Question for anyone that rates Johnson

Just out of interest I was wondering whether anyone who rates Johnson could tell me a moment in the season where he's done any of the following-

- A sub he's made where he's picked up on a weakness of the opposition & it's worked or at least had some impact

- A change in formation in order to counter act the opposition that's worked (e.g. Wigan coming to Oakwell a fortnight after playing us, changing shape & dominating us)

- A player brought into the team for a specific game (e.g Wilson sticking Digby in against Walsall last season to do a job on Pope from goal kicks & long balls - first example I could think of, this isn't a Wilson / Johnson debate).

It's a genuine question because I can't think of one. The constant changes between 4-5-1 & 3-5-2 early in the season seemed to confuse us more than the opposition & the change to 4-4-2 came only after Scowen's injury & us fans moaning for weeks about the lack of entertainment.

When I think of his tactics I think of Mawson in midfield, trying to make Smith a wing back, Winnall playing as a lone striker, 3 subs at once & a formation switch at the same time at Donny, too much chopping & changing of formation early on in the season, Wigan working us out & doing a job on us a fortnight later, most of our attacking play coming from one player (Hammill) etc.

And I just want to know am I missing some things he's doing right? And if so what are they?

 

Doubt you'll get many replies.

 

It's difficult to know how to answer this when all you've got to do is look back to Saturday and see that the sub Johnson brought on scored the equaliser within 5 minutes of being on the pitch.

 

Dont forget the demoralisation of a fair few players by constantly dropping them/playing them out of position.


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Jay has given the obvious answer to your first question. As for the others, you talk as though we've a huge squad of Premier League standard players and that we can chop and change personnel and formation at will. Johnson is working with limited resources and some of what he does will of necessity be trial and error. It's an odd time to pick to crib him when the team is at last showing definite signs of improvement. I like the bloke and I personally think he's been very resilient in adversity. As we've seen this season, even Jose Mourinho can't magically get it right all the time FFS - even with all the resources at his disposal.

Don't get me wrong - I've been as critical as anyone on here when we were on the seemingly endless losing run. But the Board have clearly shown that they are sticking by him and that faith is beginning to be repaid. We've now lost one of the last seven, and we are starting to get some quality back into the team. Keeping hold of the better players will be the next challenge, but Lee is going nowhere and things are picking up.

 

It was just something that I was thinking about because I was watching the Newcastle - Man Utd match & Van Gaal has swapped Martial & Lingard on to different wings because he knew Martial wouldn't defend well against Jaanmat who likes to bomb forward & it worked.

 

That to me was a balls up. He should've started. I couldn't understand why Winnall had played off Watkins who'd played the target man role in the previous games didn't get partnered with Fletcher from the start who could play the exact same role.

 

I knew you were going to say that. In the same way, every other substitution by every other manager that has changed the game for the better must be a balls up because they should have started the game like that in the first place.

 

Ashley Fletcher on versus Fleetwood to give us more strength and aerial presence up front. Scored within minutes.

Matty Templeton on to give us pace in the break whilst Blackpool were throwing numbers forward.

 

Did that even happen?

Digby didnt play any games against Walsall last season.

We battered them under Johnson who subbed on Winnall that day to make it 3-0.

 

Templeton's a good shout. Didn't expect him to have the bravery to put a kid on

 

Ye I balls'd up there. Meant Port Vale at Oakwell

 

I think substitutions are one area in which Johnson is improving. As a young manager he needs to improve further his ability to read a game and change it accordingly but he does seem to have made braver decisions recently and we have reaped rewards from this.

T

 

This one was a bit different because most fans on here were calling for it. It wasn't one where we were all pretending to be experts afterwards.

I wasn't meaning a sub like chucking a striker on when trailing anyway. I was getting at a specific tactic or a change in personnel to target a weakness or defend against a certain player.

Things like when Hill would play Butterfield deep against sides he perceived to be soft in central midfield & further forward against physical sides or when Robins would play Trippier as a right winger against good sides & then have him at right back against sides we didn't have as much to worry about. Both tactics that generally worked.

 

Personally, I think a lot of the time substitutions are more luck (not the right word, but you know what I mean) than judgement. Sometimes they come off, sometimes they don't. You could argue that earlier this season the substitutions were poor as we were losing far more games than we were winning, but recently they've got better as we're now winning more games than we're losing. I think it's much more to do with the fact that we've had much better players over the last couple of months. Although we might struggle again now after the loss of Pearson and Toney, the injury to Watkins and the continued absence of Scowen.

The one substitution I really did think he got wrong was the triple at Donny. The one I thought he got completely right was hauling off both Wilkinson and Rothwell at Rochdale, but we were actually even worse in the second half.

I don't think Johnson has done much that is radical or amazing, but I do think our poor results have mainly been down to the lack of quality and particularly the lack of experience in the playing personnel, rather than the formations or the tactics. We've brought better, more experienced players in and the results have improved.

BTW - I thought the team Johnson picked on Setdi was bang on. I said it's what I'd like to see on here before the game. It didn't work, by any stretch of the imagination, but I thought it would. I misjudged how sharp Williams is and how strong and powerful Fleetwood are.

 

Digby came on in the 89th minute against Port Vale.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This

And I wasn't there to witness it!

 

Doncaster away lol

 

He's resilient un adversity? Youve got to be ****ing sh1tting me?


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