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Searching For A Plan B?

yogi bear up the cagire

Life President⭐
Joined
May 8, 2008
Messages
16,280
Location
St Gaudens France
Hesitated about starting a new thread on this but can't find anyone referring to Paul Brush's interview (part 1) on Blues World and couldn't find a suitable thread to tack it onto. He spoke about Gower having to make up his mind up about his future, pretty quickly, when he returns from holiday. Most interestingly, at the end, he states that he wants to move the team forward
(hoping that Gower will be part of that movement) with 'a more varied formation' and a 'more varied style of play'
It looks as if the difficulty ....inability.....we had in changing a game, when we needed to last season, is understood. Weren't there a lot of people on here bemoaning the fact that we were too one-dimensional....lacking a plan B.
However, I suppose that understanding the problem is one thing.............. resolving it , is something else! Nevertheless......interesting times.
 
my fear is that Plan B is HOOF ball - sorry - I mean "hitting the frontman early" - aka HOOF ball -

and we did see some of this - Brighton at home 2nd half - and one or two other occasions and that Mr Brush might favour this option ......

given Tilsons over the top admiration for Donny (they were very weak at the back) perhaps there is difference of view here between Tilsons passing side and Brush's more practical HOOF it -
 
I like a bit of tactical fluency, but sometimes you can get too caught up with trying to be clever. It's difficult to defend 4-4-2 without sounding like Mike Bassett, but it has worked very well for us in recent years, so you discard it at your own peril.

Sven had this with England. Everyone kept banging on about his lack of a Plan B, failing to notice that he'd gone from the Swedish lower leagues to the Italian title, winning almost everything inbetween, with a simple 4-4-2. You'll notice that as soon as he started to mess around with quarterbacks and lone strikers, the wheels came off and we lost to Northern Ireland. There's no need for Plan B, if Plan A works most of the time.

It's a tricky one, particularly with so many teams starting to put an extra man in the middle and constricting what we try to do, but change for the sake of it is always a risk. We had a ****ing brilliant season, considering the fact that we were farted out of the second flight and lost our top goalscorer. Is a revolution really necessary?
 
Plan B's are good, if the midfield is being out faught or overcrowded, why not take the 'direct' approach, launch it into the wide corner areas ala Wimbledon of old? But to make that work, you need some speedy wingers that can also cross the ball and some good old fashioned entre forwards that can put themselves about and maybe head the damn thing in the net. Not sure we got any of that at the moment.
I'm NOT advocating this is our main attack weapon, god forbid, but if it is to become our plan B, we have got to go do some recruiting in the next few weeks.
 
I think all tactics should be utlised during a game.. Passing it around, hoofing it, getting physical, using the wingers, slotting it through the middle.. keep them guessing.. Obviously when they have the ball we revert to our normal tactic of mildly disguised panic.. as for dead ball situations I'd stick with our 'dont look and it may go away' style that has worked well for some time now..
 
The problem I have is that we don't seemed to have grasped that the game is now a squad game for 16 players, not just 11.

How many times has our bench been made up of the rest of the fit players we have left, rather someone who could change a game?

Ideally, the bench should have a keeper, a versatile defender, a midfielder, two attacking players, one with pace and the other offering something different.
 
what? you mean Collis, Zoltan, Scannell/Moose, Harrold and Revell didnt fit your criteria? :=))
 
Second part of the interview now on OS. He expands on how he sees team developing with the need to have, a) time to practice different variations on the training pitch. b) the 'right type' of adaptable players, especially in mid-field. Looks like pre-season friendlies will be used, not only for improving fitness, but for experimentation of these new ideas (trusting by then that we shall have the players to carry this out). He appeared very impressed by the way Forrest changed it around at Roots Hall and signalled out the way that Stock was able to control things in the Doncaster match.
Doesn't expect too much news on transfers until July and when tackled on Mulgrew, admitted that he was one of the players on our shopping list and that we have had 'conversations' with Wolves.......though perhaps not yet with the people that count.......at least it may indicate that mulgrew wouldn't be adverse to a move here? Nothing staggeringly new.........but interesting nevertheless.
 
I was one advocating a plan B or the ability to change our play to adapt to other team's changes at any rate. We saw, to our cost, against Donny how ineffective our usual 4-4-2 was against a team playing a different formation, and how Gower was frozen out by their tactics. If we want to realistically challenge from the off next season, then it's this ability to adapt that would stand us in good stead - and that includes making substitutions at appropriate times to allow the change to have an effect.
 
what? you mean Collis, Zoltan, Scannell/Moose, Harrold and Revell didnt fit your criteria? :=))

sorry but that is a poor bench not one man would you rely on to change a game in your favour. Maybe for future some good players, but need players ready for that moment not two years down the line.

bit harsh IMO - neither Collis or Zoltan would be expected to 'change the game'.
Scannell has shown (at Hartlepool) that he is capable of changing a game.
Like a few others I can't believe how quickly Revell is being written off - now that Harrold and Hunt have gone/going he is well on the way to being our new scapegoat.
 
revell, i think will be a star for us, and I think if he stays fit, will be a vital weapon for us next season, but now wont be sitting on the bench....just shows how thin our squad is at the moment.
 
We had a plan B in the championship, a young local forward who came on and with his height and intelligent play changed quite a few games (Norwich (H), West Brom (A), Spurs etc) but he got hounded out of the club.
 
We had a plan B in the championship, a young local forward who came on and with his height and intelligent play changed quite a few games (Norwich (H), West Brom (A), Spurs etc) but he got hounded out of the club.

Yeah, but let's face it, he never performed against the big clubs. He found his level during the pre-season friendlies, surely? :whistling:
 
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