Carlos’ interviews.

[Omegstrat6]

You know Omeg, apparently Carlos contacted Bielsa to talk about it and Bielsa simply said “That’s football” and it’s true. Strange things happen. 6 games all draws is unusual. 6 losses in a row would be more of a concern. One thing I do know is that Carlos and the team want to win matches and I’m sure they’ll get through this patch. They don’t plan to get a draw but then we sometimes forget that the opposition want to win too. It’s tough. I respect all the teams in this league. Some really good performances from us last night btw. It must be really frustrating for them.

I don't doubt that the team want to win matches Boingy, but the longer this goal drought goes on, the more frustrated and nervous the players will become which will only impact on performances on the pitch (as it did against Luton for example).

Thankfully, last night's performance at least demonstrated more intent than we have seen recently, even if we continued to lack that quality in the final third. I think we were very lucky that they had their goal disallowed but Burnley are tougher opposition than many we have struggled with so last night wasn't a bad result.

I too think that the goals will come again and I understand Corberan's desire in the meantime to protect our defensive record but whilst it's tempting to talk of "bad patches" or say "Oh well, that's just football", as with anything in life, I don't believe that things "just happen" for no reason. This is why the police, for example, replaced the term Road Traffic Accident with Road Traffic Incident because "accident" may carry the connotation of not being a deliberately caused outcome but it also implies a lack of blame. Basic "cause and effect" if you like.

I am sure that there are many variables that are feeding into our current inability to score goals whether that is a dip in fitness or form with some players or lack of confidence and nerves in others but tactical decisions and what appears to be insufficient practice at certain skills (e.g. shooting or corner conversion!) also play their part.

One other thing also occurred to me. Many years ago, early in my management career, I was on a training course and one of the things they set us was quite a complex task to be done in a very tight timescale. The idea was obviously to see how we all performed under pressure. Those from my sector of the business were all quite young and used to working under pressure so the attitude was just plough on through and get it done. We were therefore quite surprised when part way through the task we were made to take an enforced break and to do something completely different and non work related for an hour before being able to return to the task. As I'm sure you've already gathered, the point of this was to show that we can all get sucked into problems with a tunnel vision so that we lose the ability to step back and see the bigger picture and with it some possible solutions.

Going at it and driving through things without a break is sometimes necessary but more often than not, taking just a bit of time out to relax and re-charge is more than feasible and can lead to better end results. Carlos is known for the intensity of his training sessions but maybe this is part of the problem? Maybe it puts the players under even more pressure and stifles that bit of freedom of play that we seem to be missing on the pitch?

I don't think you can compare the quality of our current squad to our classic late 70s one but Ron Atkinson's attitude was famously less about tactics and intensive training sessions than simply telling his players to "go out and enjoy themselves". I'm certainly not suggesting Carlos just do this, but maybe there is something in it?