This cautiousness is obviously coached in

O

O4tonygreen

Well-known member
Another awful negative performance against a bottom half team yesterday, leading to mass frustration from the fans.

It's so annoying watching Blackpool at the moment as not only is it boring to watch, it's frustrating, as the approach, especially away from home, has cost us so many points against the lower teams who have been there for the taking.

This approach is obviously coached in as you can see that nearly all of our players don't look forward when they receive the ball and their first instinct is to pass it backwards or sideways. No-one ever does a first time pass forwards, as they are not looking for it. A few times yesterday, against a tall but not very mobile back four, there were opportunities to play a ball into space turning the back four, but our players did not see it, as they were too regimented in playing their little triangles.

The only exceptions to this seem to be our loan players (Dembele, Byers, Coulson and Rhodes) who buck the trend with a first time pass sometimes (Rhodes did a few earlier in the season to set CJ free (in the good old days when CJ was worth his place)). However, as the loans go on this is gradually being coached out of them.

Another day yesterday when we had the greater possession - whooppee doo.

As for NC's post match interview ("we knew it would be a low scoring game as they had had a couple of 1-0s recently"). What a load of tosh. They are bottom half, and we needed to win to keep our play-off chances alive. Have a go you over-cautious mid-table worrier
 
The stats again support the o/p.

Yesterday Casey had the most touches with 88, second was with Marv 84 and Pennington was 4th with 69, beaten into 3rd by Coulson with 70.

Norburn had 50 touches, so that’s the player we should be playing into, to start us off in this formation.

It’s the same more or less in every away game, and you could tell again after 5-10 minutes how it was going to go. We hope to nick a goal and really our forwards and more creative players can only watch it happen. Pass it sideways, backwards then hoof up the pitch, hoping to flick on or pick up a scrappy ball.

The guy is tactically inept. He should have changed it quickly yesterday, the way Wigan set up. With no real striker we still had our back 3 sat well inside our half, when we had possession in their half. It was a bit better second half, but still desperate / frantic stuff.
 
I'd say it's a bit of both instruction to keep the ball but also on the players too and not just the ones on the ball. Yep Norburn for example sometimes is too safe but there is rarely anything ahead of him anyway. Byers doesn't have a forward pass or Morgan when he plays. We can't even play one through a gap to run onto cos there's no pace up front either. What are they supposed to do when our forward players are literally just standing about.
 
Firstly Wigan have had points deducted, if they hadn't they would be in a similar situation to us. They aren't a bad team, just a bit toothless in the last third. Notwithstanding that we were very poor again. First half neither Gabriel nor coulson were getting forward, not really because they were penned back, when we had an attack they were far too deep to be any use in the attack. That is two players at least who were operating under instruction and curbing their natural tendency to get down the line. The front line were two far apart to work together, which rarely happens at Bloomfield road. I think he sets up the strikers to counter opposing teams in possession, but little attention to what we do in possession other than keep the ball.

There's a certain irony that critchley constantly talks about possession based football but our possession stats are usually quite low.
 
Costero Poderoso said:
Firstly Wigan have had points deducted, if they hadn't they would be in a similar situation to us. They aren't a bad team, just a bit toothless in the last third. Notwithstanding that we were very poor again. First half neither Gabriel nor coulson were getting forward, not really because they were penned back, when we had an attack they were far too deep to be any use in the attack. That is two players at least who were operating under instruction and curbing their natural tendency to get down the line. The front line were two far apart to work together, which rarely happens at Bloomfield road. I think he sets up the strikers to counter opposing teams in possession, but little attention to what we do in possession other than keep the ball.

There's a certain irony that critchley constantly talks about possession based football but our possession stats are usually quite low.
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The theory of the possession from the back seems to be to move the opposition out of shape and launch attacks. It doesn't work though because our centre halves and keeper are weak on the ball. Gabriel had a bit of a shocker too yesterday, his touch was awful and he kept switching off defensively.
Critchley is proving to be a one trick pony manager/coach. It's almost Worthingtonesque.
 
Mark_GT said:
The theory of the possession from the back seems to be to move the opposition out of shape and launch attacks. It doesn't work though because our centre halves and keeper are weak on the ball. Gabriel had a bit of a shocker too yesterday, his touch was awful and he kept switching off defensively.
Critchley is proving to be a one trick pony manager/coach. It's almost Worthingtonesque.
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I get the theory, but the theory also calls for a lot of movement and the passes to played at a certain pace so that opposition players can be dragged out of position, which we dont do, and this goes back to his first spell here hes got the players doing routines which are predictable and opposition coaches can drill their own teams to counter it.
Gabriel and coulson are both quite aggressive players and both can get up and down the pitch, but in my opinion critchley is trying to get the to play in a way that they arent quite comfortable with, they dont want to make mistakes and hence arent playing with the confidence they usually have, hence they make mistakes, affecting their confidence further.
Byers had a bit of an off day as well, partly because we were very passive and unadventurous he hes compensating for the midfield player alongside him.
You might be right about critchley being a one trick pony, the fact that he does the same thing over and over even when it serially doesn't work points to a severe limitation in his ability.
 
Costero Poderoso said:
I get the theory, but the theory also calls for a lot of movement and the passes to played at a certain pace so that opposition players can be dragged out of position, which we dont do, and this goes back to his first spell here hes got the players doing routines which are predictable and opposition coaches can drill their own teams to counter it.
Gabriel and coulson are both quite aggressive players and both can get up and down the pitch, but in my opinion critchley is trying to get the to play in a way that they arent quite comfortable with, they dont want to make mistakes and hence arent playing with the confidence they usually have, hence they make mistakes, affecting their confidence further.
Byers had a bit of an off day as well, partly because we were very passive and unadventurous he hes compensating for the midfield player alongside him.
You might be right about critchley being a one trick pony, the fact that he does the same thing over and over even when it serially doesn't work points to a severe limitation in his ability.
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I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking Charlie will have a plan for this 🤔
 
Here another thing that to me points to critchley's lack of tactical nous. Every time we are chasing a game, at somewhere between 83 and 87 minutes he takes off Norburn. So he knows that Norburn is unlikely to affect the game attacking wise, so why not do it much much earlier, and give whoever comes on some time to settle into the game, rather than the harum scarum pingo pongo type of game it becomes in that last five minutes.
 
O4tonygreen said:
Another awful negative performance against a bottom half team yesterday, leading to mass frustration from the fans.

It's so annoying watching Blackpool at the moment as not only is it boring to watch, it's frustrating, as the approach, especially away from home, has cost us so many points against the lower teams who have been there for the taking.

This approach is obviously coached in as you can see that nearly all of our players don't look forward when they receive the ball and their first instinct is to pass it backwards or sideways. No-one ever does a first time pass forwards, as they are not looking for it. A few times yesterday, against a tall but not very mobile back four, there were opportunities to play a ball into space turning the back four, but our players did not see it, as they were too regimented in playing their little triangles.

The only exceptions to this seem to be our loan players (Dembele, Byers, Coulson and Rhodes) who buck the trend with a first time pass sometimes (Rhodes did a few earlier in the season to set CJ free (in the good old days when CJ was worth his place)). However, as the loans go on this is gradually being coached out of them.

Another day yesterday when we had the greater possession - whooppee doo.

As for NC's post match interview ("we knew it would be a low scoring game as they had had a couple of 1-0s recently"). What a load of tosh. They are bottom half, and we needed to win to keep our play-off chances alive. Have a go you over-cautious mid-table worrier
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Excellent assessment.
I don't want us to be gung-ho for 90 minutes, no team can be, but dear God, even in the later stages yesterday, 0-1 down, all too often our play resembled walking football.

The greatest moments of danger yesterday arose when players drove into space.
Wigan took every opportunity to do so, but we - particularly Norburn & Byers - seemed to be under instruction not to do it, maybe for fear of harming NC's sacred possession stats.

Compare and contrast with Mark Robins and Coventry's win at Wolves. Afterwards, he said "If you take the handbrake off at times, I’ve told our players here as well, if they believe they can achieve anything".

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Neil.
 
Toastrack said:
Excellent assessment.
I don't want us to be gung-ho for 90 minutes, no team can be, but dear God, even in the later stages yesterday, 0-1 down, all too often our play resembled walking football.

The greatest moments of danger yesterday arose when players drove into space.
Wigan took every opportunity to do so, but we - particularly Norburn & Byers - seemed to be under instruction not to do it, maybe for fear of harming NC's sacred possession stats.

Compare and contrast with Mark Robins and Coventry's win at Wolves. Afterwards, he said "If you take the handbrake off at times, I’ve told our players here as well, if they believe they can achieve anything".

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Neil.
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Good point re: Coventry.

Could you ever imagine us under this Head Coach conceding a goal on 87 minutes to go 2-1 down and coming back to score two before the end of the game. If we conceded we’d have no doubts have took off most our attacking threats and just curl up and crumble.
 
O4tonygreen said:
Another awful negative performance against a bottom half team yesterday, leading to mass frustration from the fans.

It's so annoying watching Blackpool at the moment as not only is it boring to watch, it's frustrating, as the approach, especially away from home, has cost us so many points against the lower teams who have been there for the taking.

This approach is obviously coached in as you can see that nearly all of our players don't look forward when they receive the ball and their first instinct is to pass it backwards or sideways. No-one ever does a first time pass forwards, as they are not looking for it. A few times yesterday, against a tall but not very mobile back four, there were opportunities to play a ball into space turning the back four, but our players did not see it, as they were too regimented in playing their little triangles.

The only exceptions to this seem to be our loan players (Dembele, Byers, Coulson and Rhodes) who buck the trend with a first time pass sometimes (Rhodes did a few earlier in the season to set CJ free (in the good old days when CJ was worth his place)). However, as the loans go on this is gradually being coached out of them.

Another day yesterday when we had the greater possession - whooppee doo.

As for NC's post match interview ("we knew it would be a low scoring game as they had had a couple of 1-0s recently"). What a load of tosh. They are bottom half, and we needed to win to keep our play-off chances alive. Have a go you over-cautious mid-table worrier
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It’s 100% tactical and coached as every player we pick does the same thing.

Early season when we had 3 in the middle, they all struggled, Carey, Morgan and Weir all did the same thing… he even tried Oakley-Boothe who managed to do it worse. Dembele coming into the team switched it to a two and that made Morgan better.

There is no freedom on the pitch.

He’s turned it into a netball court.
 
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