Coaching conjecture... (Doom Mongers Utd)

that's what I thought

This is my get it off your chest post.

OK tactics were a little weird against the CCM. Other things worry me more than strange substitutions though. The sluggishness at times of players on the break and also the actual technical ability of the players seemingly to have gone backwards.  It was obvious that after half time they had been told to keep the ball on the ground and pass but it soon reverted back to ping pong footy again.

Getting sick of the talk like everyone else. Talk means nothing if nothing comes of it. We've all heard how great a coach Herbert is - he has not shown it so far unless you count the end of the Knights when he had 0 pressure on him.



What the f**k does the fitness coach have to do with the tactics employed? Jesus christ.

valeo2008-09-15 01:02:43

What a poor team performance and what a poor coaching performance. The team is going backwards in passion, enthusiasm, desire not to mention skill levels and an understanding of basic football tactics. All of these can be laid at the coaches door and what I am witnessing is a deterioration of a club's season if it isnt fixed now.

No more excuses just fix it or get out and let someone who can do it - that goes for everyone in the organisation.

Great coaches find solutions and lead a team with passion and clear focussed goals - We don't seem to be getting that in any shape or form. Stop talking about it and start doing it and provide us with a cohesive team strategy and players that look like they believe in it.

I still have faith in Ricki but I believe if you are going to do something different to change things, it has to be now. Its no good trying to change things in round 13 when the top 4 is gone. Maybe Ricki has to be a little bit more ruthless.....

Didn't see the halftime thing but if he is trying something different then you can't fault him for at least trying...

we've had this naive image that ricki's this supercoach but im becoming a little skeptical, we have one of the best teams on paper but watching yesterdays game reminds me of watchin auckland city under alan jones ii think, just llong ball after long ball, theres no midfield and no attack, ricki has till the end of the first round b4 terry has to have a serious think about it,

Last night was a significant improvement over Adelaide.  I'm not saying it was perfect but last night I thought they at least looked like they gave a toss.

I agree with you about this HN, and I thought McKain, Moss and Durante all truned it excellent, battling, passionate performances. Hearfield was bright at times as well.

I do think Ricki made a huge tactical error though. He clearly wanted to set his team up so it wouldn't get beaten and his post match comments indicate he was happy with the point. I can kinda see where he is coming from but I would have liked to have seen more ambition, I thought with a more attacking lineup CCM were there for the taking tonight.

The biggest problem is Smeltz and Coveny as a front 2. Smeltz is not a pacy striker who can run onto knockdowns in the (young) Michael Owen vein. Nor is he a traditional no10 type who can collect knockbacks and pull strings ala Rooney for England against Croatia the other night (with Heskey in the Coveny role).

Smeltz is an out and out target man, the best comparison I can think of is to Alan Shearer. He isn't super tall but he is fantastic in the air, deadly in the box, works hard but doesn't searing pace or get up to much else. He must lead the line, but when you pick Coveny, (who is your tall target man type) Smeltz is effectively being played out of position because he has to collect the knockbacks or run onto knockons and play with his front to goal rather than his back which is his natural style.

This is why he was so out of the game tonight. Furthermore, because we were playing with two very, very deep lying midfielders there was no support for the forwards, if you had somebody making surging runs from deep they could have collected the knockdowns from Smeltz and Covs, but in my view you really don't need both of them up front when Smeltz does a fantastic job holding up the ball and winning it in the air on his own.

Finally, the only way we were going to snatch a win tonight (due to the deep lying DMs) was through crosses in from the flanks to the big men. It was obvious and CCM would double up on our wingers safe in the knowledge that our central midfield wouldn't do anything useful with the space in the center that was being sacrificed.

Had it not been for Mossy we would have lost, and deservedly. We need to be shooting for top 4 and getting defensive 0-0 draws isn't going to get us any respect. I am happy about the clean sheet but frankly I think setting out to attack would have been far more effective.


With the info I had before the game my preferred side would have played a 4231:

                    Moss

Mulligan    Durante     McKain    Lochy

             Ferrante   Dodd

Hearfield            Gao            Daniel

                      Smeltz

Gao would play through the middle running onto the ball that Smeltz holds up. We need to get him and Hearfield running at teams from both the center and out wide while Daniel can cut inside and work his magic down the left.

For Perth I would ditch Mulligan as he was hopeless, why didn't he take our set pieces? Sigmund has pace and is actually sound defensively so I would play him there, he seemed more willing to get forward as well which is really strange.

I would certainly bring Ferrante back, we badly missed his distribution and I would probably play try Brown in Dodd's place. Otherwise I would play the formation named above. I might consider Bertos in the hole rather than Gao but it is a tough call, I'd like to see Daniel and Gao given a chance to start together.

Also, I am in favor of sticking 10 men behind the ball for some games, especially against the top 3 when playing away. Up against Perth, and in most of our home games though we must look to attack.

YAY SOME SENSE! most people after the Adelaide game said they just wanting to see their team play like they cared - well, that was a lie, cos that's exactly what they did against CCM...
Cosimo2008-09-15 19:24:12

nicely put out KTBW, I've said time and time again that we should be using the formation we developed in preseason, and you've given some very valid reasons why.

Ok so RH set out for a 0-0 result after the embarrassing performance against Adelaide should we blame him? That Adelaide performance was dire.

Well I would sooner go along and watch the nix try to play football with commitment than set out for a 0-0 at home. Commitment doesn't have to come at the cost of playing football!

How do you measure success at the nix, is it playing for 0-0's and trying to scrap ahead of Perth for the wooden spoon, well that will kill the club. The crowds will support the nix if they're winning or people are enjoying the match and the atmosphere. Frankly RH's approach on Sunday was guaranteed not to deliver a win, sure as hell it wasn't entertaining and was an atmosphere killer. The crowd in the second half was the quietest I've seen at home to date.

Talk that we might have pinched it is a load of bollocks we were lucky not to be on the end of a hiding. RH its down to you buck your ideas up because so far you're the weak link.

RH is the best coach we have and the best i could realistically seeing as getting.

thing is though, CCM didn't win either. I thought the two teams looked pretty even. We can only compare the nix to other HAL teams. Some HAL teams have moments of looking really good, but not very often. No we didn't play good football, but who are we comparing the nix to? other HAL teams, or teams around the world we see on TV. People on here saying they played like 10 year-olds and stuff - i mean, i'm pretty sure the Nix would win a competition involving the top regional teams in NZ, so i'd like to see these 10 year olds. At the moment we are playing slightly worse than the best clubs Australia has to offer. Some perspective maybe?
Cosimo2008-09-15 22:34:58

So what you're saying is coaches should not be accountable for performance. Never suggested RH be sacked but its him that is selecting the team, choosing the tactics and making substitutions and in my view he's been ordinary in the season proper to date.

No,i didnt say he shouldnt be held accountable. I just say to give him more than 4 games,coaches should be able to sort things beyond one season (definetly 4 games).

Ricki had the advantage when he first took over of having some excellent signings made by Barry Simmonds plus a great deal of luck.