Minority Report v Preston North End

These tactics allow us to match and beat average championship sides which we seemed incapable of doing for a long time. For me one of the biggest frustrations over the last few seasons when we’ve been at this level is that we try and play an open and honest game and hardened championship cloggers come and do a number on us. Well, that’s certainly been stopped as of late. I don’t see us beating many of the top 6, but I feel like at least we are not going to get bent over by the likes of Preston any more, who beat us 8-1 on aggregate last season incidentally. Let’s face it we don’t have the budget to compete at a purely skilled based face off, we have to find a different way to compete, I’m happy for us to do that when we at such a disadvantage.

 

God that used to annoy me

 

I don’t particularly like some of the long punts upfield.

However I don’t find pissing about passing the ball side to side in a vain attempt to play out from the back particularly beautiful either. If you are Man City it’s different - but even they were massively outperformed last season by Liverpool, who aren’t afraid to put their foot through the ball and knock it long or cross field.

Saying that we don’t have the forwards to compete in the air when we knock it long has some truth - but the tactic here isn’t to win the first header - though we do try that - it is to have numbers high up the field to latch onto the second balls.

We have scored some great goals from open play recently by ‘playing’ in more advanced areas rather than in front of the opposition. Play where it can hurt them, restrict the oppo to playing in front of us. Some will do that, some will beat us doing it. A lot of teams, ones we aspired to match last season like Preston, will be restricted to knocking it long more than us but being less well equipped to win the ball in the tenacious way we do.

It isn’t always pretty. But I will never rate style of play over result.

We went one nil down after barely a minute, to a team who hammered us twice last season. But at no point did I not have the feeling we would have chances to get back into it. We may not have - but I always felt the goal was likely to come.

When it did, I felt there was only to be one winner.

We need to be realistic. With the squad of players we have we don’t really have the quality to be getting into the top ten by passing it around and looking pretty.

We do have the ability, heart, desire and fitness levels to go toe to toe, compete, scrap in every game and apparently come out on top of most of the ones that are close. We’ll get a spanking now and again, most sides will. But I’m enjoying this new, effective and results getting Barnsley. Will it last? Don’t know. But we’ve got as many points after 19 games this season than we did after 33 games last season. After 20 games last season (can’t find the table after 19), we had a princely 2 wins and 12 points, and were rock bottom.

We have learnt from experience, are playing in a manner which gives us a good chance of winning in most of the games we are playing, and have a very demanding and competitive manager.

Not a lot to dislike at the moment.

 

Possession is nine tenths of f*ck all.

You second ball winning reds.

 

There are lots of things I want to comment on about this post, but I'm only going to comment on this.

There is a bulletin board archive where you can go back to the posts of December 2015 and read what people were writing. There are no posts of you defending Lee Johnson. There are literally hundreds of Dyson and myself defending Lee Johnson. Hundreds. And we were shouted at and abused but we still kept believing and still kept arguing the case. So don't come out with some self congratulatory bullsh1t where you claim you stuck with Lee Johnson. You didn't. We did. Stop congratulating yourself, it's f*kcing boring and wrong.

 

I think I watch a different match to some on here. Where they see ugly hoofball I see Mowatt running at their defence, I see Brittain bombing down the wing, I see Chaplin coming out wide to receive the ball, I see Woodrow dropping deep to pick up the ball, I see Styles playing one twos out of trouble, I even see Sollbauer going on a run. I don't understand how mixing all that up with some direct play to keep the opposition guessing is hoofball. I think they are a long way from classic hoofball. Fair enough, when they get in front and the opposition have a decent spell Barnsley sometimes start aimlessly hacking it clear but I don't think that's tactics, more a reaction of young players to some pressure. It happened against Wednesday in the second half and happened again tonight for a short period towards the end.

I'm also glad to see a few on this thread point out that passing sidewards and backwards is not beautiful. I thought I was alone in this. To me it never has been, even if you are Barcelona. In my mind that is negative anti-football. The Spanish almost single handedly destroyed exciting end to end football with their tippy tappy possession crap. The biggest frustration under Struber for me was pressing, winning the ball in a dangerous position and then being reluctant to go anywhere near the opponent's penalty area, thus never creating chances. I'd much rather see some explorative passes over the top that come to nowt than see back passes that ultimately come to nowt anyway.

PS - How come this spellchecker doesn't like Barnsley, defence, sidewards and explorative?

 

We won, mate. Again. Three on the bounce, when not really playing that well. We've come from behind in three games to win. Unheard of for us. And, in your mind, we play 'first goal winner' football.

I'm starting to think you dislike us doing well.

We've 28 points after 19 games. We'd only got four after seven, playing the football you like/want.

Goodnight.

 

Yes, Bud. I gotta get out more, too. I am mightily impressed by our team and the way they go about it.

 

Having struggled for years to return to our status as a solid Championship team in the face of huge financial odds I really don't care if we're pragmatic in our play for a season or two.
As Ismael said in his interview after the Wednesday game, the number one focus is to get to safety as quickly as possible.
28 points from 19 games.
Enough said.

 

Agreed to an extent, it wasn't a brilliant game of football. However, we are Barnsley - not Barcelona.


Two things to pick out of your report - Number 1:
It may well be that I am out of my depth, that VI is doing things that are beyond my comprehension.

Correct

Number 2:
In the past, I stuck with Lee Johnson when no-one else did, because I followed his logic
LJ's logic took us to the bottom of L1, playing the worst football I have seen in over 43 years watching the Reds. Valerien has a 66% win record in the Championship (admitted it's a small sample size at the moment) and we have scored some of the best goals I've ever seen in a Red shirt in the last 12 matches. The game at the end of the day is scoring goals.

If Valerien hasn't convinced you after that second half performance - then I feel nothing will convince you RR.


Ignore the doubters Valerien, I for one think you're doing a magnificent job. Keep it up mate

 

Initially I had a moan about his Vertical Football, but then I realised I moaned all last season about Struber's insistence on tip tapping around on the edge of our own box and the problems that caused us.

I'd much rather watch what we're doing now - minimising risk in our own half. We concede a lot fewer goals than we used to, simply from cutting out high risk playing out from the back. Yes we've still given away a few daft goals, but they've been brought on by individual errors, rather than individual errors due to the system like under Struber or Stendel.

 

To be fair Jay that's nowt to brag about!

 

Laughing

I still quite like him to be honest.

The only reason I mentioned myself is I was very vocal about it at the time as Dyson and I went to a meeting with Lee and Ben and I know there are loads of posts about it. Fact is the majority wanted Lee to go, and for obvious reasons. But there were was still a lot of people who didn't.

This "I can see things that no one else can" is just rubbish. Say your piece but don't make out you're great and unique for saying it. Does my head in.

 

Agree with all that.

To be honest I wanted him gone around Xmas time or whenever it was that we went out of the Cup after the 7 game run of defeats. But then I was a bit gutted when he left because we'd been brilliant for a few months.

The 'look at me I can see things you can't so I'm better' is infuriating to me too - even more so when it's not true.

 

Hi RedRain, I'd like you thoughts on playing twice a week, from my hazy memory even in league one we used to struggle on either the mid week game or the sat after. Now we are having to do it every week. As a result in my view we've had to change/reduce our press triggers to something more manageable. After a longer pass to agreed areas.

I still see us playing out from the back but not all the time as others have said we mix it up and are far less predictable in game and risky, even though formation is identical all the time.

 

I think you’re confusing not playing football with not always playing football out from the back.

its true that we often play a long ball forwards out from the back, but when you’ve got 3 up front and 4 across midfield we often pick up the lose balls and build from there. We’re playing football in the right areas.

I think it’s completely wrong to say we’re anything like Wycombe. There were plenty of nice interchanges between Styles, Mowatt, Woodrow and James.

 

I went to bed after I posted Minority Report last night and I have only just read the replies. It is fair to say that most are exactly what I expected. Yours is the only one that hurts. First of all, I did defend Lee Johnson at the time. The second point is this, I was not using the Lee Johnson example to suggest that I am always right. Far from it, I am wrong more than I am right, and I quoted the example of something I said earlier in the season in MR (Barnsley will not win unless they score first) in order to illustrate my fallibility. My reason for bringing up Lee Johnson was that in spite of the string of losses, Johnson played the type of football that I most admire. He went through hell trying to get the team to play in the right style and trying to get the team to win with that style. He lost 12 games on the run, but when the team started winning again, he had won 6 on the run by the time he left. I have also said in the past that I believed that Paul Heckingbottom was the beneficiary of all Johnson's hard work.

Part of the reason that your comments have hurt is that I respect your opinions. I know that you do not care, because you have told me so in the past, but nevertheless, that is where I am. When someone you respect cuts the ground from beneath your feet, it hurts, and that is why your comment hurts more than the others. I am not going to slag you for saying what you think. It is your opinion, and you have every right to your opinion. However, In this case, my opinion is that you are wrong.

 

You are right. It would be very hard to play the Struber press twice each week over a long period. However, I am not sure that VI has ever wanted to play that type of press. We are playing with a very big gap between the front 3 and the rest of the team, and the Struber press did not work like that. In the Struber press, the front players pressed and the rest of the team pushed up in order to cut off the passing options for those being pressed. To be honest, the VI system looks nothing like the Struber system, but because it uses mostly the same players, many of them are outside their comfort zones.

 

I think you’re out of your depth. And there’s no shame in that.

 

You and alot more of us. The number of times it resulted in losing possesion and conceding goals made the defence and fans nervous to say the least .