I will be heading down from the Midlands later today and expect to get home around half past midnight. I am looking for three points to cheer my long homeward journey.
Here is a cut out and keep guide for our new coach to try and improve our performances on the pitch in terms of things to avoid:
- Don't use players out of position
- Use substitutions intelligently and don't delay them
- Don't fail to have a Plan B and if possible a Plan C
- Tell the players not to hoof the ball as if they were in the non-league, but pass it along the ground to another Charlton player (clue: they will be wearing red shirts
- Don't defend too deeply
- When defending corners don't have all in the players in the box, but leave one or two upfield as an outlet. They only get in each other's way and obscure the goalkeeper's vision
- The bloke with the beard is our first choice goalkeeper
Huddersfield don't have a brilliant record away, they have lost more matches than us (ten). They are mid-table and are 9th in the form table, but they have a reputation for inconsistency which manager Mark Robins admitted was the case after last week's 2-0 defeat at Doncaster. He said, 'They wanted it more. They looked up for the game. It becomes a symptom of feeling safe in mid-table. It seems we only get a good performance every fortnight and we get a performance every couple of weeks which dips below what we expect.' Let's hope it's a case of the latter rather than the former tonight.
3 comments:
I totally agree. Although I am a great admirer of Chris Powell, I never understood why he chose to play so many players out of position.
Totally agree and lets be truthful, if had been another manager and not Powell we would have been screaming for him to be sacked ages ago!
Also no one has pointed out that the only league game we have won this year was QPR, which was actually without Kermmy and Stephens!
Kermmy is definetly a loss but Stephens was not!
The 'leaving players up for corners' is an interesting one.
In most cases (except when the opposition are chasing a late goal), teams will leave one more defender back than there are strikers kept up ie. if we leave 2 players up, they will leave 3 players back (plus the keeper).
Thus whilst the obvious players to keep back are full-backs, once you leave a second striker forward the next most likely defender kept back is a central defender (who would ordinarily be a danger at set-pieces).
Moreover as you say leaving a (small) striker in the box just gets in the way without providing any meaningful defensive help.
In short I think it's another example of a lack of 'out of the box' thinking - maybe we will get a more progressive approach from Riga (in lots of other areas too).
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