I think there seems to be an agenda floating round that Wilder had little to do with the innovative 5-3-2 overlapping centre backs tactic and that it was all Knill, or someone else, or just luck, or magic maybe. It doesn't suit the agenda because people want to believe Wilder is some kind of footballing dinosaur. All absolute bollocks.
I believe it came about because in the first 4 games of that season, we weren't strong enough in midfield so to counter that, we played with 3 CB's. This also meant that Jake Wright fitted in better as he was a great organiser but had no pace. The next bit was how to combat teams sitting off and the answer was for the 2 CB's to go forward creating overloads. Wilder was as much part of that as any of the coaching staff, he had to be, he was the manager ffs.
What I think is often overlooked is how good JOC was at crossing a ball. Once Bash came back in, and that was slightly later because it started with EEL on the right, Jake in the middle and JOC on the left, he looked like a completely different player, transformed from a 'nothing' player into a marauding DRC.
Yet some fans don't think Wilder should get any credit for it. Bizarre.
To me, there are two ways a manager can set up when he comes into a club. You can instil your favourite tactics and get your players to adapt to it (like Amorim has done at Man Utd, which has taken some time), or, you can adapt your tactics to best suit the players at your disposal.
If you're Pep, well you can just go out and buy all the players you need to carry out your tactics. If you're Wilder, you have to adapt with the players you've got until you've had chance to slowly build the squad to deliver your preferred tactics. Unfortunately, our board sacked him while he'd started that rebuilding and now he's even worse off than he was before!
) was probably better than we thought. He just wasn't an overlapping centre back.
