+- Sports Babble - sports forum (https://www.sportsbabble.co.uk)
+-- Forum: Football (https://www.sportsbabble.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: English Football Leagues (https://www.sportsbabble.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?fid=2)
+---- Forum: Sky Bet League Two (https://www.sportsbabble.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?fid=104)
+----- Forum: Chesterfield (https://www.sportsbabble.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?fid=85)
+----- Thread: Hoofball Losers (/showthread.php?tid=7423)
Hoofball Losers - bluepooch - 28-08-2018
Wow can there be anything worse to watch than an ineffective long ball team ?
RE: Hoofball Losers - St Charles Owl - 28-08-2018
Watching any team employing ineffective tactics is always a bad thing!!! Long ball can work well and certainly ends up with more play in the oppositions half and usually plenty of chances, but as you say it has to be played the right way.
RE: Hoofball Losers - SaltergateBorn - 28-08-2018
I agree, SCO. the `long ball` tactic can work. but to make it work a team needs a) a back who can play said long ball with the accuracy to allow the man receiving it some semblance of a chance to control the ball and hold it until support arrives and b) players up front (ideally a couple) with the technical ability to do that. If you haven`t - and we haven`t - you end up with `hoofball` - which we have; a succession of long balls pumped aimlessly forward in the vague hope that someone can get on the end of it. Therein, to me, lies the difference between the two. Long ball can work, but hoofball can`t.
I`m not one of those screaming for MA`s head at the moment. I think the situation has been forced on him to some extent by injuries and I think you said yourself, Blue, that you can tolerate an unattractive style of play if it gets us back into the EFL. I would go along with that entirely. (Would I have been so peed off on Saturday if we`d won? Probably not.) Sadly, at the moment it doesn`t look as though it is and that`s why we are all wallowing in the depths of despair. I still think MA will get it right eventually, although it dies look as though Jose Mourinho might soon be available if we are so desperate to get back to an attractive style of play.
No, hang on; I may have to think that one through again.
RE: Hoofball Losers - Devongone - 28-08-2018
I expected more of the unexpected from Martin Allen than Take Care missives. So far he appears to have changed very little; for Evatt read Nelson, for Hird read Evans and every time we concede you drop Maguire. Our forwards can't score (see O'Grady) and even when someone is doing okay (for Dennis see Hines) it never poses a threat that stretches any opposition to its limit. Our one midfield improvement, Carter, is injured so that whole area of the field is anonymous and since Talbot and Humphreys made a reasonable fist of compensating for the huge loss of Darikwa and Jones our full backs have been disappointing at best. And I've said enough about keepers with our discards succeeding all round the EFL and us playin' rush goalies since Tommy Lee's shoulder.
The trouble with football managers is they are just too football-manager. They are almost inter-changeable. They are ex-players and when things aren't going well they reach for the quickest, easiest solution, which you really can't get wrong. And if you belt the ball downfield at least the opposition won't be shooting from the edge of their own area will they? Anything that goes wrong isn't your fault. Unfortunately neither Gozie, nor Fortune is a giant. They are big-ish guys who have a chance when a long ball finds them, but if they are fed with aimless hooves they aren't the John-Fashanu type who'd be running and leaping all over the centre backs and making their life a nightmare with elbows and knees everywhere.
When he came Lee Shaw said his game was to buzz about, disrupt the opposition and take the chances which resulted. Even if he gets on the field at his height I don't see how he can do that at the moment, or how this style suits Kyel Reid or Zavon Hines.
I'm very much of the opinion that any style of play or formation CAN work, but it has to suit the players. At the moment we seem to squeezing our team into a system that emphasises our problems. We end up with a fairly weak central midfield combination with outside them usually a full-back playing out of position, and an attack-minded wide man having to work back. Might it not work better if we played a lone centre forward supported by an attacking midfield three keen to buzz about and cause problems (Reid, Shaw and Hines) who, coming from behind the front man, would surely be much more difficult for the defenders to pick up? The two (boring) central midfielders would then have fewer responsibilities and might protect the centre backs more effectively and the full backs could choose their rarer attacking options. If the three little guys were the mainspring of our attacking hope then the temptation to launch the ball forward would be greatly reduced (as it would if we played Maguire in position at centre back, because he will try to play out from there, if only to avoid having the piss taken out of him by his big brother).
Bielsa has his Leeds team cleaning the dressing room themselves, Klopp has brought in a specialist throw-in coach at Liverpool, and Mad Dog who I expected would have his lads on a commando course up the Heights of Abraham, he's just telling everyone to take care. I don't want to ditch him, but I want him to be more of himself. MA hasn't got great resources and isn't likely to have them either, so he needs to start thinking outside the box. Now I always thought that was his strength, that he didn't go for the safe, boring option. If he wants to launch the long ball, sign Rowan Liburd and Danny Mills who are pretty much surplus to requirements. Get his defenders launching long passes every day in training, get Muggleton to a javelin coach, sign a flier to pick up the pieces from the big men and start John-Becking it big time.
But don't just belt it forward out of fear.
RE: Hoofball Losers - spireitematt - 28-08-2018
Route One should only be played if you are the underdogs and looking to win the 2nd ball. I watched a documentary about Wimbledon (Crazy gang) and apparently they would water Plough Lane to make it difficult for bigger teams to play on and Wimbledon would play Route one and win games.
Long ball football can work especially if you have a target man who can knock the ball down for another player to have a shot at goal also it can force the opposition to make mistakes but its not easy on the eye if its being played all the time. Football fans like to be entertained and like to see attractive, attacking football.
Playing the ball from the back is good as long as you can hold onto possession and build up a an attack and you would also need at least 2 playmakers in the midfield to look for an overlap and thread the ball through to the strikers in the box. I would say Charlie Carter is our playmaker but unfortunately he's out injured currently. I think you also need at least 2 defensive midfielders especially if you are playing a 4-2-3-1 formation for example or a 4-1-4-1 formation with the defensive midfielder moving into the midfielder to make a 5 when attacking but also moving into defence to make a 5 when defending.
I think a 4-2-3-1 is a good formation especially if you play two players in the three as wingers who can attack and support the lone striker. Also 4-3-2-1 would be interchangeable also.
Attacking we need to go 4-2-3-1 and when defending we need to go 4-5-1. Southgate showed at the World Cup that 3-5-2 can work as long as you have 2 wingbacks in the 5 who can track back into defence with the central defenders. I think its one of the reasons why the 3-5-2 formation didn't work when Caldwell was manager because we didn't have any wingbacks but we also didn't have any wingers either for other formations.
RE: Hoofball Losers - bluepooch - 28-08-2018
Just seen the highlights and to be fair looking at the chances created from either side we were unlucky .I was led to believe we should have lost at least 3-0 .
RE: Hoofball Losers - Devongone - 29-08-2018
It is that NIL that worries me Blue. If teams find you relatively easy to stop then you don't win many at any level.
Long ball football is not attractive to watch, but the truth is goals DO tend to come from dead-ball situations and defensive errors.
You could conclude that either the attractive football is for the birds, or for what I think is the truth it is to break down the psychological and physical resistance of the opposition. An effective passing game is a delight for the passers and exhausting for the chasers. If the tiring defenders then make a mistake and concede a dead-ball situation which results in a goal, the stats show a goal from a free-kick - they don't show the minutes of probing and passing that created it.
My conclusion on never seeing more than highlights would be that our failure to score reflects a failure of THE TEAM in all areas - the ball does not come correctly from defence often enough, the midfield isn't using it well enough when it gets it and the forward players don't have enough to make the most of the limited opportunities that result.
If you looked at Paul Cook's team - well obviously they were better - but our full backs were a real threat going forward, in the middle of the park even our most defensively minded players were a real danger going forward too and were constantly looking to pick up the ball from our defence, our attack-minded midfielders looked to get forward, looked to beat a man and have a go at goal or produce a telling pass, and up front, even when we played a lone forward he carried a goal threat and occupied the centre backs. (Our weakness then was our centre back combination was already a bit dodgy and a little too much of our stability came from our keeper IMO.)
It sounds as though we are miles from that sort of team, but I could see Talbot and JBW posing problems from full back, if our central midfield could use their experience to make themselves even a poor man's Ryan and Morsy, then we could have some potential to attack with players like Hines, Shaw, Reid and Carter but I think possibly our man up front has to play better and to start getting his name on the scores sheet. (And we do have four options for the centre back berths.)