Reply With QuoteThe problem with Burchnall was that he could talk a good story, but could never put it into practice when it mattered...Originally Posted by the_anticlough
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True via recruitment but you can assist reducing the number of goals conceded with your team selection/balance.
His cautious approach netted 81 goals which is more than enough for promotion. I'd suggest the 'mixed' away perfomances were a combination of things rather than just one.
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The problem with Burchnall was that he could talk a good story, but could never put it into practice when it mattered...
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Fair comment
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He could at Meadow Lane, he couldn't away from home. Sounds familiar
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I dunno, home was not world beating either for a team with promotion goals, 1-4 Woking, not beating 10 men against Torquay and Halifax...
Yes, away under him was woeful. Mainly good performances at home, some poor ones (Dover) but ultimately failure when it mattered most.
Yes, many reasons for the crappy away form, but never having anyone decent on the left-hand side all season, and lack of leadership from the back and middle of the park are just as valid as explanations as Ruben, Cal and Wootton being on the pitch at the same time.
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He could never get to grips with conceding from set pieces, whether at home or away.. Also, he often spoke about moving the ball quicker and players to be braver, but they never did. Only on the odd occasion...I accept that football is all about getting 3 points, but to continually make 50 odd passes before we eventually got the ball into the opponents half because of the lack of movement.. These are things he harped about every week, but nothing changed....
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We do, but I wonder whether the new head coach will think that way when he assesses the squad?
I was surprised when IB looked at his squad last summer and saw 3-5-2 as his best option, because it wasn't what I was expecting. A bit like you I'm not convinced that the players we had/have available to play the wing back positions were/are good enough all-rounders for what is a massively demanding role. You've got to have excellent defensive and attacking attributes and one hell of an engine to get up and down the field all game. Most of our contenders have decent engines, but they have defensive or attacking frailties, meaning one way or another we often lacked something out wide when we played that formation.
When I looked at our squad last year I saw a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 as the more natural fit for the players we have, where you have orthodox full-backs and wide attacking players and therefore select the players to reflect their defensive or attacking strengths. When we went to 4-2-3-1 if often worked well, because all of the four attacking players had goals in them and you're not relying too heavily on your centre-forward. The problem with that formation - in fact all the formations we tried - was that the midfield sometimes wasn't strong enough, and that's a fundamental problem you can only solve by recruiting more height and aggression into midfield area to support a fine (but lonely!) player like Matt Palmer.
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Yeah it was enormous screw-up.
We finished the previous season doing quite well with that formation. We lose Miller and Enzio, who featured a lot there. But hey ho why throw the baby out with the bath water....it seems IB never stopped wanting to run with that...
Recruitment then say ''er....here you are....have Taylor and Chicksen for LWB and DKE and Nemane for the right.....''
IB may have looked at that and thought WTF but it didn't stop him trying to play it.....having to revert to 4-2-3-1 very often as it failed so much, and was spiralling down the plughole completely until finally we got Richardson with over half of the season gone.
Taylor was more or less banished, leaving tricky Chicky on the other wing (basically allowing the opposition to wall off a whole side of the pitch and not have to worry about it).
The sooner the new boss gets here the better because we don't want another guy trying to make a top 1 dish from mid-table ingredients.
Last edited by the_anticlough; 02-06-2022 at 02:07 PM.
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You've identified what any championship team needs and that is a solid spine as the Munto season showed. We had the best goalkeeper, a solid centre back, creative midfielder and prolific striker.
For me we've got to get a really strong leader at the back to partner Cameron. In midfield we have Matt Palmer so we need someone who compliments him and one of a Bishop/Ravenhill type.
There was some talk about Sam Austin the Kidderminster Harriers midfielder who is their captain a few months back in the media so as one Sam leaves maybe another Sam could come in? Especially as Kidderminster have not been promoted. Although he is more of an attacking midfielder as opposed to a robust spoiler in the centre circle of the Ravenhill/Bishop mould.
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The Woking game was a "freak result" not my words the words of a Woking FC supporter and Chief Exec. Of course anyone can cherry pick a handful of games where we disappointed but maybe we didn't need to be world beaters to beat 15 different teams at home including some big names, high placed finishers. We conceded from set pieces but no team was able to stop us scoring regardless of whether we took 50 passes to do it. As I'm sure you can remember more beautiful team goals were scored than I can remember before.
Only two teams were able to beat us even with the advantage of knowing we can't handle a high press.
Home was fine.
Like I said many (combined) reasons why we underperformed away from home (as was also the case with NA) and not just because key players (Ruben is obviously excused) consistently underperformed.
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