Bolton V Chelsea Chat

tim_rigby wrote:However we desperately need a new center half, how megson managed to sign three defenders this summer and not a competent center back amongst them is beyond me.

It does seem a touch baffling, although Robinson is a tough workhorse who was available on loan/for a fee of less than £1m (which is nothing to a Prem club) with plenty of experience of Prem action with a similarly industrious lower half team. Also, Samuel's performances this season have been very good and I wonder whether the extra direct competition for his place has played a significant part in that.

I put the signing of Zat Knight down to something Megson said early this season... I think it was in relation to Shittu where he said that in terms of transfer signings on a low budget, you have to bring players in who may not have worked out elsewhere and you hope that they can join up with the squad and just click into place. Sometimes it works, and other times it doesn't and you have to move them on. I think that may prove to be the case with Knight - I'm sure Megson will have hoped for more from him (indeed he went public after his slow start against United to give him a kick up the arse). Hopefully he will improve soon, but I have my doubts.

As for the signing of Ricketts... I'm just not sure with him. Going forward he's brilliant and his crosses have made a few goals already for us this season. Defensively he's crap... he might as well carry a bloody welcome mat round with him, laying it down before any oposition wingers to wipe their feet on before whipping in their crosses!! Chelsea's first 2 goals came from easy, unchallenged attacks/crosses from the right. However, I think that if Knight was a solid performer alongside Cahill and Jlloyd at LB, then we could afford the luxury of Ricketts' attacking prowess without being too slack at the back.

Not to any sort of standard Wakey, just very amateur stuff, why have you, not sure what relevance it has, being tactically aware does not require you to be much of a footballer, unless I have missed something and Mourinho and Wenger are tactically incompetent idiots because they did not play top class football.
I understand what you are saying Mangler, but we already had a good right back, he is similarly talented going forward, he contributed our second highest number of assists after Taylor last season, and he is better defensively and the money spent of Rickets could have been better spent elsewhere say combined with the money spent on Knight and spent on a better center back.
It is not just the players however, remember Big Sam had a defense with Pederson at left back that kept clean sheets. Megson does not know how to organise the defense in the same way, it is frankly chaos and something needs to be done, we have kept 3 clean sheets in the last 35 games, which have included a huge number in which we have defended deep for all or most of the game, that is not acceptable and the buck has to stop at the managers door.

your obsession with our 'narrow' fullbacks.
It's the sort of thing the mrs would say - I usually just nod and agree cos I can't be arsed explaining the basics of football to her.

Wakey, we've been debating this mythical narrow full back scenario on the BN website and we've pretty much managed to assume it's just a made up tactic to enable Tim to have another go at Megson.

Any decent coach will tell you the importance of the full backs tucking in and then moving out to the oncoming winger but Tim seems to think the full backs should be touching the sideline leaving Cahill and Knight to cover the vast majority of the width of pitch between them...it's the sort of thing someone who has never played the game would say to make themselves sound important.

I'm starting to think his TPS suggestion stands for Tall Poppy Syndrome.

What was his TPS suggestion (rarely go on BN - most of the posters seem to be pretty far up their own arses).

The Toyota management system he suggested should be adopted by BWFC to encourage workers to work harder.

The biggest prick on the BN website is probably me and expect to hold that title for some time to come.

I can confidently say that you will have no problem holding onto your title Breeze. I always cringe, and smile, when somebody new gets into an argument with you, as I know you will give them no quarter.

Wakey you know perfectly well I answered that question on another post. No I have never played professional football, very amateur at best, why have you? Has Mourhino, has Eriksen, has Wenger, no to all so it is irrelevant.

All 3 played professional football.

My mrs never has, in case you were wondering.

Wakey when you are ready to engage in a sensible discussion then say something at the moment you have nothing to contribute on football so you are trying to make what you think are smart comments they are not. I think you will find what I said was that they did not play top class football, not that they never played professionally.
Breeze I am not suggesting that they should hug the touchline, what I am suggesting is that they should play wider than they are. The fact that you have read something in a coaching mannual does not make it true, who are all these decent coaches you are quoting. Also our fullbacks generally don't come out to meet the winger they stay tucked in and leave the winger to our winger, which shockingly results in a cross coming in. Indeed with Muamba sitting deep in front of our central defenders they would not have the huge space you talk about to themselves.

tim_rigby wrote:I think you will find what I said was that they did not play top class football, not that they never played professionally.

Fair enough Tim, my mistake.
I can't believe I made such an elementary mistake. I feel like a complete wanker now.

tim_rigby wrote:No I have never played professional football, very amateur at best, why have you? Has Mourhino, has Eriksen, has Wenger, no to all so it is irrelevant.

Tim, you know as well as I do that you just made up this 'narrow full back' tactic and it has been blown out of the water because football coaching manuals actually teach full backs to tuck in and then move out to the oncoming winger. Your lack of tactical understanding has been demonstrated and exposed by a simple error...

Which manuals say that, where can I see an online copy. So you are saying all manuals say that, where do you get your stats for that. Even if they do tuck in, you keep saying that they move out to the wingers, ours don't. If Muamba sits deep why do they need to tuck in and give free ball to the oppositions wide players.
The comment you responded to wakey was that they did not play top class football, if I said otherwise previously I guess it was maybe when I got in from the pub! Still how long have you been waiting to bring that up, a bit sad.
You have still not told us what your experience is?

Calm down, Tim...it's OK to be wrong sometimes. You tried to be clever by inventing a new tactic and you got found out. We can still be friends...

tim_rigby wrote:The comment you responded to wakey was that they did not play top class football, if I said otherwise previously I guess it was maybe when I got in from the pub! Still how long have you been waiting to bring that up, a bit sad.

The comment I responded to was the one immediately prior to it, which I quoted just to make it easier for you to keep up. I could try re-reading it, but I'm pretty sure it says they didn't play professionally whichever way you look at it.

Still, as you say Tim, it's only words.

Breeze, I asked you what this absolute knowledge you have is based on, as you refuse to say I will take it that you are simply lying.

Well, for starters, our full backs don't play too narrowly so that was the alert that made me think you were just inventing it. Our full backs have been playing shite - of that there is no doubt - but that would mean you would only have the full backs to criticise and that wasn't enough for you so you had to create something based on tactics with which to beat The Ginger Plum.

Full backs should always tuck in because they are there to protect the goal and the goal is not along the wing...which is why we have the expression 'showing them down the outside' (away from goal). If the full backs are too far away from their nearest central colleague they create gaps - corridors if you will - that allow the runners to breach the back line and that's still the easiest way to score a goal by simply breaking through the back four...it's much harder to be pushed to the outside which is why full backs position themselves for a direct threat and move out to an oncoming winger/attacker when that player occupies the outside 'zone'.

I could go on but I won't because I think you already know you are wrong on this one. So our back line is being let down simply by individual errors, not by tactical ones.

But breeze if as I suggested Muamba is playing deep and filling those channels (aka Makalele) there will be no gap and we will be preventing the crosses. Additionally if a player is wide the whole defense should move across to close those gaps.

Muamba was man marking for the Chelsea game so he was in no position to fill any gap and only a player with Makelele's experience could prevent runners from taking advantage of open channels...there aren't many Claude Makeleles out there...

Can you see what I am suggesting though, I am happy to ignore the Chelsea game as they play a very different system than most. It will clearly take Muamba a while to get used to it if he ever does, but he might be a poor mans Makelele if developed correctly.

No Tim, the defensive midfielder's role does not have any influence on the positioning of the back four. That role is to pick up the runner who, 9 times of 10, is a midfielder that would not be spotted by the central defenders because they are watching the attackers.

Look even if we disagree on the tactics, and I am not suggesting having our fullbacks hug the touchlines, do you agree that they are poor. The reality is Big Sam kept clean sheets with Pedersen at left back thus tactics can have a huge influence, it is not simply down to personal errors.

Our current problems are entirely down to personal errors though, nothing to do with tactics at all. You have mentioned this Pedersen thing before but I can't see what relevance it has to what we have now - Pedersen doesn't play for us anymore, the team is 90% different and we have a new manager. You need to leave that suggestion well alone in the nostalgia file.

Our full backs do not play too narrowly - you were wrong to suggest they do.

the use of certain tactics can lead to an increase in the liklihood of individual errors, at the moment i think its a multitude of errors tactically and individually which end up costing us.

We're taking specifically about the full back positions, JJ. Are you saying that tactics is adding to the the chances of individual errors?

I disagree breeze, but I can't see us getting any further on the tactics issue, unless others have something to say.
I think the Pedersen comment is very relevant, it makes the point that some managers create a strong defense from very substandard players. Megson has a defense he has largely assembled and yet is simply unable to get anything from them. It is not simply a question of a team being the sum of its parts, some teams are more than that, unfortunately Megson does not seem to be able to create anything above and beyond.

i think you both have valid points... and re my comment, i was speaking in general terms.

I think Megson's done well of late... we've not exactly lost too many from the last ten or so games, and considering we've faced Chelsea twice, Man U, Spurs and Everton I think his record is decent.
I'd have to say that I think he's got most things right in terms of tactics, starting line-ups and substitutions (he's never gonna keep everyone happy, but generally speaking he's not been wide of the mark).

We've had a few individual mistakes that have led to goals being scored by opposition teams more easily than we would hope, but blame lies squarely at the feet of the players for those errors... Zat Knight & Ricketts have been culpable for a handful, but they are by no means alone.

i still wonder why it took so long for megson to start using the players and the type of tactics 95% of the fans wanted. His self professed preferred tactics were losing us goals, games and points, and he only changed things because the fans, the media and probably the board were on his back. He knew his job was on the line a few games in. Things have changed to appease the angered fans and hey, the performances have improved and the booing and megson outs have stopped.
so, has megson got it right on the pitch? or was it the fans? is it their demand for change that has improved things? and if so, is megson really up to it?
were the media and gary megson right when they said that many bolton fans would never be happy while megson was here? they all seemed bewildered that our supporters were disappointed with our team and our manager earlier in the season, supposedly we were all expecting too much as a result of the dizzy heights reached in recent years.
is it coincidental then that the boo boys have faded and the fans are happier since a more positive approach has been implimented, was it not that we just wanted to see some football or at least some desire, were we expecting to be in the top four? did we boo when chelsea thrashed us twice with 8 goals in a week or when man utd beat us or when tottenham rescued a point in injury time at the reebok? no! Because we were finally showing some character and some desire, we had balls. I think that is all most of us were ever asking for.
Will Megson admit that now? Will he say the fans were right to be showing their displeasure during our dire run of winless matches, all out defend football and negative approach to every game? or are we still cluless, pathetic and never satisfied?
Funny how the cluless tiny people, the useless fans, forced a change and everything got better, even if not massively.
There are still improvements to be made and my fear is that, when something needs changing or putting right, is Megson the man to do it? Or will it take months of dragging his heels, enraged fans and staring down the barrell of the sacking gun before he does anything?