Yeah, I remember something of this sort as well: we were never a purely counter-attacking team. What we would do is come out of the blocks roaring, getting at the opposition left, right and center for 45 minutes, closing down, dribbling down the edges of the box and playing aggressive forward passes. Then, as we'd tire, we'd try and sit back and hit the opposition on the counter, hopefully with a one or two goal lead at that point.
The problem with us then is that we burnt out our players too early into the season doing that, so that by the time February rolled around, the majority of them were jaded to an extent, and when that happened teams would generally sit back, weather the storm and then hit us on the break as we kept trying to break down them down well into the second half as the initial 'flurry' failed.
The solution to that was better squad management and better squad players. The former was Harry's failure: he never really used our fringe players effectively to keep the core group fit into the final stages of the season, and this was never clearer for all to see than when his mind was on the England job during that catastrophic second half of 2012. The second was Levy's failure: a failure to invest when we needed investment, and a failure to back his man to an extent, culminating in the infamous Saha and Nelsen transfers.
But anyway, beside the point. We weren't a counter-attacking team duting the Redknapp era. Was it an important part of our game? Yes. Did we try it from minute one to minute ninety, like O'Neill's Villa? No.
