Originally Posted by
jackal2
Good event and some good questions.
Clearly IB is very committed to playing out from the back and I can see his logic that it draws teams on and creates space upfield. I can also see that controlling possession wears teams out and therefore we can become most dangerous in the later stages of games. However, the question must be whether the players at his disposal are talented/confident enough to play consistently this way at the pace required to catch teams out and generate energy from the crowd. I've seen it in spells this season, but at other times we've been far too pedestrian and the ball has been in our half for far too long. We're aiming to win this league or finish very high up, so it doesn't leave much room for experiment and inconsistency.
I don't expect him to play the way Neil Warnock or Sam Allardyce did, because clearly he's not that sort of manager, but I hope his ideology is sufficiently flexible not to put the players in a position where we are frequently exposing their weaknesses rather than playing to their strengths. The most successful managers generally tend to match their choice of tactics and playing style to the attributes of their squad, rather than imposing a formation and a way of playing that they don't feel comfortable with.