Please go now, Artell

[MikeSB]

I think you’ll find that coaching young footballers, or sportsmen of any other discipline come to that, is less flavour of the month than the result of what is generally called progress. So we won the World Cup (over 60 years ago let’s not forget) with allegedly uncoached players - I suspect the truth is we won it with less coached players than today but, nevertheless, players similarly coached to the rest of the world. Home advantage, a dodgy Kazakh linesman and a favourable draw may also have played a small part!

Football moves on. In the 50s England thought they were the best in the world, then along came Puskas and his mates and showed us how far from the truth that was. One could quote numerous other examples (I won’t bore you with them) but there is little doubt that football may, on the surface, be the same game, but in reality it has radically changed. When watching the documentary about Bobby Charlton on the occasion of his 80th birthday I was taken by his skill and shot, but gobsmacked at the amount of time he and the other players had. This was not down to ability but the fact that players were not as fit and did not have the level of stamina as today’s players. If Sir Bobby was playing today he would still be a great player, but only if he was fitter, faster and better coached.

Football has moved on but for the worse imo and I agree that fitness levels have improved as the football/caseball has as well as the training facilities and pitches and so to me it's even more remarkable that we saw great games at ALL levels back then. We held the best team in the country ie Spurs to a 2-2 draw in the FA cup in 1961 and beat Chelsea at Stamford bridge in the cup that despite the so called moving on argument. Nobody could head a ball like Frank Lord, in that time or anytime that I know and so the quality of the player like Charlton and Best has never been surpassed. I don't think there is ONE Crewe player in the past, I don't know, say 30 years that were much better quality than what I saw over many seasons that is. And having five forwards back then as opposed to one or two now is just senseless and backward looking and if that is progress, then you can keep it...I doubt any academy player could play on those quagmire pitches back then and so they must have had one hell of a stamina to be able to play 90 mins without subs by the way...and without gyms mostly. Is there any greater Boxer than Muhammad Ali?

I don't think you should underestimate our world cup victory and Greaves couldn't even get into the final team either.

I really loved the game back then and wouldn't go for free to a PL game and just to finish. We have some of the finest academies in the world in the UK and yet our world cup performances over the last 8 years have been dire. So I rest my case m'lord! Rooney would not have got in the top teams back then. They say the PL is the best in the world but rarely win the Champions final and so does that tell you what we need to know? ie natural ability and not coaching M'lord....

Oh BTW, Football was a much more physical game back then and another reason why academies would not have succeeded at all. Who knows how an 8 year old would develop over the next ten years and another reason why our academy players struggle in L1 and L2 to some extent.

[bigroof]

I think you’ll find that coaching young footballers, or sportsmen of any other discipline come to that, is less flavour of the month than the result of what is generally called progress. So we won the World Cup (over 60 years ago let’s not forget) with allegedly uncoached players - I suspect the truth is we won it with less coached players than today but, nevertheless, players similarly coached to the rest of the world. Home advantage, a dodgy Kazakh linesman and a favourable draw may also have played a small part!

Football moves on. In the 50s England thought they were the best in the world, then along came Puskas and his mates and showed us how far from the truth that was. One could quote numerous other examples (I won’t bore you with them) but there is little doubt that football may, on the surface, be the same game, but in reality it has radically changed. When watching the documentary about Bobby Charlton on the occasion of his 80th birthday I was taken by his skill and shot, but gobsmacked at the amount of time he and the other players had. This was not down to ability but the fact that players were not as fit and did not have the level of stamina as today’s players. If Sir Bobby was playing today he would still be a great player, but only if he was fitter, faster and better coached.

Agreed Aston, and good luck with the ensuing debate with Mike. Would just - pedantically perhaps! - point out that that linesman was Azerbaijani, not a Kazakh, and even has a stadium named after him in Baku.

[MikeSB]

I think you’ll find that coaching young footballers, or sportsmen of any other discipline come to that, is less flavour of the month than the result of what is generally called progress. So we won the World Cup (over 60 years ago let’s not forget) with allegedly uncoached players - I suspect the truth is we won it with less coached players than today but, nevertheless, players similarly coached to the rest of the world. Home advantage, a dodgy Kazakh linesman and a favourable draw may also have played a small part!

Football moves on. In the 50s England thought they were the best in the world, then along came Puskas and his mates and showed us how far from the truth that was. One could quote numerous other examples (I won’t bore you with them) but there is little doubt that football may, on the surface, be the same game, but in reality it has radically changed. When watching the documentary about Bobby Charlton on the occasion of his 80th birthday I was taken by his skill and shot, but gobsmacked at the amount of time he and the other players had. This was not down to ability but the fact that players were not as fit and did not have the level of stamina as today’s players. If Sir Bobby was playing today he would still be a great player, but only if he was fitter, faster and better coached.

Sir Bobby needed no coaching then or now. Instinct, awareness and natural ability and confidence is all he needed. That cannot ever be 'coached' and people that believe in all this stuff will believe in Fools Gold as well or *******!

In actual fact I don't think modern players have the same level of skill as they did and so in that sense, football has gone backwards. I saw Greaves and White and Blanchflower personally and Charlton and Best...so I can compare players of today. if we are so good an the game has moved on...How come we fail so miserably at throw ins and corners. Does it not make sense to have two or three players up at the half way line that means they have to too and that gives the GK more room to get the ball? It does seem as though football managers are not the brightest people around...

Dario hated players shooting from distance and wanted the ball walking into the net and one academy lad scored a goal from midfield by doing just that and got *******ed by Dario for not passing the ball earlier. The lad and his Dad thought that was stupid and he left the academy soon after...His Dad told me that story..Coaching means do as we tell you son or you don't get picked for the next game..we know that happens..That can destroy natural ability and confidence and why so many passes go astray...

[out0lunch]

Sir Bobby needed no coaching then or now. Instinct, awareness and natural ability and confidence is all he needed. That cannot ever be 'coached' and people that believe in all this stuff will believe in Fools Gold as well or *******!

In actual fact I don't think modern players have the same level of skill as they did and so in that sense, football has gone backwards. I saw Greaves and White and Blanchflower personally and Charlton and Best...so I can compare players of today. if we are so good an the game has moved on...How come we fail so miserably at throw ins and corners. Does it not make sense to have two or three players up at the half way line that means they have to too and that gives the GK more room to get the ball? It does seem as though football managers are not the brightest people around...

Dario hated players shooting from distance and wanted the ball walking into the net and one academy lad scored a goal from midfield by doing just that and got *******ed by Dario for not passing the ball earlier. The lad and his Dad thought that was stupid and he left the academy soon after...His Dad told me that story..Coaching means do as we tell you son or you don't get picked for the next game..we know that happens..That can destroy natural ability and confidence and why so many passes go astray...

Didn't that 'academy lad' go on to play for another local club?

[Gobstopper]

I think the fact we won the world cup in 66 is neither here nor there, it was a different time and a different era, the players back then were not coached less or more than anyone else. We did have some naturally gifted players but other countries did also its just that ours performed better when it mattered. I doubt we will see that again, the setting up of the premier league settled that one, the premier league and sky have a vested interest in a premier league that is devoid of English players. personally I am not interested in the premiership or the dire football they come up with, I have always watched Crewe and always will. I have seen the good and the bad, but it was Dario who changed things and it was the academy he set up that started to develop the players we needed to compete and that took us to the championship and the huge list of footballers that came through our academy. Many of those probably had natural ability and Dario was not perfect but he introduced the coaching methods to produce players who could go on to bigger things. Dario presided over our most successful period ever and you could not say his brand of football was boring, he achieved that by coaching he didn't just throw players out there who he thought had natural ability. He knew how he wanted to play football and he developed the players to do that, you only go so far on natural ability alone.

[Furberstreet]

Everyone looks back and sees some part of his/her life with rose-tinted spectacles. My memories of 1970s football were that it was exciting but the tackling was horrific at times and players did not get the protection they do now to display their skills. I certainly agree that, for years, Crewe have been awful at throw ins, and I have never understood why we always brought everyone back to defend free kicks and corners. I fully agree with Gobstopper on Dario's influence. He achieved great things at Crewe and you played his way or you were out of the first XI.

[Red and White Crusader]

Its all relative. The fact that Frank Lord didn't play much higher is testament to how good many many footballers were in that day and there was no point moving on that often as the wages were capped. Frank Blunstone the ex Alex Player who played for Chelsea and England got just ten pounds a week and worked in a newsagent before he went to training. He told me that personally when we played golf together.

People argue that football and other sports have moved on for the better? I say not because being fitter or faster does not in itself produce 'better' visual enjoyment. Packed defences suppress individual skills and probably true that Jimmy Greaves or Bobby Charlton would not have scored the goals they did. So people then say that is improvement? Nah, its the opposite imo. I used to love watching tennis with the likes of Illie Nastasi flicking his wrist to dip the ball over the net and the excitement of players moving around the court and now what we see is men and women staying on the base line bashing the ball over the net with 20 rallies etc...Boring boring boring and so is that an improvement? Its not supposed to be a sport of who can hit the ball the hardest, again imo.

Its probably why football was far more enjoyable to watch as a spectator sport back then and like tennis, its now boring because defensive tactics dictate so that sometime we see only one or two attempts at goal in 90 minutes. Is that progress? Over to you!

That's a good post.
Food for thought there.

[Gobstopper]

I have been watching tbe alex since 1976 i have seen some poor crewe teams. Those were the days wbere the bottom 4 clubs sought re-election and we spent most of our time in tbe bottom 4. I think mike SB has forgotten those years. What we see today has moved on from those days and Dario changed it and we started to improve as a team, he made the players he had better and coaching was the way he did it. If he had carried on with the MikeSB method we would be out of business now. I'm sorry Mike but I don't remember 1968 I do remember the end of the 1970's when we got the record for the least number of points ever recorded by a league football team, in the days when it was 2 points for a win and we finished the season with 27 points, the good old days, not.

[Timmy58]

I have been watching tbe alex since 1976 i have seen some poor crewe teams. Those were the days wbere the bottom 4 clubs sought re-election and we spent most of our time in tbe bottom 4. I think mike SB has forgotten those years. What we see today has moved on from those days and Dario changed it and we started to improve as a team, he made the players he had better and coaching was the way he did it. If he had carried on with the MikeSB method we would be out of business now. I'm sorry Mike but I don't remember 1968 I do remember the end of the 1970's when we got the record for the least number of points ever recorded by a league football team, in the days when it was 2 points for a win and we finished the season with 27 points, the good old days, not.

And on the subject of Dario, would he have survived as long as he did had he been managing the Alex for the last 10 years!. I suspect not because patience and understanding of the concept seems, at times, in short supply. And going back to the title of the thread, I am going to say Dave, please don't go!

[MikeSB]

I have been watching tbe alex since 1976 i have seen some poor crewe teams. Those were the days wbere the bottom 4 clubs sought re-election and we spent most of our time in tbe bottom 4. I think mike SB has forgotten those years. What we see today has moved on from those days and Dario changed it and we started to improve as a team, he made the players he had better and coaching was the way he did it. If he had carried on with the MikeSB method we would be out of business now. I'm sorry Mike but I don't remember 1968 I do remember the end of the 1970's when we got the record for the least number of points ever recorded by a league football team, in the days when it was 2 points for a win and we finished the season with 27 points, the good old days, not.

I have forgotten nothing but some of you need reminding of the ACTUAL situation..

Here is Crewe's league record over the years..

http://www.crewealexandra-mad.co.uk/...eague-history/

The sixties which me and Mick remember so well was a very successful period for us..To us it was as good as anything we have seen since..

The seventies were extremely poor that goes without saying but have you see the last TEN years where even Timmy has admitted that Dario would have been sacked with that record and that is with the world class academy we have and all the best facilities we have had in our history..

So one decade out of the last 100 plus years and some of you think we spent all that time in the bottom four to hear you talk.

No, you see when the FACTS are produced it leaves some of you with egg on your faces and you don't like it do you.

Greaves is mentioned because he was one of the best players in the world at the time and someone whom I watched a number of occasions and he has the same opinion on coaching as I do...

Where has all this coaching been the last TEN years then if its so good?

I say again, I rest my case..

Yours is bluster, mine are based on facts and personal experience..

Don't forget to add THIS season to another dismal one too..