists of 60% Fuc King about, I don’t see any other team in the prem do the tvvatting about our players do before each and every game

 

Totally agree. If it's just coaching, I will turn up on Monday and hopefully a month from now I will start scoring the goals that will keep us up.

 

I agree with a lot of the above, I do think some players are just 'natural' goal scorers and quite possibly we just don't have one. However, suggesting that they can't be trained to improve is surely naive? All sports people get trained. Usain Bolt did loads of training to run in a straight line faster than anyone else. Federer must have served a tennis ball a million times in his career, but will still work on adapting / improving it.

Surely in this multi-million pound industry the club could employ someone simply for the benefit of improving the success rate of shots on target / goals? As I say they must do shooting drills, but are they being coached and trained to improve in this area rather than just continuing with their current techniques / mentality in front of goal.

The game yesterday, judged overall, was fine. But goals win games and our shooting was comical.

 

With the exception of a handful of top players I'm sure all strikers miss more chances than they score from. Dreadful as Grey etc seem to be, their miss to chance ratio is probably no worse than 90 per cent of the other forwards playing in the EPL

 

That's a valid point. When I've not bothered going below at half time this season I just see the substitutes knocking long balls across the pitch at each other. There's little thought gone into it other than "go out there and kick a ball".

 

You are not the first person to say that. But is it really true? Have you evidence for it? I'm sure there's a limit to the potential in everybody, but surely people can be improved by advice, practising and experience.

 

If you look at real finishers, then it's about mentality. Yes practice is important, but how do you coach goalscoring? There's the net, put the ball in the net - you don't need UEFA badges for that.

Ian Wright was a natural finisher, signed as a professional at 21, no real coaching - he just wanted to score. Vardy came from non-league and became prolific.

Jermaine Defoe has stated no one taught him how to score, he was just obsessed about scoring and would practice ad nauseam.

Kevin Phillips came in from Baldock Town and started scoring straight away.

Alex Inglethorpe was a...just kidding.

I read about Robbie Fowler, he practiced on body position and hitting the corners.

I'm a firm believer that goal scoring is a natural instinct - you either have it or you don't....our forwards don't.

 

But can the natural scorers be trained to be even better,even just 1%? And more importantly for us, can someone who isn’t a natural, be trained to be better? I’d argue they can. If the club don’t have a goal scoring coach, why not? What’s the harm in at least trying!?

 

Can you replicate a real match in training? That's the only way.

 

Wanted: Turd Polisher.

 

Forget a specialist coach, even Arthur Scargill would be hard pressed to turn Gray, Deeney or Okaka into effective strikers.

 

I don’t think we are polar opposites in our opinions here. But by that reckoning all training aside from physical is pointless. There are clearly merits and benefits from setting up similar situations and practicing them. Having a specialist goal scoring coach would be better than the cover all bases coach?

 

Must be contagious.

He caught it off Gray.

 

As long as by striker coach, you mean the four wheel kind dumping Gray and Deeney off in another county and bringing in anyone with a bit of quality, then I’m all for it.

 

Not sure how effective Scargill was.

Bob Crow was canny & single minded.

 

Anyone remember that motivational bloke the club employed, famous for his 'pink shirt' back in the day Can't remember exactly what era that was?

 

The only Strikers Coach I'm interested in is one to put all our existing strikers in and send them down the road PERMANENTLY!!!

 

I don't believe he was able to play the Chalobah role.
Wages.

 

Whilst you can’t coach a striker to become a natural finisher, you certainly can teach them to work better in tight spaces, movement on the pitch and composure - if our strikers improved those 3 aspects, they wouldn’t become natural goalscorers but they’d have a damn better chance of scoring more than they do.

Where I think a few of our strikers fall down (Gray, Deeney) is that I’m not entirely convinced they want to put in the hard yards in training to do this. I accept its a hunch more than on anything more tangible but they strike me as strikers who are just as interested for becoming famous for what they do off the pitch, rather than the goals they score on it.

One thing I don’t buy and never have, in a broader sense - is when people defend Gracia in saying he can’t make players better. They either have it or they don’t. Then what exactly is the point of having him as head coach? This excuse that he can’t go out and score the goals for them?! Well no manager has ever been able to do that. Gracia and his coaching team are ultimately responsible for whatever happens on the pitch, be it good or bad.

 

As much as I agree with your post, how would you fit Trevor Senior into your logic?

 

Psychological protection means I have completely blocked him out...he never played for us as far as I'm concerned.

 

Apart from composure, I would absolutely agree with the first parts.

The issue in the last 3 or 4 games is we've created chances...good chances...we're just not lethal in converting them. At the height of his prowess, the chances Delofeu et al have had in the last few games, I know Vydra would have scored most of them. Luther would have scored most of them, Kevin Phillips would have scored most of them, DG10, Mo Johnston etc

The natural goalscorers of history also rely on instinct to get themselves into goal scoring positions and then are lethal because they expect an opportunity. How many times have we heard leaving players who contribute nothing in build up on the pitch because they can grab you a goal when you need one...you know the ones who need just 'one chance'.

 

I'd add Ighalo to that list as well (before he suddenly lost a touch of sharpness).

I think Gray relies a bit too much on instinct in his general play for his composure to significantly improve. He's one of those players who does everything at a fast pace and struggles a bit when given time to think.

Success, I'd hope his finishing could be improved through coaching. He generally has good technique, good composure on the ball, and can pick out a pass - for some reason that ability just seems to desert him at the moment as soon as he gets a sight of the net.

Deulofeu is just inconsistent and mentally fragile, this is nothing new. He's still fairly young though and has been hampered by injuries, so could improve his consistency with more time and games.

 

All this is just the old Nature versus Nuture argument. You can not separate the one from the other and so it cannot be tested in a controlled experment. The best you can do is look at big data and see if there are correlations.
Life's experiences provide us with a pretty good indication that practising improves performance and that some people seem to 'get it' much more quickly and completely than others.
Interestingly, there are plenty of players who have a red-hot spell and then lose it (Jose Torres, Trevor Senior (!), Danny Graham, Odion Ighalo et alia). Troy Deeney has scored over 100 goals for us, but nobody expects him to do it any more (including, it seems, him). I know a lot of these were in the Championship but he just doesn't even try now. I'm sure there's a lack of confidence thing going on - amongst all of them; and it is the coaches' job to work on this. At the moment players are shirking responsibility and passing the ball to someone else. There's too much patient build-up and not enough hustle and risk-taking. Of course they must mix it up, but the forwards must be given permission to at least more frequently just hammer the ball and see what happens. (Capoue (against Wolves) and Holebas (against Southampton) have recently shown the way). (Neither of them forwards, please note).

 

Succinctly put.