Hi Monkeyhawk. Good to have you on board. Soccer (football) is a wonderfully complex and fluid game, and therefore it looks a lot of the time that the play is spontaneous. But there's a time and a place for spontaneity. Apart from preparation (training, drills, skills development) and people management (selection, psychology, talent identification), once the team takes the field the coach still has a lot to think about. Team formation and tactics have to respond to what the opposition might be doing, and changes in the score also require responses. Should we play 4-4-2 or 4-5-1? What about a deep lying midfielder? One of the strikers playing off the other? Fullbacks advancing down the flanks? Which of our players are marking which of their players. And so on. These decisions rest ultimately with the coach. So it's not just substitutions. You will frequently see coaches on the sideline yelling instructions during the ebb and flow of the game. Unless it's Steve McLaren, it's probably something tactical along these lines.
owlhouse has covered most of the ground. If you play Pro Evolution Soccer, it furnishes you with all kinds of coaching options: how deep to hold the defensive line, whether or not to leave the strikers out for counter attacks, how wide to play the wide midfielders, whether the fullbacks should push up, and so on. It's the easiest way, I think, for a spectator to appreciate the coached element of the game. You'll sometimes see a top-league coach/manager start in the directors' box rather than on the touchline, to get the elevated view of the formations, though nowadays there's usually an assistant upstairs to handle those duties. And if you want to read a coach's perspective, David Pleat's Guardian columns are a good place to start, and the BBC News site often has tactical explanations on its football pages. (All this is good distraction from another rotten performance, which means that Boro's traditional Christmas slump will be hard to distinguish from the rest of the season. It really comes down to the question of whether there are three worse teams in the league, and I don't see that happening, particularly given that we're just not built to fight for survival.)
Fergie kept his top-scoring and top-assisting player off the team. His team, the defending champions, are trying to keep pace with a team of youngsters (albeit, top-class, silken-passing, goal-scoring, and now battle-toughened youngsters) who lead the table despite being without their top striker, are still unbeaten almost at the halfway point of the season, and still have played one game fewer than Man U. On top of that, the other big teams also had relatively easy games against bottom-of-the-league teams. Fergie gambled, and lost both the match and the chase against a side that have only just recently into a month-long relationship with their new manager. Fergie gambled to protect his star player rather than on securing the points, and he didn't even get a point. From the looks of it, nobody on his team looked capable of scoring yesterday, and the one guy who has done it consistently is wasn't even on the bench. Does the coach matter? I think so.
btw, sorry, owlhouse, I couldn't help but tweak ya. Having said that, I did think Miller was robbed yesterday. The replays showed that Kenny timed his run perfectly, then exhibited excellent vision and control to beat Cudicini. But the officials stole that goal away. Derby is in such a deep hole nowadays, every bit of bad luck is as good as a goal against them. As for Bolton, Anelka, who scored the match-winner against Man U, used to play for Liverpool. So, nicely done, mon ami. Nicely done.
Derby did get robbed, but things like that happen to everyone. It's just that other sides have the wherewithal to get those breaks back elsewhere. This year, Derby just don't. The season isn't really long enough to drop too many of these games, especially in the horse race at the top of the table. Arse is the only team that has yet to stumble, and they probably will drop a game somewhere (not that I hate the Gunners, I just hope they don't separate from the pack), but the big problem for Manure is their confidence moving forward. Rooney is becoming Eric Lindros; miles of talent, minimal (at best) awareness of the world around him, and he can't stay on the pitch. The Pretty Portuguese Pony isn't the type to get tough when the tough gets going, and after that, who's there to finish consistently? Tevez? I guess. It's just my sense that there's nothing stopping another few games like this from happening to Man U at inopportune times. And I will gleefully dance for every last one of them.
Liverpool are the only other unbeaten team in the EPL, apart from Arsenal. They've won three fewer games than Arsenal, but are only six points behind, with the same number of games played as the Gunners, which is one fewer than most of the rest of the league. If they win the extra game they have in hand, they'll be level on points with Man U, with a superior goal difference. That would've put Liverpool in second this week, but instead, they're fifth. That's the margin of difference in the top five this week. Anyone in the top six can be in the top three in the space of one match. In fact, teams #3 through #9 are separated by only one point from their neighbor on either side. It's what's kept the EPL interesting. No sign of any runaway winners yet, and the slim (or zero) margin for error is what makes Man U's loss so notable.
Arsenal's game in hand means a win would put them six points clear of the field. That's a pretty sizeable margin, all told. And just because Liverpool have yet to lose doesn't mean they've been what I'd call consistent. They look good moving forward, but optimism is free, and Rafa is at least as susceptible to brain farts as Fergie is. The EPL is interesting because the EPL is interesting. There's no shortage of drama avywhere, and with the season one-third over, everyone still has something both meaningful and attainable to strive for. Even Derby.
I am so happy that turtlegirl and I get to see Fulham/Wigan on 22 December in London! I need to plan a London SpoFi meetup.
We arrived here in Cairns late Saturday night. TS1 was falling asleep but I wanted a little telly to cool down from the two three flights and what popped on? The Liverpool-Newcastle pre-game! So I kept my eyes open until that sweet Gerrard blast off Lucas's semi-misdirection before tapping it over. Sweet dreams indeed!
Hi Bill. Get used to late nights/early mornings in this part of the world if you watch the EPL. At least here in Jakarta the early game is on at a reasonable hour.
