Rousseau

A few are moaning on Twitter about the fact that it is the same team -- were they expecting Pedro to sign a new team last night?

Could be. Perhaps I'm just used to seeing 4-3-3 with Waghorn right and Miller "up top"? We'll know when we kick-off.

I reckon it's 4-3-3, but it depends on how he deploys the midfield three: is it 1 sitting, 2 advanced, or 2 sitting with a No.10 like a 4-2-3-1?

I bow to your superior experience in coaching youngsters, and I agree prioritising technical ability at the younger age groups is sensible, but are there not certain tactical principles -- not whole theories at that age, of course -- that they can learn, pre-11-a-side, with which older age groups can build upon? It would be interesting to see how continental sides incorporate the tactical element -- they seem to be more competent tactically... and technically too!

Ooft! Arsenal getting a hiding at the hands of West Brom.

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While Rangers continue to trail rivals Celtic at the top of Scottish football, here’s how the narrative will continue to play out. Former Rangers player/manager is invited to sit down with the media. Former player/manager is asked how Rangers will close the gap on Celtic. “Investment” says former player/manager. Rinse, repeat. It’s almost like 2012 to 2016 never actually happened. Like the way to fix the ills of the Ibrox club is to throw yet more money down a dark hole, because that’s really what they’re suggesting. Either that or, as Maurice Johnston stated earlier this week, they want Dave King to put his hand in his own pocket and spend himself. Being asked to write big fat cheques is the everyday life of a football chairman, and they should all know this coming in. But you cannot demand a man plough in millions of pounds from his own money. King hasn’t helped himself by boasting about a £30 million war chest, which he now suggests was meant to cover additional costs rather than just bloat the playing squad. However, there are far worse alternatives if “sugar daddy” is the route you seek. Just ask Hearts supporters. Rangers are still struggling to get themselves on the straight and narrow financially, so directing representatives with briefcases full of cash away from Ibrox in search of the best available players on the continent isn’t really an option. Celtic haven’t even spent all that much, yet. They probably will in the near future with a massive influx of Champions League money coming in. But, at this stage, they’ve spent £500k on Moussa Dembele, £3.5million on Scott Sinclair, £2.8m on Eboue Kouassi, a small fee for Dorus de Vries and around £1m on Cristian Gamboa. One of those players has just arrived and has yet to start, another hasn’t been seen since the autumn, and the last is a back-up right back. The two players who’ve made a massive contribution, at a cost £4million between them, is Sinclair and Dembele. Other than their input, Celtic’s terrific season has been built of contributions from players who were already at the club from last season. That’s what makes it such a terrific job by Brendan Rodgers, and why it’s unfair to paint the success in comparison to Rangers as the benefit of money in football. As any Celtic fan will gleefully point out, Joe Garner cost three times as much as Moussa Dembele. We’ve yet to have an indication of what transfer market Pedro Caixinha will prefer as he searches to pluck a few diamonds from the rough with the resources at his disposal, but avoiding Mark Warburton’s penchant for continuing returning to League One and League Two in England may be a start. Get consistent Regardless of what Celtic spend, a Rangers team on their current budget should not be third in the Ladbrokes Premiership table. This is what so many pundits seem to miss when they talk about the financial gulf. There are two gulfs and they always seem to forget the other: the financial gulf between Celtic and Rangers, and the financial gulf between Rangers and everyone else. Rangers should not need a pot of gold to score a victory, any victory, against Ross County in three attempts. This is the tremendous advantage given to either half of the Old Firm; if, at the start of any particular season, they lack the funds to compete with their rivals in terms of player recruitment. They should still be able to compete with them in the league table by virtue of being markedly better than the rest of the competition. Of course, the weaker you are the more prone you’ll be to an odd slip-up, while games between the two clubs are unlikely to swing in Rangers’ favour if there is a massive financial gulf between the pair. However, I say repeat this point again: the gap should not be 33 points! Pray for change Imagine a Hibs fan in the aftermath of the 2012 cup final. Or, to take it forward a little bit, imagine how they felt after watching Hearts win the Scottish Championship while they remained in the second tier. “What’s the point?” must have been muttered by more than a few. Now, the Hibees are on the course for the second tier title, they’ve won the Scottish Cup and are currently on the best run of results against their rivals since the 1970s. Things change. Celtic are on a historically great season. They look on course to go the entire domestic campaign unbeaten, something that’s never happened before since the league expanded to more than just 18 games per league term, as it was in the 1890s. While this writer would certainly not like to back against them to lose any particular match, history would suggest it’s a feat that’s not going to be repeated twice. Right now it seems inconceivable Celtic will fall from their perch in the foreseeable future. But football swings from one direction to the next in unpredictably ways. Rangers better just hope it swings back in their direction before 2021. http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/teams/rangers/why-rangers-should-close-the-gap-without-spending-heavily-1-4396374

Sounds like the players are ready for the game! [tweet]843048095088857088[/tweet] FYI: Parody Account.

True, but then that would be part of the DoF's remit, whether that would be to educate coaches already here -- it doesn't have to be the whole theory at the younger levels but certain principles that older age groups can build upon -- and/or bring in coaches that know these theories.

I agree. I was also interested by this: "At Barcelona, Guardiola was dealing with players who had been prepared for his extreme interpretation of the theory from their upbringing at La Masia; at Bayern Munich, he was working with players who had been instructed in a (more cautious) variant of the philosophy by Louis van Gaal." How do we expose our youth players to these ideas, so any manager has the best raw materials with which to mold and use? I suppose the answer again could be a DoF?

The fashion these days is to knife a manager at the first sign of trouble. Nobody is allowed to build, nobody is allowed to learn from a mistake. Move to a new country, take over a new team, try to adapt to a new environment and if you’re not winning titles six months later you’re a fraud. Neither Jürgen Klopp nor Pep Guardiola are under pressure as such heading into Sunday’s game at the Etihad, but both are facing grumblings of discontent. When Steve McClaren was sacked by Derby last week it meant that a quarter of all league clubs had changed their manager in the previous 100 days. Aitor Karanka’s exit from Middlesbrough then followed on Thursday. The level of churn is absurd and counterproductive on a number of levels. It’s a troubling thought that, had they been working in the modern era, there is a significant chance Herbert Chapman, Matt Busby, Don Revie, Bill Shankly, Brian Clough (twice) and Alex Ferguson would all have been sacked before they had enjoyed real success. Sacking managers has economic consequences and makes player recruitment over the long-term chaotic. But there are also tactical implications. Short-termism breeds simplicity and conservatism. Few managers, knowing the sword is dangling over their heads, are going to take tactical risks, or are going to seek to impose a system that takes time for players to assimilate. Everything will be simplified; nobody will look beyond the next game. Liverpool, in the first half of this season, showed what Klopp’s approach can achieve – but it took lots of work last season and in the summer to get to that point. The issue now is to work out what has gone wrong since the turn of the year and put it right for next season (probably by expanding the squad, perhaps by trying to lessen the physical load at least to an extent and certainly by trying to improve the defence and work out a way of unlocking deep-lying opponents). Guardiola’s project, his basic theory of play, is more complex. His preferred term for his philosophy is juego de posición and to instil it he divides the training pitch into 20 sections. The lines marking the penalty areas are extended for the full length and width of the pitch, while the vertical lines marking the sides of the six-yard box are picked up again at the edge of the 18-yard box and extended to the edge of the other 18-yard box. The zones nearest the touchlines are then split again, halfway between the 18-yard and halfway lines. The idea is that players adjust their position according to which zone the ball is in. But that is just the foundation: ideally players should be flexible enough to fill a zone that would, in the initial template, be filled by somebody else, creating a level of rotation to overman in key areas while maintaining a structure that should both offer passing options and maintain a defensive shape that can react effectively to the loss of possession and a counterattack by being immediately prepared to counter-press. At its simplest level, the zone principle should mean that no more than three players are in a line horizontally and no more than two vertically: if a player moves into a zone that means four in the same horizontal line are occupied, one of the other three should automatically move. That should ensure that the man on the ball always has two or three passing options and allows possession to be retained – the endless rondos that Guardiola favours in training making his players supremely adept at giving and receiving the ball in tight spaces – which is why his sides regularly have so much of the ball. When it is not aimed directly at the opposition goal, passing is designed to allow the team to generate the right structure, whether to mount an attack or to be prepared to counter-press. Guardiola has said it takes 15 passes for that structure to be created. There is, in other words, a direct link between offensive and defensive strategies. “Do you know how Barcelona win the ball back so quickly?” Johan Cruyff asked during Guardiola’s spell as coach at the Camp Nou. “It’s because they don’t have to run back more than 10 metres as they never pass the ball more than 10 metres.” Instilling those positional ideas is difficult. While basic elements such as a holding midfielder dropping between the two centre-backs to overman when playing out from the back against two centre-forwards, or even the full-back coming inside when the winger goes wide and vice versa, can be readily grasped, the principle of responding constantly to a mental pitch map is rather harder. At Barcelona, Guardiola was dealing with players who had been prepared for his extreme interpretation of the theory from their upbringing at La Masia; at Bayern Munich, he was working with players who had been instructed in a (more cautious) variant of the philosophy by Louis van Gaal. At City, he was virtually starting from scratch, which is perhaps why implementation there has proved so much trickier. It seems likely there will be a clearout in the summer and that more signings will be made but perhaps most important is that players who are already at the club assimilate the 20-zone system. Since the defeat at Everton there have been promising signs in that direction, which perhaps explains why Guardiola was so clearly irritated by his players’ lack of fight in the first half in Monaco. As he relentlessly rubbed ear and nose, only breaking off every now and again to scratch his chin, he reiterated that the defeat had not been the result of individual errors or tactics but of attitude. That, of course is also partly his responsibility, but losing to Monaco in that way doesn’t invalidate his more general strategic approach. Sunday’s game is essentially a battle for the minor places, a scrap to see who reaches the Champions League. That is a cause of frustration, particularly given how Antonio Conte has – with no European football – had an instant impact at Chelsea but, realistically, in both managers’ first full season, at this point their sides were always going to be works in progress. https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/mar/18/pep-guardiola-manchester-city-liverpool-barcelona-bayern-munich

Sorry I'm a wee bit late, but that's your preview published, Coop. It'll be interesting to see what the team will be -- same again, like you suggest, could be the way we go.

Of course, most are just buzz words. In this case it's just a way of thinking about the game, which helps coaches and players think about the game and prepare accordingly. It is a Portuguese methodology so I'm not sure how well traveled it is in the UK. Agreed -- the proof is always in the pudding. I wasn't suggesting that most British managers don't know these things, it's just that they don't talk about them. Whether that is because they are more guarded or perhaps the media just doesn't value it as much -- Cathro suggests they prefer the headline -- I don't know? Caixinha seems more comfortable with it because he has been exposed to that level of detail and discussion. I think we can discuss the different theories of the game more -- tactics, formations, training sessions, philosophies, principles etc. -- without revealing the game plan. I don't think he's revealing what we're doing in the next game; he's only discussing his principles of the game. We do crave more information nowadays, but it does seem like there is a more in-depth level of tactical discussion is already happening on the continent. I see it as a virtuous circle: The more these ideas as discussed the more fans learn, the more the media focus on it, the better informed the fans are and ultimately future players. If a young player in, for example, Portugal is exposed to a more in-depth level of tactical discussion from a young age, then surely that only benefits the future player?

Atletico, Monaco, Bayern, Juventus... tbh, anyone but Barca. #HatersGonnaHate

Methodologies, Matrices, Tactical Periodisation... Phwoar! Say it again. Slowly. Yes, I'm excited with how he works -- it's a modern way that I think is lacking in British football. However, I'd much prefer to see a tangible benefit in the players and team performance. It's clear to see he is very knowledgeable about the tactical aspect of the game and the technical details. Even good British managers/coaches don't talk like that. He's clearly from a country that values the tactical element, and Ian Cathro said as much last week: "In Portugal you have three newspapers about football and they talk more about football. “So everyone’s tactics and more technical things are under more scrutiny and talked about by more people. And my understanding is here we are more headline and story driven. “But they have three daily newspapers to fill so naturally they go deeper into things. That means there is more discussion of line-ups and systems.” Most refreshing.

Both, I believe. In some iterations there is 1 man in the middle in which the outer players can pass to, encouraging movement and better positioning to receive and make passes. Seems to help morale too: the Barca players look like they have a lot of fun with it, trying to win the ball back or keeping it away from the middle pressers .

My apologies to all. I hadn't seen us use it before. I'm just quite pleased to see us use it with such intensity. I'm aware it has been used in the past -- football in general -- but it's been given a new intensity and focus by Barcelona's implementation of it; there are various permutations that try to recreate game situations.

I can't believe I'm seeing a Rondo at Auchenhowie. Used by Rangers. What a time to be alive.

I'd like to see the lad given a chance; we've had him written off since he arrived, but he's only played 2 games for us -- bad team performances at that. He's only 23, playing League Two last year and is now playing in League One for a side in the play-offs, fighting for automatic promotion. League One might not be good enough for us, but it does show progress.

I'd like to see a lot more of our training sessions, but then again, I'm not sure it should be plastered all over the internet for opponents to view.

You can see a bit of the Tactical Periodisation; In amongst the fitness elements there is always ball work and game scenarios included. I don't know if I'm seeing things, but I think I saw Jordan Rossiter...

Cathro might be looking for a job soon...

You know, Madden did well but I think we got away with this one: [tweet]841246613578403840[/tweet]

Loved the way Forrester and Tavernier ran straight to the fans at the goal.

Murty deserves a lot of praise for the way he's conducted himself over the last few weeks. Performances against ICT and Dundee were poor, but subsequent performances were much better. Today we went into the game with a different mindset; to defend compactly and zonally in an unusual -- for us -- 4-4-1-1, and break on them. We didn't really break that often, but we created a couple of gilt-edged chances. We showed a lot of character too. He's dealt with the press very well too.