Champagneblade
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- Jan 24, 2010
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- #31
This is the limitation we face in being very driven by a system and not so much having outstanding individuals.
We will drop to the Championship where we will regularly have more possession than the opponent and therefore building a team pattern that profits from this makes sense.
If successful, we’ll then head back up to the ‘promised land’ (sigh) where, unless we manage to get a large uptick in the playing staff, these patterns of play will be minimised, given we’ll have far less of the ball, and areas we spend less time doing - defending - will become majority parts of our play.
This is also probably why the loss of Iliman was such a heavy one to bare. You could, to a largely condescending degree, though not to a totally inaccurate one, boil down the approach of Hecky to this: give it to Iliman.
His maverick street football style benefited greatly from allowing him such freedom. It’s probably why in a new team, it’s taken him 3 managers to start to see some form. Before the new manager, who very much is seen to get the best out of players, the best thing he’d done in a Marseille shirt was keepy-uppies outside the train station!
But what favoured him was also our downfall. Give it to Iliman, when there is no Iliman, somewhat falls flat.
Whilst we had a little dart at 4-3-3 with a fit Brereton-Díaz, we’ve slowly realised, somewhat belatedly that the closest this group of player will get to last season’s patterns is to transition from ‘Give it to Iliman’ to ‘Give it to McAtee’.
He came late in the window, but it is no coincidence that since going to a 3-5-1-1 we’ve looked more competitive in the last two away games rather than playing 2 up top and getting overrun.
Question is, can we come up with a new less reliant system? If not, then who is the next Didzy/Iliman/Macca to make us tick next season?
We will drop to the Championship where we will regularly have more possession than the opponent and therefore building a team pattern that profits from this makes sense.
If successful, we’ll then head back up to the ‘promised land’ (sigh) where, unless we manage to get a large uptick in the playing staff, these patterns of play will be minimised, given we’ll have far less of the ball, and areas we spend less time doing - defending - will become majority parts of our play.
This is also probably why the loss of Iliman was such a heavy one to bare. You could, to a largely condescending degree, though not to a totally inaccurate one, boil down the approach of Hecky to this: give it to Iliman.
His maverick street football style benefited greatly from allowing him such freedom. It’s probably why in a new team, it’s taken him 3 managers to start to see some form. Before the new manager, who very much is seen to get the best out of players, the best thing he’d done in a Marseille shirt was keepy-uppies outside the train station!
But what favoured him was also our downfall. Give it to Iliman, when there is no Iliman, somewhat falls flat.
Whilst we had a little dart at 4-3-3 with a fit Brereton-Díaz, we’ve slowly realised, somewhat belatedly that the closest this group of player will get to last season’s patterns is to transition from ‘Give it to Iliman’ to ‘Give it to McAtee’.
He came late in the window, but it is no coincidence that since going to a 3-5-1-1 we’ve looked more competitive in the last two away games rather than playing 2 up top and getting overrun.
Question is, can we come up with a new less reliant system? If not, then who is the next Didzy/Iliman/Macca to make us tick next season?
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