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George Smiley

Anti football

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I know i am getting way ahead of myself here but just supposing we get promoted to the Prem this season.All very exciting locking horns with the big boys (thats hard enough) but what about dealing with the thug teams lying in wait like Sam Allardyce ''s Blackburn and Tony Pulis''s Stoke City.Can you imagine the uproar on this board if Ryan Shawcross takes out Wes at the knee and puts him out for 4 months.If Lambert could have been arsed about the League cup then i think we would have played Blackburn off the park .More importantly how would our fans react if Lambert sent out teams just to stop the opposition playing ?If it meant staying in the Prem by the skin of our teeth , would you accept it?

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Fair question. For me, yes but only in the short term if it meant us staying up a season or two to avoid the worst of the Football League cash drought (not that I like this necessity - see other threads criticising the system).

But would be disgruntled if we didn''t play football once we could afford to (when would this be? that depends on the footballing vision of the board & the club''s fans).

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I think there are more cloggers and hoofers in the Championship than the Premiership, and our players are in more danger in this league than the one above.

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we would need an entirely new squad to play anti football ..i know we would need a lot of new players in the prem anyway  but the only player i can see fitting into a stoke style of play is andrew crofts ..i would rather take the blackpool approach it may not be successful in the end but at least there giving it a go in the right way [:D]

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I''d accept it if it meant staying in the Prem, but not forever, i think its acceptable for certain games.

At the end of the day if we were to stay in the Prem for a few years i think everyone would be happy, especially the bank manager.

Wouldn''t want to come down like last time and have years of championship/league 1 again

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[quote user="pennywise "]i would rather take the blackpool approach it may not be successful in the end but at least there giving it a go in the right way [:D][/quote]I agree. Don''t underestimate Lambert if we do find ourselves in Prem though. We almost survived to fight another season under Worthy and he didn''t have a clue by that stage, bless him. I can''t imagine Lambert repeating Worthy''s mistakes, he is a different animal altogether.

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[quote user="Herb"][quote user="pennywise "]i would rather take the blackpool approach it may not be successful in the end but at least there giving it a go in the right way [:D][/quote]I agree. Don''t underestimate Lambert if we do find ourselves in Prem though. We almost survived to fight another season under Worthy and he didn''t have a clue by that stage, bless him. I can''t imagine Lambert repeating Worthy''s mistakes, he is a different animal altogether.[/quote]Northern Ireland 0 - 0 ItalyBut Worthington doesn''t have a clue...

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Solid point for N.Irl but Italy were woeful at the world cup. As for Worthy not having a clue, was it his fault that the players chucked 3 points away at Palace that evidently killed us (pretty much)?

Anyway as for us in the prem, i''d like to see us give it a go. If you don''t attack you won''t score. We''d have no pressure on us and people will be expecting us to get hammered every game. If we approached that correctly, we never know what could happen.

Certainly would do us no harm with being a bit of a yo-yo club like WBA.

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You don''t get relegated from the prem for playing nice football.  You get relegated for making defensive mistakes, for defending set pieces badly, or for being beaten for pace.

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ask the blackpool fans who went to Anfield if its better to sit back and avoid a twatting (for thats what you will get) or to go for it and win....The big sides can be beaten.. sitting back and trying to keep the score down isnt the way to do it.

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[quote user="jas the barclay king"]ask the blackpool fans who went to Anfield if its better to sit back and avoid a twatting (for thats what you will get) or to go for it and win....The big sides can be beaten.. sitting back and trying to keep the score down isnt the way to do it.[/quote]Definitely the worst liverpool team since Souness had his way though. I wouldn''t read too much into it, Blackpool will be relegated.

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Dont know if anyone knows where it is located but I seem to remember McNallys business plan involved a couple of seasons as a yo yo club before becoming an established ( if mid table ) premier league club, not only like but what was delivered at Fulham. Similar to Blackpool I think he indicated the initial investment would be in things like ground expansion and debt paying rather than major squad investment. With the rule changes on expenditure and the additional parachute money I think it is regarded as vital to get there rather than stay there. 

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[quote user="Nolly"]I''d accept it if it meant staying in the Prem, but not forever, i think its acceptable for certain games.

At the end of the day if we were to stay in the Prem for a few years i think everyone would be happy, especially the bank manager.

Wouldn''t want to come down like last time and have years of championship/league 1 again[/quote]Are you having a larf?[:)]  Thread upon thread moaning about ticket prices is what I predict.

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I wouldn''t mind the Stoke approach for a season or two if we stayed up but sooner or later teams are going to figure Stoke out and the physicallity of their team won''t be so much of a problem.  When I say the Stoke approach though, I don''t want ten men behind the ball and we kick them off the pitch I mean be physicall, make it hard but still try and attack.

I''m enjoying the talk of IF we go up because it shows how well we are doing but we would need a lot of new players.  The OP said how gutted would we be if Shawcross wiped out Hoolahan for four months?  Well, I wouldn''t be gutted because players like Hoolahan won''t last five minutes in the Premiership anyway.  IF we go up the board must stretch their wallets a lot because otherwise we could well embaress ourselves.

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[quote user="Mook"][quote user="jas the barclay king"]ask the blackpool fans who went to Anfield if its better to sit back and avoid a twatting (for thats what you will get) or to go for it and win....The big sides can be beaten.. sitting back and trying to keep the score down isnt the way to do it.[/quote]Definitely the worst liverpool team since Souness had his way though. I wouldn''t read too much into it, Blackpool will be relegated.[/quote]I appreciate Liverpool have seen better days, but that was still a Liverpool team with Steven Gerrard, Pepe Reina, Jamie Carragher, Dirk Kuyt and Torres (well, for a short time). On paper, you''d have been foolish to bet on such a result, even with Liverpool''s predicament. I said at the start of the season Blackpool musn''t be counted out and I think they''ve every chance of staying up.

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[quote user="renegadecanary"]I know i am getting way ahead of myself here but just supposing we get promoted to the Prem this season.All very exciting locking horns with the big boys (thats hard enough) but what about dealing with the thug teams lying in wait like Sam Allardyce ''s Blackburn and Tony Pulis''s Stoke City.Can you imagine the uproar on this board if Ryan Shawcross takes out Wes at the knee and puts him out for 4 months.If Lambert could have been arsed about the League cup then i think we would have played Blackburn off the park .More importantly how would our fans react if Lambert sent out teams just to stop the opposition playing ?If it meant staying in the Prem by the skin of our teeth , would you accept it?[/quote]Any club outside the ''elite'' is considered unworthy.......There''s nothing wrong with physical football and some of our favourite club heros were in this ''catagory''.... Duncan Forbes to name but one.

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Lets no go up to the prem. The most overrated league in the world. Its basically one big league that covers 3/4 mini leagues! The championship is the most underated league in the world! If lamberts starts to play defensive then we goes - simple!

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How is Premiere league the most overrated in the world?

Its the best....some statements/opinions you have really are strange, you seem to think Holland are a club you can support, they are a nation, you can follow them (although, i don''t know anyone else who would even follow another nation, let alone ''support'' them), you think the premiership is overrated? why do so many players go there? why is all the TV money there?

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[quote user="I am a Banana"]Lets no go up to the prem. The most overrated league in the world. Its basically one big league that covers 3/4 mini leagues! The championship is the most underated league in the world! If lamberts starts to play defensive then we goes - simple![/quote]

Overated / underated whatever anyones opinion unfortunately it is the money that counts. Those not obtaining premiership payments over the next few years will probably move into the wilderness. Like it or not with the additional monies, higher and longer parachute payments and the rule changes restricting what you can spend I am afraid that even the championship will become 2 different leagues, those with the parachute money always finishing top half those without the money bottom half. Be careful what you wish for as I suspect failure over the next 3 - 5 years to get promoted will mean disaster and probably administration for our beloved club. To make it harder to get promotion I suspect several other teams are in the same boat. 

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Lambert goes out to win games. He''s done it from the day he stepped into the club and when we go up to the Premiership (not if), Lambert will not change the way he wants the game played.

We will be an exciting, entertaining, attacking premiership team in the not too distant future.

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I agree with this yellow hammer. But I''ve been wondering about this for a while. Does Lambert want to win games more than other managers we have had of late? Probably yes in as much as if we''re drawing away from home with a few minutes left he will make a substitution to try and win the game where as others would have made one to hold on to the point. But I don''t think he sets his side out to win games from the off as much as some others have.

We can in fact be quite negative during the first hour of our games but become more open for the last 30 mins. I noticed this last season too. During the first hour this season we have scored just 6 goals and conceded 7. In the first half hour of games we have only scored once. But in the last 30 minutes we have scored 11 and conceded 6. Last season we won the league with a goal difference of +42 yet we had a negative goal difference over the season during the first half hour of our games.

This backs up my observations that we contain teams early on. Even if we concede we carry on keeping it tight hoping to run them ragged later. The Leicester game was a good example. We went a goal down early but still contained them for the first 30 minutes. Later, when the game became a bit stretched, we seemed to play with the view that we could outscore them.

This flies in the face of how many managers think and set out their game plans. Worthy was the complete opposite in that he would set his side out to attack but often make substitutions to hold onto what he had in the last quarter of games. It also stands us in good stead because by being different we are doing the unexpected. But eventually, if we remain successful, inevitably others will follow.

 

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[quote user="nutty nigel"]

We can in fact be quite negative during the first hour of our games

but become more open for the last 30 mins. I noticed this last season

too. During the first hour this season we have scored just 6 goals and

conceded 7. In the first half hour of games we have only scored once.

But in the last 30 minutes we have scored 11 and conceded 6. Last season

we won the league with a goal difference of +42 yet we had a negative

goal difference over the season during the first half hour of our games.

This backs up my observations that we contain teams early on. Even if

we concede we carry on keeping it tight hoping to run them ragged

later. The Leicester game was a good example. We went a goal down early

but still contained them for the first 30 minutes. Later, when the game

became a bit stretched, we seemed to play with the view that we could

outscore them.

[/quote]

Seems to me that Mr Lambert may have been doing some reading.  An old Fink Tank study in The Times showed that the longer a game is played, the more likely goals are to be scored.  So it should follow that the best time to attack is late in a game.  In a game like tennis, as many points are lost as won, the same could be argued for football, as defenders get tired, they make positional mistakes, if you''ve kept something in reserve you can take advantage of gaps opening up in the opposing teams'' defence.  Also (and obviously) the later you score, the less time the other team has to respond.

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I think that Lambert of course goes out to win games and attacking subsitiutions towards the end of games shows that, as do Nutty''s quite wonderful statistics.

But for nearly all of Lambert''s time at Norwich the onus has been on us to win the game. Every game we played in League One, we were favourites to win (certainly after the Leeds away game). So Norwich had to go out with an attacking approach, as other times would quite happily sit behind the ball.

We will start to see in this League (and especially on Saturday against QPR) how Lambert wants the team to play when a draw would be classed as a good result. The difference from mid-table to promotion is winning games instead of drawing, the difference between mid-table and relegation is drawing games instead of losing. Mick McCarthy showed this in the Premier League last season, as did Birmingham. Hull and Burnley showed that pushing for a win when a draw is a good result will get you relegated. I would imagine Blackpool will also discover this over the coming weeks/months.

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That is true Blah and there are more goals later in the games when they become stretched. (See how I use the modern phraseology? I can''t remember games becoming stretched in the 60''s & 70''s [:S] ) I just think these stats are far more pronounced in our case.

Talking about fink tanks and anti football I remember listening to an interview with Bobby Gould in the 90''s. Gould was Wales manager then but previously been in charge of Wimbledon in the 80''s when they won the FA Cup. He said something about a university study having proved that the more times you get the ball in the box the more goals you will score. This justified having a great big battering ram up front getting into the box whenever possible and hoofing the ball in from all kinds of distances. They turned anti football into an art form[:S] But we never seemed to cope with them. Even when we were at our best in the 80''s we used to end up hoofing it and getting beat!

 

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[quote user="nutty nigel"]

That is true Blah and there are more goals later in the games when they become stretched. (See how I use the modern phraseology? I can''t remember games becoming stretched in the 60''s & 70''s [:S] ) I just think these stats are far more pronounced in our case.

Talking about fink tanks and anti football I remember listening to an interview with Bobby Gould in the 90''s. Gould was Wales manager then but previously been in charge of Wimbledon in the 80''s when they won the FA Cup. He said something about a university study having proved that the more times you get the ball in the box the more goals you will score. This justified having a great big battering ram up front getting into the box whenever possible and hoofing the ball in from all kinds of distances. They turned anti football into an art form[:S] But we never seemed to cope with them. Even when we were at our best in the 80''s we used to end up hoofing it and getting beat!

 

[/quote]

I know Charles Reep wrote how most goals are scored from a passing sequence of 3 or less passes.

For more information about see here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/sep/17/joy-of-six-route-one-goals

and here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/may/12/the-question-important-possession

The second is by Jonathan Wilson, who along with Simon Kuper, is probably one of the best football jurnos out there.

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Thanks for those links Beth, they were really interesting and I had never read them before.

When we played passing football in the late 80''s we always struggled against Wimbledon. The crowd would become really frustrated because we would end up hoofing the ball to forwards who were not equiped to play that way. There would be cries of "get the ball down and play football" and "why resort to their tactics just play round them". But of course it''s not that simple. Because what you do when you have the ball is only half of it. Often, more importantly it''s what you do when you don''t have the ball that wins games. Whether you pass the ball like we did or hoof it like Wimbledon did you have to stop the other team playing. And that''s perhaps what that wimbledon team did best. By whatever method they could they would stop teams playing. What Sachii said at the end of the second article sums it all up for me :-

 

At Milan, Arrigo Sacchi got fed up of players moaning about his obsession with team shape, and so proved its worth with a simple drill. "I convinced [Ruud] Gullit and [Marco] Van Basten by telling them that five organised players would beat 10 disorganised ones," he said. "And I proved it to them. I took five players: Giovanni Galli in goal, [Mauro] Tassotti, [Paolo] Maldini, [Alesandro] Costacurta and [Franco] Baresi. They had 10 players: Gullit, Van Basten, [Frank] Rijkaard, [Pietro Paolo] Virdis, [Alberigo] Evani, [Carlo] Ancelotti, [Angelo] Colombo, [Roberto] Donadoni, [Christian] Lantignotti and [Graziano] Mannari. They had 15 minutes to score against my five players, the only rule was that if we won possession or they lost the ball, they had to start over from 10 metres inside their own half. I did this all the time and they never scored. Not once."

Thanks again for sharing those links[Y] Maybe we could talk football over a pint at The Blind Beggar one time if it''s still there [;)][B]

 

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Those were two good reads.

I think some people are getting mixed up between being organised and playing anti-football. Surely the difference between the two is what you do once you have possession? If two teams are organised but one team tries to maintain possession and create scoring chances while the other team just looks for the outlet of their loan striker without really looking to attack then these two teams are different?

All teams should aim to be organised when not in possession as this is the best way to not concede goals. It''s then what you do once you have the ball that really defines what kind of team you are. It''s striking this balance right that makes a team successful. Liverpool finished where they did last season because they couldn''t attack effectively even if they were good defensively. Arsenal finished where they did because at times they are unorganised and conceded weak goals at times. Chelski finished top because they did both well.

It''s not playing "anti-football" that will keep us up it''s not being organised and conceding sloppy goals. Against Watford we were a mess and we lost, in the space of a few short weeks we were organised and winning games and in the top 6 playing some very good football. I would say the balance is about right.

Davo

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[quote user="Bethnal Yellow and Green"][quote user="Herb"][quote user="pennywise "]i would rather take the blackpool approach it may not be successful in the end but at least there giving it a go in the right way [:D][/quote]I agree. Don''t underestimate Lambert if we do find ourselves in Prem though. We almost survived to fight another season under Worthy and he didn''t have a clue by that stage, bless him. I can''t imagine Lambert repeating Worthy''s mistakes, he is a different animal altogether.[/quote]Northern Ireland 0 - 0 ItalyBut Worthington doesn''t have a clue...[/quote]How did he get on last night?Besides, I said didn''t have a clue at that stage.I think promotion was a bit of a suprise and he was caught out...made numerous mistakes.Getting rid of Malky and Eddy, not replacing Iwan till it was too late, signing Helveg then playing him out of position, Jonsonn, the list goes on. Yes we played with some passion and desire, but his personnel choices were dire.

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[quote user="Herb"][quote user="Bethnal Yellow and Green"][quote user="Herb"][quote user="pennywise "]i would rather take the blackpool approach it may not be successful in the end but at least there giving it a go in the right way [:D][/quote]

I agree. Don''t underestimate Lambert if we do find ourselves in Prem though. We almost survived to fight another season under Worthy and he didn''t have a clue by that stage, bless him. I can''t imagine Lambert repeating Worthy''s mistakes, he is a different animal altogether.
[/quote]

Northern Ireland 0 - 0 Italy

But Worthington doesn''t have a clue...
[/quote]

How did he get on last night?

Besides, I said didn''t have a clue at that stage.
I think promotion was a bit of a suprise and he was caught out...made numerous mistakes.
Getting rid of Malky and Eddy, not replacing Iwan till it was too late, signing Helveg then playing him out of position, Jonsonn, the list goes on. Yes we played with some passion and desire, but his personnel choices were dire.


[/quote]

It''s all about opinions of course Herb. But I sometimes wonder about some opinions bandied around on here. Just to attempt to clear up the Malky thing again, Worthy did not get rid of Malky, he said he couldn''t promise him first team football so Malky to his eternal credit engineered a transfer to West Ham so he could play first team football. He won promotion with West Ham who couldn''t promise him first team football so he engineered a move to Watford. He finally played Premier Football for Watford but I belive every game was for a club bottom of the league.

I thought Eddy played for us in the Premiership? And when he did and Helveg was fit we obviously couldn''t play two right backs!

I also believe Worthy tried to sign Dean Ashton in the summer but was forced to wait until the January when some of those premiership millions had arrived.

Yours and my opinions are poles apart Herb.

 

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So did Montenegro play anti-football last night - our so called Premier footballers playing for England certainly couldn''t handle it if so!

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