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Mauricio Pochettino - Sacked

Against Saudi Sportswashing Machine recently, I do recall (hopefully correctly) our midfield morphing into a 4141 when defending. I do agree that that is the strongest shape and that Mason and Bentaleb do regularly get pulled out of position in the current shape, but then if that happens the #10 should be dropping in. IMO a lot of our failings in defence are more from individual errors and players switching off.
 
veron23 said:
i th


I think I understand who Poch is, thanks for the insight however.

my point was that even with an open chequebook and Pochs 1st choice 11, in my opinion from watching almost every game live he doesn't understand defensive shape.
every successful team these days has a "number 6" with 2 in front when they don't have the ball. From Bayern to Chelsea to the period Man Utd had a good run would morph into a 4141 when not in possession. We stick with a 2 regardless of what phase we are in and we leave huge gaps and get drawn out of position time and time again.

So even if Poch has his dream 11 next season I still see us being easy to cut open.

It seems he is only has the high press as form of defence which is great when it works but no team can press for 90 minutes all season long so I would like him to have a better understanding of defensive transitions which so far I haven't seen.

calling him a "system manager" is really a lame attempt to feel better about him. He may have a system, doesn't mean he has to be rigid with that system.
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But the point those that are quick to criticise fail to grasp is that Poch has been caught between a rock and a hard place.

We all acknowledge that he doesn't have the players to play his preferred system - so what could he do?
He could spend the whole of this season playing a formation he'll discard in the Summer when he brings in his own signings that will be tailored to his preferred system
or
Muddle through with unsuitable players, but establish his long term philiosophy amongst a squad of players, the core of which will still be here next season and will hopefully have benefitted from being exposed to his methods for a whole season.

Personally, I think if he had played 4-3-3 or 3-4-3 or whatever people are calling for, abandoned that, then emerged with an alien 4-2-3-1 next season, people would have been all over his case. People would be shouting 'planless', 'why didn't we play that formation last year' blah blah blah. This way, his ideas are implemented and understood in the club, the scouting team, youth coaches etc know what we are aiming towards and can act accordingly. If we chopped and changed formations every three minutes according to the latest trend on GG we'd be all over the shop.

We'd be accusing Poch of having no idea, philosophy, identity. We'd be Spurs under Sherwood. Kyle Walker would play as a striker away to Chelsea. Arsenal fans would hold hands with Spurs fans and go skipping down the street in merriment. The world would be chaos.

At some point we are going to have to look at a long term solution. Winning the next game is obviously important and what we all want, but being a well oiled machine into the future is the key to real success. Poch's Southampton didn't get carved open and ship millions; neither will we. We need a summer of sensible, solid recruitment and a manager with his feet under the desk with a full summer to just work and train and mould the team.

Playing 4-3-3 or whatever in a dead rubber game against Emirates Marketing Project isn't going to shape the future of the club. What I've listed above might well though on the other hand.
 
HI mate. Totally agree that if Poch will long term stick with 4231 then there is no point changing it and its best to get through a teething period. However Chelsea for example are 4231 when they have the ball and straight away 4141 without the ball. Matic drops to a "number 6" role and the number 10 drops in line with the "number 8"

They still press high with at least 4 attackers but immediately form into 4141 without the ball, so clearly its a) possible and b) doesn't negate the high press. People seem to be jumping onto the banwagon that the high press has to compromise all else which is nonsense. We don't even press that much anyway so there is no reason to neglect defensive shape when the ball is on our half. Its clear to me Poch is not coaching the players on this part of the game and Bentaleb and Mason are being left adrift to deal with a 3 man triangle attack who rotate positions until either one of our 2 gets drawn out of position.

Its not possible these days to have 2 sole midfielders and compete.
 
And remember Veron23; one of those midfielders should break into the box to score AND track runners and be the last line of defence.

Given that our "attacking 3" have been a bit pants, I think it is fair to swap one out... Although before the City game Sky said those 3 have scored (or maybe just "been involved in") 30 goals, the same as Kane which was lauded as a great feat.
 
veron23 said:
i th


I think I understand who Poch is, thanks for the insight however.

my point was that even with an open chequebook and Pochs 1st choice 11, in my opinion from watching almost every game live he doesn't understand defensive shape.
every successful team these days has a "number 6" with 2 in front when they don't have the ball. From Bayern to Chelsea to the period Man Utd had a good run would morph into a 4141 when not in possession. We stick with a 2 regardless of what phase we are in and we leave huge gaps and get drawn out of position time and time again.

So even if Poch has his dream 11 next season I still see us being easy to cut open.

It seems he is only has the high press as form of defence which is great when it works but no team can press for 90 minutes all season long so I would like him to have a better understanding of defensive transitions which so far I haven't seen.

calling him a "system manager" is really a lame attempt to feel better about him. He may have a system, doesn't mean he has to be rigid with that system.
Click to expand...

I'm not defending him, personally I believe we could have adapted "just a little" this season, go a bit more DM focused, leveraged players like Lennon and likely be 3-6 points better off, which would have been significant.

That said, he is rigid (comparatively), I don't think we will ever see him making huge adjustments, I'm also not sure his sides will ever do the large amounts of clean sheets per season, doesn't seem to be his style.

Its not about me/you/whoever feeling better about Poch, this is a direction that club has taken, my opinion, we have had 4 managers, pretty much the same results (4th-6th) with minor variations in the style of play.

If you want better results, look at the spend, as noted in the OMT thread, City/Cheat$ki/Manure have spent $1B+, Pool/Scum have spent $800M+, we have spent $400M when looking at combined Net Spend +Wages, new manager, new players won't change that.
 
Bullet said:
And remember Veron23; one of those midfielders should break into the box to score AND track runners and be the last line of defence.

Given that our "attacking 3" have been a bit pants, I think it is fair to swap one out... Although before the City game Sky said those 3 have scored (or maybe just "been involved in") 30 goals, the same as Kane which was lauded as a great feat.
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Only the current top 4 teams have scored more than us this season, which is quite nice really given how poor we have looked at times.
 
Raziel said:
I'm not defending him, personally I believe we could have adapted "just a little" this season, go a bit more DM focused, leveraged players like Lennon and likely be 3-6 points better off, which would have been significant.

That said, he is rigid (comparatively), I don't think we will ever see him making huge adjustments, I'm also not sure his sides will ever do the large amounts of clean sheets per season, doesn't seem to be his style.

Its not about me/you/whoever feeling better about Poch, this is a direction that club has taken, my opinion, we have had 4 managers, pretty much the same results (4th-6th) with minor variations in the style of play.

If you want better results, look at the spend, as noted in the OMT thread, City/Cheat$ki/Manure have spent $1B+, Pool/Scum have spent $800M+, we have spent $400M when looking at combined Net Spend +Wages, new manager, new players won't change that.
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Mate, it has zero to do with money. It doesn't take a £20 million midfielder to get into position when we don't have the ball. If that was the case all the other teams bar the rich will concede 10 goals per game. He is not instructing our midfield to get into shape when we don't have the ball now so this will no change even if he has who he wants next year. Our only defence is when we press the ball in the opponents half. Once the ball is in our half however, Mason/Bentaleb or whoever for that matter is left isolated.

So my point remains, whoever we sign next year won't make the slightest bit of difference when it comes to scoring against us. Unless Poch learns that pressing is only 50% of defence then we wont see much improvement.

The buck stops with Poch. He is a one trick pony and hasn't grasped alot of the basics. Regardless of the players we have, his system is majorly flawed.
 
Cochise said:
Only the current top 4 teams have scored more than us this season, which is quite nice really given how poor we have looked at times.
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On the other hand, we have failed to score in a total of 6 home games this season (ie a third of them), which is more than any other top 10 side (in fact, only Villa, Sunderland and Burnley have a worse stat here). The median for the rest of the top 10 is 3 (with a mean of 2.44) and the median for the rest of the league is 4 (with a mean of 4.05). Should we be worried about that? Of course, the majority of stats point to the fact that the reason we have failed to compete effectively this season for a top 4 spot has been the fairly woeful overall defensive picture, but I think our home form in general has a few holes, tbh.
 
I was thinking more of facilities and preparation, I appreciate the comfort of the familiar and the environment inside the stadium have been factors in the past but surely these days players are mentally primed to ignore all of these
 
galeforce said:
I was thinking more of facilities and preparation, I appreciate the comfort of the familiar and the environment inside the stadium have been factors in the past but surely these days players are mentally primed to ignore all of these
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The days when Wimbledon used to make the temperature in the away dressing room uncomfortable and pump in really loud bad music.

Or Liverpool used to have a deliberately slippery floor to try and stop players from focusing on the match

And didn't John Beck used to spike the sugar for tea with salt or something, to make players get stiches?
 
The whole thing about 'not being pouch players' not being suited to his system is bull brick. Sure we can upgrade on a lot of the squad, but that's very different from the squad having holes in it and therefore preventing pouch playing his system.

What completely different type of player (to any we have) does pouch need to make things magically click.

Nah..... He is young manager who has had An ok first year in charge, with some possitives and some negatives. Hopefully he will be learning and so will the young squad.
 
Gutter Boy said:
I'd say our tiny pitch and often poisonous crowd mean playing at home has been a disadvantage for us, at least since the Jol years.
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Then we need to find a system where by us having a tiny pitch is
A huge advantage, as we will be playing half our games there..... It's pretty important.
 
glorygloryeze said:
I'd like someone to reply to Veron23 points please - both those who agree and disagree (or do both in parts)...
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Would you mind re-stating the points you think are so worthy of reply? If at all possible without the string of logical fallacies seemingly surrounding whatever good point it is you think he's making...

DTA said:
The whole thing about 'not being pouch players' not being suited to his system is bull crud. Sure we can upgrade on a lot of the squad, but that's very different from the squad having holes in it and therefore preventing pouch playing his system.

What completely different type of player (to any we have) does pouch need to make things magically click.

Nah..... He is young manager who has had An ok first year in charge, with some possitives and some negatives. Hopefully he will be learning and so will the young squad.
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Primarily, in my opinion, we need more players like those currently in the starting 11. It's nothing magical about it at all. It's just that we have the youngest team in Europe (tm) and we're being inconsistent with a bench that's offering somewhere close to zero competition for places for the front 6.

The players that do not fit have been more or less marginalized by now and will hopefully be gone by the time the summer transfer window shuts
 
DTA said:
Then we need to find a system where by us having a tiny pitch is
A huge advantage, as we will be playing half our games there..... It's pretty important.
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Isn't it fairly well accepted that a smaller pitch favours the "underdog" or the team happy to keep it 0-0 at the outset?

Where we are in the football hierarchy, and where we want to be, that's not likely to be the case for us in home in many matches. We can't just change a system to where that all of a sudden becomes an advantage. It's not an advantage for the opponents because of a system of play, it's an advantage (although I think a fairly small one) because of the relative expectations of the two teams at kick off.
 
one would assume we'll have a bigger pitch "soon" anyway

its better to be playing the right system with the wrong players on the wrong pitch than the wrong system with the wrong players on the wrong pitch imo
 
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