From one extreme to another

[Sean Thornton]

Anyone else think Pinchy and Tyler's spat has a woodwardfanesque quality about it?

 

[Tyler Durden]

Anyone else think Pinchy and Tyler's spat has a woodwardfanesque quality about it?

I'm going easy on her. She clearly has a delicate disposition.

 

[HillmortonBlade]

Tippity tappity tippity tappity tippity tappity

And to the side...

Tippity tappity tippity tappity tippity tappity

Now go back...

Tippity tappity tippity tappity tippity tappity

"Fuck me how did we lose that one? Ah well at least we provided scintillating entertainment".

Tippy tap: Played by eunuchs, espoused by cretins.

HOOF!

Goalkick

HOOF!

Goalkick

HOOF

"Fuck me, how did we lose that one? Ah well at least we scared the pigeons off the roof"

HOOF: not played by footballers, espoused by dinosaurs...

 

[blade67]

Balance is all you need. Well actually all you need is to stick the ball in the net, no additional points awarded for aesthetic value.

Don't be led up the garden path by anyone who tries telling you there's a correct way to play.They're unbalanced.

bang on. good football is about creating goal scoring chances and defending well. there are a number of ways of doing that and they all look good to me

 

[Tyler Durden]

bang on. good football is about creating goal scoring chances and defending well. there are a number of ways of doing that and they all look good to me

Most people see it that way thankfully. Pretty much every game I'm at, I hear the fans shouting to "keep it on the floor" then the same ones 5 minutes later are screaming to "get it upfield".
Why? Because they want the team to do whatever is likely to see us get a goal at the time. Real supporters don't give a flying fuck about 'formulas' or somebody elses view of what the "right way to play" is. They want victory and nothing else. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to look clever (and failing miserably).

 

[1danewhitehouse]

If you want to grow a business, do you fall back on what you have been doing, or do you attend networking, advertise, ask for recommendations / referrals ?
If you want to get that bird back to yours, do you hit her on the bonce and drag her out the club, or do you put the graft in ?

I would suggest there IS a correct way to go about your business on a football pitch to acheive the overall goal.

Fail to plan = plan to fail ???

Or shall we just wing it and hope for the best ??

I know of not one person or organisation that has been successful that has not had a plan or a strategy.

UTB

Absolutely agree that having a plan/strategy and sticking to it is key. The way Kev has jerked his knee and flip-flopped from pass to hoof to pass to hoof appointing any manager who takes his fancy at a given time with little consideration for continuity is a big part of our problem for me.


If it’s to be relatively direct football under Wilder, so be it. But let’s not go and replace him with a purist when we sack him next May or we’ll once again have players who can’t do what the manager wants.


Let him develop the squad over time the way he wants it and we might start to see some improvement.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

I agree but I wonder if spending so many years watching football in the top two divisions has led to us expecting too much of players at this level regards flexibility. Being coached in systems from being young kids rather than being encouraged to concentrate on ability and freedom can't help. The other thing is managerial rigidity and pkayers being afraid to venture outside their roles.

Agreed. It was made public that when Clough was here, there was a strategy whereby all the youth teams played the way he set up his first team. All well and good if the manager is going to be there a number of years but it falls down when you go for a new manager, new ethos etc. and you’ve got a load of kids trained to play a different way.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

The point I'd make is that, to an extent, both styles can have success (I think longer more direct play noticeably struggles when you reach the top of the game). What we've done wrong is the failure to have any consistent long term planning. Warnock, our only success of my time as a Blade, took a long time to make progress and had more than one period where fans called for him to go.

Post-Colin era, we made the decision to go to Robson, big budget, and hoped for a new style. Didn't work, no complaints about him going. Blackwell then reverted to as about as direct as football gets, and sort of proved the point that winning isn't everything as even a play-off final didn't ultimately save his neck - some vocal fans wanted him out when we were 3rd in the table.

Speed is then to revert to playing a more stylish passing football (though not entirely passing to death), then lower league Adams to save a dying hope (back to direct).

Wilson comes in, gets us playing the slick passing football, gets us scoring, entertaining. But Wilson then loses Lowton, Quinn, Evans, Williamson, even Blackman that he finds goes at Christmas; all the players that made his first approach possible. He's left with little option but to revert to the dour defensive displays that saw him sacked.

In comes Weir - he's definitely going to play some football. He loses McDonald, the guy who might have actually facilitated success in that role, and Weir's general reluctance to have his side do anything but retain possession and concede goals sees him go. So in comes Clough to reinvigorate the side. He, bizarrely, fills the squad with a couple of dozen awful players when any two or three quality ones would've seen us up. He spends it playing dull, uninspired, football.

Now comes Adkins for the switch again. Somehow, with a team of utter mediocrity, he's going to get us playing his quick attacking football with players who can't spell quick. Fails quite miserably without many players in or out.

So let's change again! Now we bring in a bottom tier success story who believes in getting the ball from back to front as quickly as possible, wants a big man up front, wants to be much more direct.

Where is the sense of any kind of long term strategy like Warnock was allowed? Not strategy in the sense of the same manager, nobody particularly disputes any of the sackings we made (I have some small sympathy for a couple, but not much). Strategy in the sense that each manager will pick up from where the last left off. That they share a style, or ethic.

We haphazardly appoint managers, swinging from one type to the other, the board presumably always believing that the grass is greener, give some of them very little scope to work with, or let them make baffling budget allocations, and then they sit back and wonder why things aren't improving.

Surely the point at board level is to have a vision and appoint managers who, even if they fail, will take you some step in the direction you want to move in. Not so that the manager is either handcuffed and forced to work with players who didn't suit him (the Adkins problem, not to let him off the hook entirely for his many failings) or has to do a complete overhaul of the first team (Wilder, now with six new players in the starting eleven).

This is why I didn't like the Wilder appointment. Not because I necessarily thought he's a bad manager, but because he shows that we still haven't got any sense of what it means to build for the future. The board don't know what type of football they want or what manager to appoint to achieve it.

To put it simply: just fucking pick a style, stick with it, and then we can see if the plan works or not. Don't start from close to scratch every season and wonder why there's no progress.

Very well put. A point I’ve been trying to make for some time.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

Don't worry about that. Some people on here presumably wear goalkeeper gloves to type. You were nowhere near as bad.

Boxing gloves work much better for me. Or oven mits for a change.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

Tony Currie, the Maestro, asked if you can play proper football in the lower leagues:

"Of course you can. Why wouldn’t you be able to do it? Okay, it’s not the Premier League but the principles of the game don’t change. They’re still exactly the same, aren’t they?"

Len Badger, the best uncapped right-back of his generation:

"You can play football in any division. But you need to be able to have some bite as well."

Ted Hemsley:

"What you need to do is win the battle first and then win the war. You can play football. There’s no reason why you can’t. Brighton showed that last year. Southampton too. So we all know it can be done but you’ve got to be able to mix it."

Listen and learn you Hoofers, to people who have played the game at the highest level. Of course you have to compete, battle and mix it as Ted says. Of course you need some bite, as Len says. It's common sense. But not one of these real Blades legends (each of them worth a thousand Bassett's and an infinite number of Warnocks) advocates route one, hoof, gerrituptfield or any of the shameful variations on the theme that the Diplodocus Generation cling on to. They know it's utter garbage. They know it's ugly. They know it doesn't work.

Perhaps we should now canvass the views of Vinnie Jones and Wally Downes, eh?

Whitehouse

Hodges

Deane

Blake

Nilsen

Kelly

Tracey

Rees

Devlin

Brown

McCall

Tonge

Kenny

Jagielka

Nnlovu

Kabba

Ifill

Gillespie

Webber


Some fine players employed by those managers you deride. Nobody is advocating incredibly one dimensional aimless hoof. Nor is that what we played under those managers. You seem to pretend we did (we got close under Blackwell mind). But we certainly competed and mixed it and yes, we probably prioritised that over aesthetics. When we did manage to get that bit of quality in the team on top of the battling and competing, we had success. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tend to last long with the blades as the family silver is inevitably sold off whilst at or nearing the peak of their powers.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

Most people see it that way thankfully. Pretty much every game I'm at, I hear the fans shouting to "keep it on the floor" then the same ones 5 minutes later are screaming to "get it upfield".
Why? Because they want the team to do whatever is likely to see us get a goal at the time. Real supporters don't give a flying fuck about 'formulas' or somebody elses view of what the "right way to play" is. They want victory and nothing else. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to look clever (and failing miserably).

I agree to an extent but I think fans also want excitement. The best example I can give is watching England and seeing James Milner come on when they’re defending a 1-0 lead. Yes it might be a wise way to go to see the game out but bloody hell it makes we want to turn the telly off.


I don’t think it has to be possession based or direct particularly but I think there has to be attacking intent. I think that’s part of the reason so many turned against Clough.

 

[Tyler Durden]

I agree to an extent but I think fans also want excitement. The best example I can give is watching England and seeing James Milner come on when they’re defending a 1-0 lead. Yes it might be a wise way to go to see the game out but bloody hell it makes we want to turn the telly off.


I don’t think it has to be possession based or direct particularly but I think there has to be attacking intent. I think that’s part of the reason so many turned against Clough.

I wouldn't argue with that. I'd like excitement as well, but it has to be a consequence of winning games. After 6 years in this godforsaken division, getting points should be the sole focus.
I do think that the attacking intent has been present so far this season. The problem has been the lack of end product, we're just not seizing the initiative at the minute, although I don't see why that won't improve with time.