Corberan

[Derek Hardballs]

Corberan is creating his own problems to a large extent.

When he took over from Bruce he had a look at what he had in the Sheff Utd game then chose a way of playing and picked the same eleven at every opportunity. He got us paying more attention to detail and we won 9 of the next 10 games. Kept things simple.

Then Phillips got injured and CC started tinkering. First it was Wallace in the ten role, Swift on the left. Then it was Wallace on the left, Albrighton on the right. Results declined.

Now he's messing about again with Molumby as the second striker in a "ten", a completely new central defence, the immobile Chalobah alongside the immobile Yokuslu and over playing from the back.

I believe the problem is, since Guardiola came to England, coaches have got it into their heads that this is the way to play football. What they fail to realise is once most start doing it, it becomes ineffective because only the best are going to succeed at it and we don't have the budget to attract players that are technically superior to other teams in this league.

Football is not about being aesthetically the best team  it's about getting results ultimately

Not sure our fans agree with that - c.f. the boos when we drew with Derby whilst top of the league and unbeaten under Val.

Indeed. There was rather a lot of booing back then and attendances began to drop noticeably, as they dod under Pulis. Most of our fans, rightly or wrongly do not believe that football is only about winning.

However, I have heard bleating about the style of football of pretty much all of our recent managers.

If you put "winning" and Pulis in the same sentence, you weren't watching the same football as me!
Pulis was about not losing.
And it was mostly dire.
Roy, on the other hand, could be defensive but at least tried to win matches. An ideal manager for our size club..

That’s not accurate we won plenty of matches under Pulis and played well, the points and league position whilst he was motivated and the team were responsive shows this.

On the more specific to where we are now point, playing silly little triangles across our 18 yard box achieves F’all other than to put us under pressure and concede soft goals. Does it really create space or is it just the latest fashionable way to play? Managers seem to be like sheep with tactics these days, if Pep etc play in a certain way they all slavishly follow similarly regardless of the talent at their disposal. Play to the strengths of the players you have not to what you want them to be. If they aren’t great at passing particularly at the back then don’t hit it longer and into the channels imo the result in terms of possession/position further up field will be exactly the same.