Minority Report - Crewe

I suspect that this report is not going to be a minority report, but it will be my last for a month so I will crack on.

With Crewe playing a diamond, I expected them to be strong down the middle but weak down the sides, and that is exactly what I saw. It was disappointing in the first half how slowly we reacted in the centre of our defence to the sudden appearance of three attackers against our two centre backs. Either we pull the full backs in, or we drop our defensive midfield player deeper. Doing neither resulted in the free kick that they scored from, but even so, somebody in the wall moved, and that is very poor. Crewe needed strong full backs if they were not to be wide open to our wingers. Their full backs were both slow. They were there for the taking, and in fairness to them Harris, Watkins and Wabara had plenty of success out wide. Unfortunately, the final ball in, particularly from the pair of wingers was appalling. Fair enough, most of the time there was only Winnall to hit, and occasionally, even he was missing. In such a case the wingers are supposed to cut in, hold onto the ball a little longer, and wait for the second wave of midfield players to arrive in the space in front of the defence. They never did so and opportunity after opportunity was butchered.

I have said it before after winning games, and I will say it again now that we have lost one that we should have won easily, either we are using the wrong system or we are playing the wrong players in the right system.

Today our problems were multiplied because Hourihane was as poor as I can ever remember. He is in the team primarily for his ability to deliver from dead ball kicks. If he does not do that consistently, then there are better players and systems that better suit the other players in the squad. Today his delivery was just like the three bears porridge. Only one was just right. It was obvious by half time that changes should be made. Surely, we did not need five players in midfield when Crewe had just four. Surely we would have been better able to take advantage of the endless flow of dead ball kicks and crosses from the wings if we had a tall player there beside Winnall. But the manager decided to leave it late, and then he brought the wrong player off. Do not get me wrong. I am no great fan of Harris, but he is a far better wide player than Hourihane.

It was left to the Crewe manager to make the significant half time changes. In the second half they sat deeper in order to protect what they had. They were quite happy to play without the ball for most of the half, and they got a bonus. They scored on one of their rare breakaways. Crewe were poor and we were naïve, but the poor side won.

Make no mistake, I still support LJ and there is no chance that I will change my mind, but I think that he needs to re-think his squad strengths and weaknesses, because he is in grave danger of staying with these players, and this system, when it no longer makes sense to anyone else that he does so.

 

Really?.

What, EVER?

That's a bold statement to make right now. Are you saying that there is no depths to how bad it could get and you still wouldn't change your mind?

 

You really must try to think through all the possible solutions before you decide on the same one that has failed on every occasion since Wilson left the first time. What is it they say about madness?

 

Top band get mi toes tippy tapping they do.

 

No-one is saying that it would be the ideal route to take, but if it comes to that, it will have been because it was the wrong decision to appoint him in the first place. At some point, if it continues in this vein, someone will need to decide if the bigger madness is to do what we have done too many times in the past, or if the bigger madness is to keep a manager if and when it becomes apparent to everyone that he is not the man for the job, just because we have sacked too many in the past.

 

We play their songs once a month when we score a goal?


Actually changing managers hasn't failed every time has it? We changed manager and Andy Ritchie got us promoted. We changed manager and Bassett took us to Wembley. We changed manager and Davey took us to Wembley.

There is in my opinion a good reason why we were successful at these points. Ritchie attempted to win games, Bassett attempted to win games and in the cup games so did Simon Davey. We changed manager when we got rid of hill and out flutcroft in charge and he HAD to try and win games and guess what? We were successful. The following season he tried to get draws and we were abysmal.

Where is the madness? Is it changing managers? Or is it managers attempting to play full defensive football hoping to get 46 draws in a season with a few if those turned into wins by scoring the occasional goal? And if that is the case then is it due to direction from our board? It simply can't be a coincidence that at a club where we have a 'plodding along' and doing the bare minimum attitude from the board with a low risk low return strategy to stadium maintenance, low risk low return dull pricing strategies, low risk low profit outsourcing of every possible aspect of the club, low risk low return loan signings, low risk low return everywhere off the pitch that we have had a chain of managers adopting a low risk low return strategy towards on the field activities.

In short there needs to be a change in attitude or personnel at the top of this club because the low risk, low return virus that runs through the veins of the club is slowly killing it from inside out.

 

I was going to post something very similar to this.

 

I don't think this is as 'minority' as some of your reports Red Rain. And (if I may say so) it benefits from a little more succinctness than some of your offerings.

I'm inclined to agree that on yesterday's showing, Winnall and Hourihane present issues for us. Winnall has many qualities, but he doesn't seem to me to be a strong enough target man for a 4-5-1 scenario. Hourihane's decent delivery rate reminds me of the Ancient Mariner's. He also doesn't seem to contribute much in open play (cf. Pearson and Scowen). I've yet to be convinced by the Ghost of Marley Watkins. What is he meant to be? He looks a trier, but he's neither a prolific striker nor an effective winger. Is he more evidence of the poor standard of the Scottish leagues?

Changing the system is an interesting point. Psychologically, will LJ prove capable of being flexible enough to adopt something more pragmatic, given that he's toured the globe in search of high-falutin' UEFA badges? We're at the bottom of our 'hierarchy of needs' at the moment, but LJ is being distracted by the top! Or to put it another way, we'll struggle to get out of the alehouse league with this system.

 

*round of applause*

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmezIIrFQmY

Not my cup of tea but there you go

 

In short there needs to be a change in attitude or personnel at the top of this club because the low risk, low return virus that runs through the veins of the club is slowly killing it from inside out.[/QUOTE]

Best statement for a long time

 

I have said it in the past, and I will say it again, I can think of many better ways of spending a quarter of a million quid every year than paying a manager to go elsewhere. The examples you quoted of new managers who were successful were all eventually sacked. They may have been successful over the course of one season, but in my book, one season is not an extended period of success.

Last night everyone was quite rightly annoyed. It was an awful performance by both team and manager. But it is important that decisions are taken for the right reasons, and not simply because the decision-maker is mad. The right decision starts with taking more time and appreciating that a manager cannot hope to build a team in just one transfer window. Many on here insist that the players are fine. They are not! Many are young and inexperienced, many have disappointed and in good time should be replaced. I am not enjoying having to watch this difficult transition and indeed watching a new team being built, but I am old enough to understand that the managers of the more distant past were allowed more time.

Danny Wilson is the most successful manager in the history of Barnsley Football Club. However, his first season as assistant to Viv Anderson was a disaster both from a management and a playing standpoint. But when Anderson left at the end of that season, Wilson was appointed player manager. It could be said that the rest is history, but that is not quite accurate is it. He came back to the club on the back of his past reputation and lasted about a year. Our greatest ever manager could not command the respect or the kudos to get through more than one year. What does that say about our chances of finding the right man the next time we look.

If you want more proof that the managers that we have sacked recently were not bad managers, then simply read the current league table and ask yourself who the managers of Bury, Rochdale and Shrewsbury managed in their previous jobs.

The team has no chance of being ready for promotion this year. Surely it is better and more cost effective to write off this season and spend the money that would have been spent on sacking the manager on buying players in the next two transfer windows.

 

The fact that the previous managers are having some success away from Oakwell leads me to believe that the reason they failed is because there lies a more significant problem within the heartbeat of the club.

I'm all for spending money on aquiring players rather than paying off another manager but would you trust Lee Jay with the money?

The right manager has to be in place before the purse strings are released to such an extent.

 

Suggesting that we are actually a basket case of a club. Wilson, Hill, Flicker, Mellon - all good managers. And Johnson, the one we're finally willing to give time to? I have some serious doubts.......

 

They say Insanity, is when you do the same things again and again and they never work

 

I'm not sure how accurate that kind of figure might be - maybe you are right or maybe not. If we DO have to pay that kind of money in "compensation" then we need to stop that right away. Why should a manager be rewarded for failure? It wouldn't happen in any industrial situation so why are football managers entitled to be paid off if they didn't deliver the goods?

I'm not sure what the legalities might be but wouldn't it be possible, when negotiating a contract, to say "Ok here is your salary, here are your win bonuses etc and the job is yours from today until it is terminated by either party. If you leave of your own accord you get nothing. If you leave because you are sacked you get nothing more that thirty days pay in lieu of notice"

Is that too radical or just impossible to implement? Good grief there are scores of experienced football managers out of work so why should those that make a mess of their job expect to get huge sums of money when they are sacked? I don't understand it!

 

How many goals and assists does Harris have? Pearson? Scowen? Crowley? Our problems are multiplied by all the pressure on Conor to do it week in week out knowing full well his team mates aren't stepping up to the plate and helping him out from midfield. If/when he's sold in January to a championship club our midfield will be back to the days of plodders who don't contribute like when we had Dawson, Perkins etc.

 

Your point is a good one. It made me think. The only answer I have is as follows.

The main reason that we are playing 5 players in midfield is that Hourihane is not strong enough to play in a four. LJ has said so, and I agree. Playing five in midfield means that we can play only one forward, and because Winnall is our best goal scorer, he is the player that is consistently picked up front even though everyone can see the system does not suit him. If Hourihane is providing accurate delivery and is able to provide the passes then, on balance, it is probably worth playing Winnall out of his comfort zone. If Hourihane is not doing all of that, then the balance of the team is not served by picking Hourihane and the issue of picking a second striker comes higher up the list of priorities.

Having said all of that, the issue of Hourihane or a second striker is simply a case of moving the furniture on the Titanic. The real issue is that the players simply are not good enough and that issue cannot be solved outside the transfer windows. All the managers that Barnsley has sacked in the last 20 years would have been much better regarded by the fans if they had been given a larger budget. SCMP equalises budgets in this division and it therefore equalises team performance. Only the likes of Keith Hill stand out as consistently performing above their budget.

 

If I were to summarise the contributions on the board following the match on Saturday, I would say that 90% of them blamed LJ and the system that we played for the loss. I was one of those who said so. I was angry and I was reacting to a very bad result. But I have calmed down now and I have allowed myself a rethink.

Of course, everyone watches their own team, and no one allocates any blame or credit to the opposition or its manager. That is fair enough, because we all expect our own manager to counter anything that our opponents produce, but unfortunately that means that we see only half of the game. When we played Swindon, LJ and his team were handed all the praise when he did not deserve it. Much of that result was down to how the Swindon manager dealt with the tactics that LJ employed. And much of the result on Saturday was down to how the Crewe manager reacted to the tactics employed by LJ.

Nevertheless, we should still have won the game. We had virtually all the second half ball possession. The big problem was that the final ball or the final shot on goal was just not good enough. As I pointed out before, the obvious Crewe weakness was at full back. But our wide players failed to take advantage of it. They were not penetrating, they did not take the ball on the outside of the full backs and their crossing was inaccurate. Most posters would have liked to see just four players in midfield organised in the traditional 4-4-2 with wide players. Assuming Crewe had retained their diamond, we would have been outnumbered in central midfield and Crewe would have still been weak at full back. What would have been the effect?

Many posters would say that the effect would simply have been that we would have gone on and won the game easily. They assume that everything else remains the same, except that we have doubled the number of players in a potentially goal scoring position. They do not believe that Crewe would have changed their tactics in response to a change in ours. But that is not the only effect is it! Because it is football and there are two teams out there and two brains at work on the respective benches.

Even if it was the only effect, the poor delivery into the box by the wide players would still have been poor. Instead of constantly hitting the ball over the head of one forward, potentially, they would have been constantly hitting the ball over the head of two. In actual fact, they would not have been constantly doing anything, because reducing the number of players that we have in midfield automatically means that our share of possession is reduced. The game is a simple game. You just have to remember that it is just as simple on the opposition bench as it is on ours.

The real problem though is as simple as everyone makes out. It is not LJ, and neither is it his tactics. The real problem is the same as it always has been, and always will be. Both sides have eleven players and our eleven are not consistently better than the opposition eleven. It takes time to build a team and it takes time to find eleven players that have better skills than their opponents and have a blend of skills that make them a good side. LJ is no different to any other manager. They all need time to get it right. As supporters, we need to give our managers the time that they need.

 

"Surely, we did not need five players in midfield when Crewe had just four".

Interesting.
Surely that's the whole point? So you outnumber the opposition in key areas?

But what the **** do I know, eh.