Weekends Thoughts

One of the major reasons for wanting to blog is that it will give me a better opportunity to reflect on my performance as a football coach. It will open feedback possibilities and to share best practice from Coaches, Teachers and others that feel they can contribute and share their views on my work and performance.

This will in turn evolve me as a person and as a coach. That path to excellence and working with and at the best continues.

Individuals have to possess a certain amount of resilience and self belief to take on feedback from strangers. Look at Joe Hart for instance, he has had his critics lately and has shown great character to return as the permanent force in between the sticks for Man City.

I wonder how much of the feedback Pellegrini was receiving, and viewing in the press and from sections of Hart's critics made Pellegrini drop Hart from his number 1 role. Managers have two options in my opinion. 1 - back your number 1 publicly and personally and continue to play them, What long term detriment could this have on the team? Could the individuals psychological state be negatively affected in turn affecting performance?
Or 2 drop your number 1.Then what message does this send out to your number 2 goalkeeper?
Is this carried out to give your original number a kick up the rear?

Goalkeepers are in the unfortunate position that their performance can be objectively interpreted without the need of fancy hi-tech performance analysis gizmo's through the number of goals the opposition score. Thus allowing everyone and anyone that has an interest in football give an opinion even though they may not see the whole performance. One of the potential risk of performance analysis, can be compared to an iceberg. The objective statistics are what you see above the service but below the surface is the rounded performance that may not be able to be recorded, such as vital communication with team mates that allow for vital clearances etc.

What I want is to become more resilient and better. Gain an insight to others thinking. I want to stretched and find answers through thinking, making links and considerations.

Saturdays adventure...

After the journey down to North Devon the weather was quite pleasant in fact, no rain and you could even see a blue sky.

The affair ended in a 0-0 draw and we came away from Bideford slightly disappointed not take all three points. On the other hand thankfully the assistant failed to notice a Bideford strike that was in fact was over the line. This would have been very gutting as we had the majority of possession and attacked with a real purpose forcing the home goalkeeper to make number of top draw saves.

One of my observations, and was very surprised to see from a team riding high in the league, that Bideford played with the lone target man up top and the wide players that vary rarely broke beyond making any attempt at a 3rd man run. The only threat beyond on the first ball was the number 10 playing just behind the striker. Defensively our midfield and defence worked very well and contained that threat early on. Offensively Bideford looked to claim set plays and use their physical presence to get something from the game.
We had to be patient and be clever to break the block, attempt to play round the sides to try and move the home teams Goliath like centre halves into areas where they where uncomfortable and then expose spaces in around their defenders.

What I am keen to learn is what others look for and take down when taking notes during games. This I know will differ dependant on your individual coaching style and situation.

I will record the opposition team shape and line up. I will then compose a number of notes as hints that I can use when speaking at half time or intervals. I try and recognise when making my observations any key patterns I.E does the goalkeeper always distribute in a certain manner and to a certain individual etc. One of my observations and strategies that needed to be encouraged offensively is if one of the centre halves has the ball, and we have width and height in possession, could we draw the lone centre forward to the ball for the pass square to our other centre halve, who has created some distance between him and his partner to create space, could they then step into the attack and impose on the midfield to try and create an overload in the midfield area.

We needed to ensure when out of possession we were closer and competed better to the 1st and 2nd ball, at times trying to win the 1st was a uphill task so need to compact areas anticipating for the 2nd ball. Our wide players worked tremendously hard narrowing our midfield when possession was lost and stretching play when possession was gained.

Thanks for taking your time to read, hope you have enjoyed. Until next time all the best!