Valerian

I meant somewhere in-between as the norm, not an isolated incident. Much like we used to play under Norma Hunter and which in my mind is some of the best football we have ever played even better than the "Watching Brazil" stuff.

 

I'm more than happy to agree with that. Having said that, I'd never call Bite Yer Legs 'Norma'!

 

Oops, lucky he cant hear me. RIP Norm

 

I'd much rather remember the nine wins in a row than a few dodgy performance against desperate teams and I certainly wouldn't have expected Val to rip his plan up for the playoffs.

 

I keep hearing about this 1 trick pony but for what it's worth here's my take on Val and his methods.
At Barnsley he inherited a young squad eager to learn and wanting to progress their careers so they became super fit and would run through a brick wall for him. In return he always had their backs and kept the pressure from them.
Fast forward to West Brom where he inherited an ageing squad coming to the end of their careers, most likely set up for life who are quite capable of playing good football but not willing to put in the hard yards anymore.
When Val met our lads for the first time I imagine they found him a bit scary. He had a certain presence about him and these young lads, out of respect and a fair bit of intrepidation bought into everything he said, hence our performances throughout his tenure.
Back to West Brom and a pound to a pinch of snuff the established pros there got their heads together after the first few training sessions and said sod this for a game of soldiers let's get rid of this ogre.
As we all know, when results go badly it's never the players that get the sack it's always the manager. It's going to be interesting to see how Alex Mowatt gets on now his mentor has gone.

 

It was actually 7 wins in a row, not 9. After a draw in the 8th game we won 2 more, so 9 wins and a draw. Still an absolutely amazing run, I concede, and our best ever, but, as been mentioned elsewhere, the effectiveness of Val's tactics had taken a considerable dip before the play-offs. Furthermore, our opponents in the play-offs had already beaten us twice, and we had failed to score against them in either game. I would have thought that that would suggest it might be a sensible idea to try something different in the play-offs. Val didn't, and we lost again.

 

Please can we get him back

 

17 points from the last 10 games is hardly a considerable dip considering the tension around what the team was achieving at the time by getting in to the playoffs and I'm sure we achieved it with a game or two spare rendering them meaningless.

 

17 points from 10 games is certainly a very reasonable return, but represents a big drop from the preceding 28 points in 10 games. Teams had begun to work out how to counter our main tactic of whacking the ball upfield at the earliest opportunity and then pressuring the opposition. Derby, in particular, decided not to play how Ismael wanted them to play and allow themselves to be pressurised. Instead, they played us at our own game and whacked the ball straight back. This made for a very unedifying spectacle and a terribly dull 0-0 draw. Rotherham did the same against us and were far better at it. They missed at least half a dozen glorious chances, which perhaps explained why were they were at the bottom of the table. They really should have won the game comfortably. That match produced 3 very undeserved points of the 17 from the last 10 games.