Tactics, opinion, match reports, game blogging
Albion News is the official matchday programme magazine for West Bromwich Albion. I will be using a number of issues I have been given to attempt a historical analysis. See the dedicated page for more details:
http://kickaboutwiththegents.wordpress.com/according-to-the-programme/
I haven’t written an article here in a while, so I thought I’d make an inevitable placeholder/promise post. Which I promise I will keep this time.
A lot has been happening for me as a writer on football – I now write at Football Speak, and was the highest rated writer before some twat rated both my articles 1/10 to bring them down – gladly, a system should be in place to stop this now. Now, the consequences are that I’m obviously getting a lot more hits there than I am here. Although to be fair I have only written 3 articles here thus far and have generated good traffic considering that. This means I’m inclined to say that much of the more accessible stuff will be submitted on Football Speak. I will maintain the Kickabout… Elsewhere page to keep this, and possibly other outside articles, indexed here. I may even ‘Continue’ articles here.
Stuff, therefore, which is much more my own strong opinion will be placed here, and this is the purpose of the upcoming ‘Deconstructing Football’ series. I hope here to tackle serious issues in a rather academic way – I may even simplify these essays and put them on Football Speak, generating a circle of traffic (hopefully).
Importantly however there will still be a place here for everyday analysis – and that will come when the regular season arrives. I intend to hopefully analyse many matches, and to do regular match reports here as I have done with the FA Cup and Champions League finals (which I have recently updated with better formation diagrams). The site was launched at a poor time for this, as I don’t have much access to or knowledge of most of the international tournaments this summer (The Gold Cup, Copa Libertadores, Copa America etc.). I’d particularly like to focus on West Bromwich Albion as my own club – this could lead to intimate, long-running analysis with summaries appearing elsewhere.
Should I start to pick up more regular traffic too, I will perhaps consider moving this to a dedicated site, still based on WordPress, so you may have to point your browsers to kickaboutwiththegents.com
Kick on, gents.
Build-Up
Manchester United, recently crowned champions of England, were considered the underdogs. The 2010 Final seems a long time ago, where Inter expertly reached the final against Bayern Munich by dispatching Barcelona in the Semi-Finals. Mourinho, now Real’s manager, didn’t repeat the feat in his new role at Real Madrid in a match-up in the semis with rivals Barcelona. Importantly, Barcelona captain Carlos Puyol had a limited number of appearances in the lead-up to the final through injury, even deputising at left-back, with Pep Guardiola preferring Mascherano as a makeshift centre-back over Sergio Busquets. Manchester United had a less heated and easier to digest route to the final by beating Bundesliga’s underachieving semi-finalists Schalke 04. Before that they had an interesting if unremarkable pair of games against fellow English club Chelsea, who provided along with Schalke the tests of Ferguson’s system for the final.
Tactical systems
Barcelona play an unflinching 4-3-3 formation which is punctuated by:
- Very high pressing up the pitch. This releases their full-backs, in the case of this game it was Eric Abidal and Daniel Alves. With Sergio Busquets sitting just behind the other midfielders, this allows the trio of Xavi, Iniesta and Messi (usually staggered in that fashion up the pitch) to recycle the ball constantly and keep possession. This is the secret of their possession game – win it very high up the pitch and keep it in the opponents’ half or in the midfield (which sits in the opponents’ half…)
- Simple, short passes which are usually high tempo. The Barcelona players have superb passing ability – watching them seems to be a tutorial on how to pass. That is, they turn, and they pass in the direction their body faces.
- The forwards operate by cutting inside. This is the advantage this team had over the 2010 side which boasted Zlatan Ibrahimovic: a luxurious forward who demands ‘service’. Pedro, Messi and (to a lesser extent) Villa more or less create their service by playing the ball almost exclusively on the ground to one another, and this is with the pivots of Xavi and Iniesta behind them.
Manchester United have taken to playing a 4-4-1-1 formation, a modification of the traditional English obsession 4-4-2. The dangers of this, as I pointed out in my previous report that it needs to sit high up the pitch in order to function – the extra player dropping back may provide more ‘link play’ (in this case Rooney playing off the poacher Hernandez), but this needs to push high up the pitch in order to dominate, otherwise the striker becomes isolated. It also puts a lot of pressure on the wide players to get involved: with the central midfielders outnumbered against 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 formations, full backs tend to be cautious. United could have solved this by playing narrowly in the midfield, packing the centre and pushing outwards.
United also had the dilemma of having a highly unusual midfield combination – winger Ryan Giggs, shorn of much of his pace, and Michael Carrick, a player who lives on distributing the ball simply. The team lacks a player like Busquets which allows Carrick (not naturally defensive) or Giggs (not naturally a central player) to move forward and connect with both the front pairing and the wide men. It was widely anticipated that United would not change this system, as they had overcome all these problems by dominating against Schalke 04 in the Semi-finals, and had bested Chelsea in the quarters with the same system – the inclusion of Rooney being able to drop back into midfield had put extra pressure on Michael Essien in the quarter-finals, and it’s fair to say that Rooney’s duty would have been to disrupt Busquets so that Hernandez could get between Mascherano (not a natural Centre-back) and Gerard Pique (formally of Manchester United).
This is a pretty fair depiction of how the shapes of the two teams came out on the night. I have picked Evra as being tucked in this way because of reasons you will see below. It’s hard to map Messi on the diagram, as he did play very deep at times, but also very forward (the so-called ‘false nine’ role). Villa caused Evra a lot of problems. I tweeted during the match:
Stoke were pushed back by Manchester City's shape, and their own lack of confidence
9 minutes until kickoff. My prediction:
- A tight tactical game which will be characterised by a battle for the centre of the park. Stoke’s wingers, the confirmed-fit Matthew Etherington (likely not to last the match) and Jermaine Pennant will be Stoke’s main outlet, along with the bullet throws of Rory Delap.
- Stoke will want the tempo to be quick and physical, Manchester City with their Catenaccio-esque tactics will want to be slow and patient playing short, sideways passes.
- Pressing is important. Both teams will want to keep the ball, and thus they should both press. I would expect Stoke to try to impose themselves on the game, having got their shooting boots on in recent matches. Kenwynne Jones and John Walters, their forwards, will be the key part of this strategy.
- Stoke should not (and will not) be afraid to play direct passes. Everton changed their game to be more direct last weekend and ended up beating City 2-1.
- Don’t expect Wembley to be quiet, as it usually seems to be, with Stoke’s fans there. They have the loudest ground in the Premier League, and they don’t even come close to the biggest seating capacities.
- Manchester City are odds-on for a reason. They have a mixture of flair and physicality which should match up to Stoke’s intensity, and possibly overpower them.
- The two teams are surprisingly similar.
- Both defences will need to be cautious not to 1) Make rudimentary errors because of the pressure, and 2) make good, precise tackles under pressure. The physical battle is a psychological one: I would expect a red card possibly in the course of the match.
2 minutes to go now!
Welcome to Kickabout with the Gents. This is a football blog inspired by:
Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters
So far then we’ve
Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters
So it’s still pre-season, and one of the major innovations of this edition of FM must be dealt with: match preparation. Basically, your team can learn and be drilled in up to 3 formations. This means that in a match you can switch tactically and your team won’t unrealistically be perfect or, alternatively, spazz out like a chicken on meth.
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Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters
http://imgur.com/a/zyW9M#Ii4u9
Image album at imgur.com
Ok, so I arrive at Arsenal (these screenshots were taken 4 games into the season so that I had everything established), with the things in my mind that I identified in the preview.
Firstly, there’s strengthening the squad. I identify several areas we can improve upon:
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Why Mark Hughes is not the manager everybody thinks.
June 4, 2011 in Comment, Uncategorized | Tags: Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers F.C., Gérard Houllier, Joleon Lescott, Manchester City F.C., Mark Hughes, Martin O'Neill, Steve McClaren, Wayne Bridge | by R.J. Croton | Leave a comment
Image via Wikipedia - David Bentley, one of Hughes' signings at the only place he's really done good: Blackburn
January 2011, West Ham United. Avram Grant looks set to be sacked with Martin O’Neill, everyone’s famous Muppet lookalike, ready to replace him. O’Neill reputedly refuses because of the dishonour of the West Ham hierarchy, their lack of professionalism. Months earlier, Martin Jol reportedly refused to take over at Newcastle United because of his friendship with the unjustly sacked Chris Hughton.
Fast-forward to June 2011. Mark Hughes looked set to become manager of Aston Villa – Villa’s hierarchy has reportedly now refused because of Hughes’ lack of professionalism in activating a break clause. Amazingly as well, his agent is reportedly Kia Joorabchian, the agent who presided over the Tevez/Mascherano transfer fiasco which Sheffield United won tens of millions of compensation for because of their illicit impact.
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